The Learning Curve

by Melissa Nathan

  ‘Hmm.’ Miss James frowned. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, take ICT for a start –’

  ‘Ah! Yes!’ sighed Miss James dreamily. ‘ICT! So many initials nowadays, don’t you find? “Information Communication Technology” I mean, what on God’s good earth does that mean? In my day we had blackboards and were done with it. You knew where you were with a black—’

  ‘We’ve really broadened it,’ cut in Rob, not a moment too soon. ‘It’s not just about computers in the classroom any more, we’ve got digital cameras, webcams and even “roamers” for the Year 1s –’

  ‘I know,’ said Miss James, frowning suspiciously. ‘And I don’t like it one bit. Robots for five-year-olds. Whatever next? Digital desks?’

  ‘But the roamers help them learn –’

  ‘And anyway,’ said Miss James, proving with great aplomb that when it came to interrupting she could give as good as she got and then some, ‘isn’t that all just keeping up with the times?’

  Good gracious, thought Nicky. Rob wasn’t as good at this as she was! She kept her head down and looked straight ahead. The thought was incredible. Did this mean that she was going to be the next Head? If so, would she employ Rob as her Deputy? Or would that be a conflict of interests? Gosh, poor Rob.

  Rob coughed and shuffled in his seat. ‘Yes –’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong’ – Miss James halted him, like a policeman halting traffic, with the palm of her hand almost in his face – ‘I adore the idea – think it’s genius – it’s exactly what I’ve always wanted Heatheringdown to be. It’s just that I do wonder if we’ll ever really get there.’ She turned her eyes upward, always a bad sign. ‘To be truly progressive,’ she mused, ‘we need to be truly amorphous. Fluid. Nebulous. Ever-changing. Like a cloud being whipped up by a tempestuous, autumnal sky. And yet at the same time we need to maintain a rigid ethos that parents – and future parents especially – can easily identify with.’ Her face darkened, not unlike a cloud being whipped up by a tempestuous, autumnal sky. ‘Oh, it’s all so complicated.’

  ‘That’s it!’ cried Rob, excited. ‘That’s it!’ He started laughing.

  ‘Is it?’ asked Miss James, thrilled.

  ‘Of course you would be the one to summarise it so accurately,’ he continued.

  ‘Would I?’ she asked, delighted.

  ‘And what we need to do is to work out how those two vital elements – progress and tradition – can stand side by side, simultaneously bringing the school forward into the twenty-first century while maintaining its twentieth-century morals and values.’

  Rob and Miss James looked at each other with something approaching love in their eyes. Love for Miss James, naturally. After all, it was her office. Nicky sat very still, watching them. She wondered if it would be appropriate to clap. Or vote. Anything really, as long as she wasn’t sitting there doing nothing. She decided to nod.

  ‘If I may be so bold,’ concluded Rob humbly, ‘may I congratulate you, Miss James?’

  Miss James bowed her head a little. ‘You may,’ she conceded, almost shyly.

  Then, suddenly, she slammed her palm down on her pile of papers and actually stood up for emphasis. ‘Wonderful!’ She sat down again and beamed at them both. They stared back at her. ‘I can see I’ve got one hell of a team working on my side,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Have a custard cream.’

  She thrust the biscuit tin under their noses and they dutifully took one each. Nicky felt a bit of a fraud taking one as she hadn’t said anything worth saying yet, but a custard cream was a custard cream. She noticed Rob didn’t eat his and decided against peeling one layer of biscuit off the cream during such an auspicious meeting. She ate hers in two bites, a personal record.

  Miss James suddenly pointed at Rob. ‘I want you to work out how to turn “Progressive yet Traditional” into a real, working vision of Heatheringdown. That is your job, O esteemed Deputy.’ She turned to Nicky again. ‘Now, Nicola, Nicola, Nicola, my other esteemed Deputy. We all know that we have to do boring old SATS, blah blah blah,’ she leant in and fixed Nicky with her gaze and a pointed finger, ‘but, O worthy Deputy, your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to find out how every single individual teacher in this “progressive yet traditional”’ – a wink and a nod at Rob – ‘school carries out their own personal assessments throughout the year with an aim towards formulating an up-to-date structure for them all to follow.’

  Nicky stared at her, unable to speak for a moment. ‘Gosh,’ she eventually managed.

  ‘Rumour has it,’ confided Miss James, ‘that Ned’s method of finding the average level of his pupils is to close his eyes and point.’

  ‘Gosh –’

  ‘Not really on,’ continued Miss James. ‘Especially if he keeps pointing to the ones who are so thick they don’t duck in time.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Nicky again.

  ‘So as of today, that is your job, my dear.’

  Nicky wondered how on earth the two tasks could possibly be seen as equal in workload. Rob had to find another amorphous, nebulous, fluid, mostly meaningless sentence to add to Miss James’s original one, while she now had to observe and encroach on every teacher’s private methods, collate them and come up with a completely original method of summation. She wondered if now would be a good time to broach the subject of workload.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ continued Miss James, ‘I will get Janet, my wonderful secretary, my right-hand arm, my limbs, my Janet, to give you all the help or notes you will need. JANET!’

  Janet, Miss James’s secretary, opened the door to Miss James’s office and stood in the doorway, not putting a toe over the threshold.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘These wonderful, wonderful people are now working on the vision and assessment of Heatheringdown.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Your job is to help them in any way they ask you to.’

  Janet gave them both a look. ‘I’m going home in five minutes and I’m late in tomorrow because my youngest has broken his thumb.’

  ‘Fine.’ Nicky and Rob smiled and nodded in unison.

  Janet looked back at Miss Heatheringdown. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you, Janet!’

  Janet shut the door behind her. Miss James smacked the papers on her desk vigorously and beamed at them. ‘We have serious work to do here. So many pupils depend on us. Isn’t it thrilling?’

  Nicky and Rob nodded.

  ‘And I have every faith in you two,’ she said. ‘Together, we’re going to turn Heatheringdown into The top school. Now, you two. One piece in my Europe puzzle each, and your time is yours.’

  Nicky leapt up, crossed the office to the other table, and started scouring the unfinished map. The corners had already been done and England was one-third there. As she started looking at the unfinished pieces scattered around the edges, Rob alighted on a piece, stuck it in the middle of Bulgaria and gave her a quick smile. He turned to Miss James.

  ‘Bye then, Miss James.’ She looked up at him from her note-making, as though she’d forgotten he was in the room. To her embarrassment, Nicky took a full ten minutes to find her piece. After fitting it in place, she gave a little cough which Miss James didn’t hear, and then crept out, hoping she’d been forgotten.

  She found Rob in the staffroom. He grinned at her.

  ‘Multi-focussed?’ he asked.

  ‘Give me your custard cream,’ replied Nicky, in no mood to be teased. ‘Now.’

  ‘It’s in my pocket,’ he said, holding his arms up. ‘Come and get it.

  She paused for a fraction of a second, then remembered to act normally and came and got it.

  ‘Don’t mess with me when it comes to custard creams,’ she told him, her hand still in his trousers. ‘Or I’ll tell Miss James you didn’t eat yours.’

  ‘Hello!’ greeted Pete, at the sight of Nicky with her hand down Rob’s trouser pocket. ‘Is Rob pretend
ing he’s lost his testicles again? I can’t believe you women fall for that.’

  Nicky took out the custard cream and showed it to him.

  Pete’s eyebrows rose. ‘He leaves biscuits in there!’ he whispered in awe. ‘Genius!’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Ally, who had just joined them.

  Pete turned to her. ‘Putting custard creams next to my testicles.’

  ‘What, for ballast?’ asked Ally.

  Pete burst into laughter.

  ‘I think Garibaldi are probably more your biscuit,’ she told Pete.

  ‘Come here and say that,’ said Pete.

  ‘No, you come here and say it.’

  ‘No, you come here and say it.’

  ‘No, you come here and say it.’

  Rob watched Nicky as she carefully peeled off the top layer of biscuit with her teeth. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘they weren’t near my testicles.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘My penis was in the way.’

  She looked at him over the biscuit and put the rest of it in her mouth in one go.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said, smiling.

  The rest of the staff was told about Rob and Nicky’s promotion the next morning. A bit of a shock, as Miss James hadn’t warned either of them she would do this. She announced that some of their new remit now included ‘responsibility for the professional development’ of their colleagues, so Rob and Nicky would now have to listen to whatever their ten assigned teachers needed to discuss. They were as stunned as the others about this and it could have been a tricky moment if Amanda hadn’t said, ‘Ooh, does that mean we can bitch to them officially?’ and everyone laughed. Amanda was one of Rob’s teachers, so Nicky was in no doubt that she would be one of Amanda’s future favourite topics up for discussion.

  But generally, the announcement went as well as could be expected. Roberta and Gwen eyed each other over their coffee with triumphant bitterness, their friendship jump-started. Ned, who had as much bitterness in his make-up as a hungry puppy lying on its back with its tail thumping the ground, was delighted for both Rob and Nicky. He told his wife at lunch-time during their daily phone call and it had been a small interruption from his discussion of his Marmite and cheese sandwiches; ‘an intriguing combination and a not unpleasant surprise’. He’d even put his hand over the mouthpiece and told Nicky across the staffroom that his wife, Theresa, wished her congratulations. Nicky was grateful and tried not to pity him.

  Martha, the new Reception teacher, was too new in her post to even think of herself in terms of promotion, so she found it easy to be delighted for both Rob and Nicky.

  Nicky found Martha an intriguing addition to the staffroom. It had turned out that Martha’s private life gave her a unique position among the teachers. She was neither married nor single, which meant that no one understood her. It took them a while to work out exactly what this meant and, even then, they didn’t get it. Technically, she had a boyfriend, whom she liked very much, but he was not The One. Her explanation had been met with a short silence before Rob congratulated her in effusive terms, ‘Good for you, girl, go for it!’ followed by Amanda in agreement. ‘Yeah! You go for it!’

  Then Martha left the room and they set to discussing her emotional status with more energy than they would ever do once they’d got to know her.

  ‘That is such a shame,’ started Roberta in an exaggerated whisper. ‘Poor girl.’

  ‘What is?’ asked Rob.

  ‘Well, she’s obviously waiting for her boyfriend to pop the question,’ stated Roberta. ‘And she’s made up the whole “He’s not The One” lie to hide her disappointment. Didn’t you see how hard it was for her to come out with it?’

  ‘Rubbish!’ exclaimed all the singles in unison.

  ‘And he probably never will,’ agreed Gwen with Roberta, ignoring the singles. ‘And she’ll throw away her twenties for him.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘And that’ll be that. She’ll wake up and find it’s too late to have a family.’

  Nicky noticed Rob suddenly stare at her with determined concern. She gave him a fixed grin, but when it started to wobble she looked away.

  ‘In which case,’ continued Roberta, nodding, ‘she should get rid of him and get herself back on the market.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Perhaps I should introduce her to someone.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ shrilled Amanda. ‘Maybe she is actually enjoying herself! And maybe, just maybe, she actually doesn’t want children. Not every woman does, you know. And good luck to her.’ She looked over at Rob.

  ‘Or maybe she genuinely doesn’t believe in marriage,’ added Nicky. ‘And good luck to her with that too.’

  Amanda eyed Rob quickly, before nodding and saying, ‘That’s right, girlfriend!’ She laughed. ‘We’re career girls, aren’t we?’ she said, elbowing her.

  Nicky decided now was not the time to enter into a debate about why women had to choose career over family whereas men didn’t, nor the use of the word ‘girl’ for adult females, when the word ‘boy’ was only ever used for boys, let alone the fact that if Amanda ever elbowed her again she could expect to be punched in the face.

  ‘Excuse me!’ cried Roberta. ‘I’ve got an ex-husband and a son – does that mean I’m not a career girl?’

  There was an ugly pause.

  ‘Does that mean,’ clarified Gwen, encouraged by Roberta, ‘that mothers of three can’t be promoted?’

  Silence seeped round the room. Nicky changed her mind and decided that maybe now was the perfect time to open a healthy debate about all the above, but just as she was wondering how to get started, Rob gave a little ahem.

  ‘Now, now, everyone,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Nicky got promoted because she’s carefree and single,’ he said with a gently rebuking smile. ‘I think we all know that it’s because of the qualities she brings to her job.’

  ‘Yes,’ rushed Gwen. ‘Of course. We all know that.’

  ‘Good.’ Rob smiled.

  Nicky stared from Gwen to Rob and back again before saying softly, ‘And while we’re on the subject, I think we all also know that Rob wasn’t promoted because he’s carefree and single either.’

  ‘Well of course not,’ said Gwen. ‘We all know that.’

  Nicky picked up her bag and walked out of the staffroom.

  At break-time, she caught five minutes with Ally.

  ‘You were a bit sharp back there with Rob,’ said Ally. ‘He was only trying to defend your position.’

  ‘Why does he need to defend me?’ replied Nicky. ‘We’re equals. Why does my promotion need justifying and his doesn’t?’

  Ally shook her head at her friend. ‘Have you looked at his arse recently?’

  Nicky moaned and hung her head on her hands. ‘You told me not to,’ she wailed.

  ‘I didn’t say anything about looking,’ said Ally. ‘I just said don’t stop concentrating on your job at the same time.’

  Nicky’s main responsibility of summarising every single teacher’s method of assessment for a future school template proceeded to swamp her ‘management time’ and spilt into her ‘planning and preparation time’ as, over the next seven weeks, she had to sit in on everyone’s class. Most marking was now nearly all done by the children themselves – she had long since learnt that the best way for kids to feel a sense of ownership over their work was to let them swap books with their neighbour and mark each other’s work. This had released precious weekend time which, up until now, she had spent on the Internet preparing wonderful classes, or back at school finishing displays so that the children could see their handiwork almost as soon as they’d finished it. She had never resented any free time being spent on her children. The way she saw it, the more you put into work the more the children got out of it. She only had five hours a day with them. She didn’t want to waste a moment.

  But now, suddenly, she didn’t have any moments to waste. Her work list – every day started with a list of jobs to achieve – was now too long for her to even contemplate.

&
nbsp; She knew she had pulled the short straw, seeing as Rob’s remit had seen him interview some of the kids in their lunch hour and then give a talk to Miss James and herself, with the help of an overhead projector. It had been an impassioned forty minutes – almost as impassioned as his original speech had been in Miss James’s office. Miss James loved every word of it. He’d been given two custard creams and a Bourbon.

  It was after that meeting that Miss James had told them that they were now, of course, in charge of Parents’ Evening.

  Yet again, Rob and she were to divide the responsibilities, which seemed fairly easy. The two main areas of responsibility were to oversee either timetables or book-marking. For Parents’ Evening – in fact two evenings – each teacher was responsible for their own timetable (so that each parent knew exactly when to turn up and how long they would have with their teacher) and they also had to ensure that every single piece of marking was up to date (so that parents could look through their child’s work, should they so desire). Rob chose timetables before Nicky had a chance to put the key in the ignition of her brain, and by the time she’d looked at the gear-stick, she realised she was overseeing teachers’ book-marking. It turned out that whereas teachers were only too glad to have someone chivvy them along – with the added thrill of some advice and top flirting – with their bit of timetabling, they did not care to be reminded to do anything as sensitive as their marking. Especially by someone who got her kids to do hers most of the time anyway.

  It wasn’t long before Nicky’s extra workload started to affect her private life. Exhausted by a relentless week full of resentful teachers, she now needed to be in bed on a Saturday night sometimes as early as nine o’clock. Then she would use all of Sunday morning – starting as early as 8 a.m. – to finish off preparing for the week ahead, when she used to do all her cleaning, before a much-needed Sunday-afternoon rest, preferably spent horizontally watching an old John Wayne film with the sound down (she found them more interesting that way). She had to do most of her cleaning on weekday mornings now instead of Sundays, which was just possible if she woke a quarter of an hour earlier, and then she squeezed in the vacuuming during John Wayne, which, intriguingly, didn’t seem to spoil her enjoyment of the film. She ironed in the evenings if she wasn’t too tired, and soon stopped buying clothes that needed ironing.