by Anon
*
I knew Salim was special. When teachers say that, they don’t mean it in a derogatory sense. Quite the opposite.
I knew he was special the first time I saw him in the playground, standing apart from everyone, watching and counting the skipping, his toes pointing inwards. From that point on, I always talked to him when I was on duty. Not because I felt sorry for him, but because he always had an interesting take on the world. He regaled me with storylines from Bollywood films and showed me the dance moves.
For a while, I was his only friend, which became problematic. When I walked past my hard-earned quiet line outside the classroom, a voice would pipe up: ‘Hello, Sir. I have been here for five minutes’; or ‘Hello, Sir. I have written five lines for homework.’ I told him to be quiet, and that if he spoke again, he would get a detention. Everyone knew he wouldn’t.
At the beginning of term, his hand was always up. When he spoke, he leaned back his eyes lit up, and a robotic voice emerged. He had tried to befriend various members of the class, but now they ostracised him. One by one, his partners had peeled away. Now he sat on his own, and it was very difficult to find anyone to work with him.
All the signs were there: the social awkwardness; the obsession, particularly with numbers; the literal approach to texts. He couldn’t handle it when the bus was late; when it rained; when I didn’t reward them with Haribos, like I said I would. The boundaries, rules and regular ritual of the school were great comfort to him. He flourished in an environment in which everything was kept as regular as possible. But we could not keep all irregularities at bay. Sometimes the lasagne did not stay rigid and collapsed over his green beans; sometimes I said I would give the books back on Wednesday and gave them back on Thursday; sometimes I gave them 12 minutes to write rather than 15. These were all egregious irregularities that exposed me as a liar, and the world as unstable and unpredictable.
Lesson #107
Don’t Speak Metaphorically to Autistic Children.
We were told this during our training, but it is easy to forget. For instance, a teacher had told an autistic pupil that he was ‘on fire’, because he was working so hard; the kid leapt up, shouting, ‘I’M ON FIRE! HELP! I’M ON FIRE!’ I thought of this when I told the class that they could finish two pieces of work, and kill two birds with one stone. Salim looked at me with a pained expression, and said, ‘I didn’t kill any birds!’
I ensured I explained things as clearly and concretely as I could, with as few words as possible, repeating myself slowly, having the instructions clearly written on handouts and on the board. The handouts were simple and colourful: images of characters or concepts, with boxes underneath providing sentence starters or connectives. Teaching Salim forced me to unravel the whole process of instruction and start again. I could take nothing for granted. For every stage of a lesson, I had to make sure that I was absolutely clear, that I was going at a pace that he was comfortable with, and that he was secure in his understanding (for example, by saying ‘thumbs up or thumbs down’, or letting them show the green, yellow or orange pages in their Planners to show the level of their understanding without being exposed to the rest of the class).
Thus Salim made me a better teacher of the whole class. They all benefited from such careful, well-planned differentiation. I realised that I had been going too fast and assuming too much of everyone in the class. Now they were all with me for the whole lesson. Pace is one of the most difficult things to master.
Lesson #115
You Are Going Too Fast.
Almost all beginner teachers go too fast. It takes a great deal of skill to go at a pace which everyone in the class is comfortable with, which combines fast-paced attention-grabbing engagement with slow consolidation and repetition. True differentiation involves setting different levels of the same task, so that pupils can go at their own pace.
The question was whether Salim benefited by being in there with the others. On the one hand, you could say his socialisation was being improved (a moot point if every other child is teasing him and refusing to sit with him). On the other, he would surely benefit from targeted one-on-one, and we had an excellent autism unit with superb specialists and resources. I needed a permanent TA to help out. It was time for Paula.
*
‘Y’a’right, Sir?’
She was always smiling. She laughed whenever she saw me, partly because she was a happy person, but I am sure that a part of her was laughing at me.
She had worked all over. All manner of schools. Nice ones, nasty ones. And here the longest. She knew all the Old Guard, and always had a knowing wink and a laugh with her old friends from ‘the old school’. When it was real. When it was like family.
‘Now, these young teachers, well. They’re just like kids, ain’t it? They look barely old enough to be my son! Don’t get me wrong, I like them. They get results. But most of them just don’t got time to sit and chat. To have a chinwag. You know? That’s what it is all about.’
The one thing she really knew was that whatever changed – the building, the Head, the money, whatever – none of it don’t matter, because the one thing that stays constant is that ‘kids is kids is kids’.
And she should know. Teachers should suffer from the curse of empathy. But, in reality, we only have time to flag up those we feel are in need of support, then hand them over. We don’t have enough time to talk about the work, let alone what is really going on in their heads. She’s the one who has to really empathise.
She was always following at least one student around. Some were in wheelchairs, some shuddered along on walking frames, some ran around pell-mell. You would see her helping them into the lift or escorting them to the toilet. Or sitting with them, explaining the same things over and over and over again.
I saw her at lunchtime, supporting a child on a walking frame. We were at the back of a huge queue, which had developed into a scrum, as every child in the school was attempting to get their lunch. She was barged and jostled by Year 9s as she slowly and deliberately stacked up a tray for the pupil.
‘Ya want chicken pie? What about crumble?’
She looked at the chef and winked.
‘Y’a’right?’
‘Yes, Paula! Y’a’right? How you been?’
‘Fine. Fine.’
‘Sorry it took so long. Ya shoulda come right to the front! Ya should know that by now!’
She cackled and wagged her finger.
‘Ya know me. Anyway. The last shall be first. And the first shall be last.’
*
The moment she stepped into my class, everything changed.
She came in at the beginning of the lesson, but she made a point of not being with Salim, so he didn’t feel self-conscious. To begin with, she looked out of the window, uninterested, half listening. Once they had begun a task, she slowly circulated, peering over the kids’ shoulders. Some TAs freak kids out when they do this. The worst are the really abrasive ones who start shrieking at the kids to get on with it, winding them up and creating a scene. Some put you off by staring at their phones, monged with boredom. Some even call out to correct things you’ve said. Mick used to come in and shout, ‘What’s that say? I can’t read it. What’s this lesson about, anyway? I haven’t got a clue. Have you? Nah, me neither. Sir! What you on about?’
Paula barely spoke. She did not need to. Everything was met with a slow nod, a calm tap on the page. Come on. Let’s get on.
She made a point of sitting next to every kid. They all had spaces next to them, after all.
Kieran got a bit shirty to begin with.
‘’Low it, leave me alone!’
She joked with him, pretended to take his pen. She knew when to turn on the humour. When he got the pen back he was keen to show her that he was not fooling around and really wanted to write.
Mercedes knew her from outside school. Another parent in loco. Soon she was desperate to show her how much she had done. Whenever Paula arrived, she proudly held up her
page.
‘Look how much ya done, Mercedes! Look at you!’
Mercedes beamed.
Milosz kept looking around – out of the window, at his shoes, anywhere but at his book. She sat next to him until he was becalmed. She tapped on the page. He looked at her. Then he started to write. She got up again when he had written a complete sentence and nodded to me.
When she reached Salim, she craned her neck casually to see over his shoulder. Whenever I did this, he became self-conscious and covered up his work. But with Paula, he confessed that he did not know what he was supposed to be doing. She quietly took him outside and they finished the task on the table outside the classroom with no fuss and no attention drawn.
By the time the lesson was over, he had finished three questions and was smiling.
‘Thank you, Miss. Hasn’t he done well?’ I said.
‘Thank you, Sir. See you next time.’
She walked down the hall and into another classroom.
8
Smile, It’s Christmas
Year 7s clustered in the playground, protecting each other from the cold wind, like yaks on the tundra. Women in woolly hats and tights nursed hot cups of tea. Hubristic PE teachers in shorts and trainers did squat jumps, grunting and punching the air. The kids laughed. A chorus of ‘Oh, my daze!’
A whistle blew. The clusters dispersed and then filed into lines with the startling efficiency and grace of a starling murmuration. Kids nestled their chins into the collars of their jackets, mouthed smoke rings into the air. Suddenly, their faces were illuminated by strobe flashes of light, then a steady glow, as classroom lights around the playground were turned on with an ambient hum.
VP stood at an end of one of the lines, surveying the troops before they went Over the Top. A whistle blew again. The hush of anticipation and fear.
One by one they were picked off. Moving out of line. Disorganisation. Wrong equipment. Insubordination.
‘Morning, Dear,’ whispered Tom.
*
Morning DEAR – Drop Everything and Read – was the new literacy boondoggle to get the Year 7s reading. They were not reading in their own time, so we were going to open their eyes to the Classics by forcing them to read at gunpoint before school every morning when they were freezing cold and half asleep. In order to qualify, I had to go and read Winnie the Pooh to VP, which was chilling and horrific, but I got the gig.
The PE teachers ended up being the best at the job, partly because kids love guys in shorts who shout and have bantz; they were also essentially on the same level as the Year 7s when it came to literacy. There were various Maths teachers too, although they seemed to be in it solely for the free croissants.
It soon became a highlight of my day. The kids slumped in, eyes still puffy, and plonked their bags on the desk. Donnie leaned on his bag; Mercedes stared out of the window; Salim took out his things in the same order he always did; Milosz rested his head in the crook of his elbow; Chika opened her book and started reading immediately.
This was the magic hour. The only time in the day when I had them at my mercy. They were in the liminal state between waking and sleeping – the best time to read and dream. And quietly, deliberately, selflessly, we read beautiful stories. From this point onwards, the day would offer nothing but distractions and enervations that would take us all further and further away from ourselves. But, for now, I could be gentle. I did not have to bark or shout or wind them up. We could simply be, here, in this room, with this book, in this blessed quiet respite from chaotic lives and oppressive expectations. A book that I had not broken down into gobbits, or set comprehensions and essays on, or provided a series of images or videos that created precisely the opposite effect. We did not have to rush through it. We did not even have to finish the first page. We could just discover it, together.
I always thought they hated it and resented me for getting them up early. I would have hated me. But one day, while reading Alice in Wonderland, I stopped suddenly, wondering if anyone was listening to me.
Kieran piped up, ‘Don’t stop!’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘It’s relaxing.’
They all agreed.
‘Yes, reading is relaxing. That’s the main point of it.’
‘Yeah. We should do more of it.’
Boom ting.
Kieran loved Noughts and Crosses; Donnie The Hunger Games; Chika devoured Harry Potter, much to her mother’s chagrin (she didn’t approve of his brand of magic); Mercedes liked Junk. She thought it was even better than ‘the blubs’ (I think she meant the blurb). She even took the book out and read it every night at home. She was my big breakthrough.
*
Mercedes used to stand in line outside the classroom, combing the front of her afro down over her eyes, making provocative observations on anything that wandered past her limited vision, growling and gurning and grizzling like a generator. She had to make a point of saying something – anything – just before she reached the threshold of the classroom. It became a game. I stood beside the classroom door, greeting them as they entered; she always piped up ‘A’right, Sir!’ or ‘Sir, wa’gwan?’, knowing I could not respond; knowing I was sworn to silence; knowing I had to keep shtum until everyone was behind their desks; knowing I was being watched more than she was.
But there was a lot of front, and it was as fragile as gossamer. Underneath was broiling rage and confusion. Sometimes I saw tears appear when reading. And then, quick as a flash, they were wiped away as she launched into a tirade against someone. Like everyone else in that class, she covered her vulnerability with braggadocio. I could not stop the class and demand that we all ‘just talk about what is really bothering us’. That was for Circle Time. She was an attention-seeker par excellence, what we call a great ‘tester of limits’. Her disruption and antagonism were pleas for friendship. But I had to maintain uniformity of expectations. She knew she could push me so far – a wry, knowing smile, an arched eyebrow – and then just as I was about to go nuclear, she reined it in.
I planned the opening of my lessons around harnessing her volatile, scattergun energy. The Starter had to be interesting, challenging, fun: a puzzle, a word game, a challenge. Quickly, she was buzzing: ‘Ooh, ooh, I know this!’; ‘Ooh, ooh, I got it! I got it!’ Almost immediately both arms were stretching to the sky, contorting her face into bizarre expressions, imploring, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ The trick was to galvanise the energy she had when she entered the room, but not so much that the whole class was disrupted. I had to celebrate her when she got the first challenge right, and then hope the positive energy would carry through the next task, whereupon she could lift the more sedate members of the room. But then I faced the danger of it all going tits up when she started getting arrogant and bossing people around or treating them like they were stupid. I was ready to start attempting some paired work, but I had to be very careful about who I let her be in a pair with. She couldn’t go with Milosz or Saadia because she intimidated them; she couldn’t go with Chika because Chika would do all the work, although Mercedes would take the credit; she couldn’t go with Salim because he couldn’t go with anyone; if I tried to put her with Donnie she would shake her arms dramatically and say, ‘NO! NO! NO’; Kieran wanted to do paired work with Mercedes more than anything, but she led him on and didn’t focus, so I had to keep them apart, which made Kieran rebel more. I ended up mixing it up, and letting her go with a different kid each lesson. Gradually, they learned to tolerate each other. Maybe even like each other, a little.
Now the SMs were off my back, I got to spread my wings ever so slightly and try some of the strategies I had learned from my training. We did ‘thought tracking’ (verbalising the character’s thoughts), cloze exercises (cutting up poems or paragraphs and getting the kids to rearrange them in the correct order) and scaffolded creative writing, in which they were told to write their own myths, with the support of differentiated worksheets, sentence starters and sophisticated vocabulary. The secret was to
come up with a variety of quick tasks, because they lost focus so fast. It was incredible how they just couldn’t sit still, like there were ferrets loose in the class running up their legs. When they started to jiggle, I borrowed Tom’s strategy, which was to get them to do very quick aerobics – hands up, to the side, down below, up above – in order to refocus. I had to do this exercise three times a lesson, at least.
During the individual work, they were learning to stay relatively quiet and focused. It was all about managing my expectations: rather than insisting they write for fifteen minutes to produce half a page, I realised that eight minutes and five lines was about their limit. And those eight minutes were blissful. Like reading, the quiet concentrated time became addictive.
Their success was also addictive. By writing an extra two lines in class or for homework, they rose by a level. That then spurred them on to write more the next time. And when they saw that they could rise by another level by correcting their work in the Plenary, they focused even more. Donnie stayed behind every lesson to redo his homework in break or after school. For others in the class it was more about the competition. It was all about the levels. Every lesson, when I gave the books back, they would say, ‘What did I get?’ and turn immediately to the mark. They didn’t read what I had written. Just saw the mark, and whether it was better than everyone else.
Lesson #125
Sadly, Competition Is the Motivator. Particularly for Boys.