by Woog
You disperse, still giggling. Then one of you happens upon a huge bronze statue of a naked lady. So you alert your fellow pupils—and so on and so forth until your teacher cracks the shits and you leave.
Has every primary school kid on the east coast of Australia done a similar camp? Canberra? Clog factory? Dead Horse Gap?
From what I can tell, the Canberra/Snowy Mountains trip is a rite of passage, as generations of teachers attempt to introduce students to our political system and our artistic heritage. Thank God for clogs and penises, I say!
9
THE SMELL OF TEEN SPIRIT
At the age of twelve, I was sent off to a posh boarding school in the northern suburbs of Sydney to be turned into a well-rounded, intelligent, thoughtful global citizen, capable of doing anything I put my mind to because I am woman, hear me roar.
Twelve is a very young age to be let loose on the world, which was effectively what happened. Thirty girls from around Australia were thrown together in a dormitory and told to play nice. Add one geriatric old bag, the housemistress, whose accommodation was at the furthest point of the building, and hey—what could possibly go wrong?
The boarding house was an old Federation number with worn carpets and the smell of teen spirit. When you entered the foyer, the housemistress’s apartment was to the left. On the right was a big staircase, which led up to a long hall. At the end of the hall there was a room the size of a football field. This was divided into cubicles, each one housing four beds.
Next to your bed, you had a small chest of drawers topped with a mirror and next to that, a small hanging space.
The whole place smacked of neglect and was not exactly the sort of place that could be described as a lovely home away from home. I recall my mum unpacking all my belongings, making up my bed and then getting the hell out of there. I sat on the bed and ate an entire jar of green olives, watching as the three girls who were to share my cubicle came in one by one with their parents and their gear. Finally, it was just the four of us, sitting on our freshly made beds, looking at each other.
One girl started crying and the rest of us went over and comforted her. And then we heard other little whimpers floating up over the cheap partitions. Soon the whole room was awash with tears.
My six-year stint at boarding school taught me more about life than any part of the actual curriculum ever did. These years taught me to be rat-cunning, to question the establishment, to defy authority and to save my own arse.
I will not go into all of the dreadful things the class of ’91 got up to, because some of you might actually have daughters at boarding school right this minute, and I fear that with the advances in technology since my day, things might have got even worse. But I will share with you my highlights reel—or should that be lowlights reel?—to give you a sense of what I took away from the experience . . .
A popular weekend activity among one group was to take the train to nearby Chatswood, a large shopping precinct only a few stops away. The purpose of the expedition was shoplifting. And when I say shoplifting, I don’t mean nicking a red frog from the counter of the local milk bar; I’m talking about expensive items that the boarders would then on-sell to the daygirls at a reduced rate. Levi’s jeans, Doc Martens, dresses—everything was fair game. One girl in particular, a doctor’s daughter from a country town near the Queensland border, was a kleptomaniacal genius. If it wasn’t nailed down, she shoved it up her top. They grew so practised at it that eventually they began to take requests and stole to order.
For some reason—perhaps still wary after my long-ago ladybird-hairclip spree—I never got involved in this racket. I certainly played my part when it came to other shenanigans, though.
My first suspension was in Year 8. It was for something that, if you ask me, should have seen me hailed for showing early signs of entrepreneurial excellence, not derided as a common thief. You see, the Christian group in the school, known as the Crusaders, was going to hold a dance to raise money for some worthy cause (I can’t remember what). One day, I happened to walk past the table they had set up to sell tickets at $5 a throw.
Now this dance was to be held in conjunction with the local boys school, so I knew that there would be much interest in attending, because . . . BOYS. So I waited until the two girls at the table were distracted, then I slunk over and swiped a handful of tickets.
By lunchtime, word had got around that one of the Year 8 girls (that would be me) was selling tickets to the hot event for half-price. I sold out of tickets in no time, and was just contemplating how I could get my hands on some more when I was approached by a teacher, who told me that the headmistress would like to see me.
BUSTED!
Apparently, tales of my business prowess had reached the ears of some meddling do-gooder, who had turned me in.
I found the headmistress—a woman who looked uncannily like a Border Leicester sheep, if you can picture that—sat behind her desk, nostrils flared so wide you could make out the shape of her brain.
‘Sit down,’ she thundered.
So I sat, and confessed all.
Then followed a solid thirty minutes’ berating: I was a disappointment; I was wicked; I was no better than a common thief. By rights I should be expelled on the spot.
Then the door opened and in walked my mum. To be honest, I think she was more scared than me. The headmistress gave her a toned-down version of the lecture she had given me, and then I was sent home for five days to have a good think about what I had done.
On the way home, Mum was a bit cross with me, but not as much as I’d feared. When we got home she rang my dad and told him what I’d done, and I listened from the next room as they laughed about my business acumen.
I was suspended for the second time the following year. There was nothing clever or entrepreneurial about my crime this time; it was more of a straight snatch-and-grab.
Oh Lord, forgive me, because indeed I did sin. I stole in your house.
I stole the contents of the chapel plate.
Okay, so in my defence Levi’s had just brought out a range of white jeans. WHITE LEVI’S! I needed them in my life.
On the day of my crime there had been a special collection so that the Crusaders could buy bicycles for Nepalese orphans. By some twist of fate, I had been put in charge of counting the collection, along with another girl whom I thought was my friend.
The bowls were heavy with coins and the final tally amounted to several hundred dollars. Well, several hundred dollars minus the thirty bucks that ended up in my pocket.
Later, as I was treating my mates to Paddle Pops from the canteen, a Year 12 girl approached with a message: I was to report to the office immediately.
BUSTED!
So off I went to that old familiar place. Though there had been some changes, I noticed, as I sat outside the headmistress’s office; they had changed the art around.
The office door opened and out walked my ‘friend’. HER NAME WAS ANNABELLE KELLY.
God, it feels good to get that out. You might know her; she’s now an architect up on the north coast of New South Wales.
About the changes I mentioned; it wasn’t only the art. At the beginning of the school year, we were introduced to a new headmistress, as the older one had retired. But the change wasn’t too drastic. This new headmistress was also sheep-like in appearance, which is to say that she didn’t have hair—she had wool.
They must have had a handbook, these headmistresses, on how to deal with delinquents, for she delivered nearly the same speech as her predecessor, almost word perfect.
‘Why shouldn’t I expel you right now?’ she asked me.
So I told her that my parents would be super pissed off (though not in those exact words).
Then—because history was clearly repeating—the door opened and in walked my mother.
Addressing the headmistress, she lamented the fact that they were meeting each other for the first time under such dreadful circumstances, and then proceeded to char
m the pants suit off the woman. She handed over a large cheque for the building fund and whisked me off for a week at home.
This time, however, the mood at home was less jovial than it had been during my last forced break. I actually had to do non-fun stuff, like sort out old files in my stepfather’s office. It wasn’t even in the office. It was a cold, stinky basement.
Plus my mum was pulling out the old ‘no speakies’ punishment—aka the silent treatment—which is still very effective in this modern day. And when she did talk, it was to deliver long, sad lectures on the subject of disappointment. Ah, that word: disappointed. The worst one a parent can use.
I had learnt my lesson.
Thou shall not steal.
When I returned to school, I discovered that my friends had decided they didn’t want me to get expelled—the prospect of which was only the puff of a ciggie away—so from then on each time I was the main suspect for a crime, one of them took the fall.
That was the thing about growing up in a small group of girls. We stuck together through thick and thin. We knew each other in a way that no one else ever will and it is a bond that has lasted. While time and geography have scattered us far and wide, that closeness and camaraderie has endured. I was lucky to have encountered such a great group of gals, for it is those school years that truly shape who you ultimately turn out to be. I am grateful not to be in jail. I am grateful that my parents persisted with me despite my evil ways. I am grateful that social media didn’t exist at that time. And, in a way, I am even grateful to Annabelle Kelly, that fucking nark. Most of the notorious criminals in the world started their careers as petty thieves—but I turned out to be a mummy blogger. The only thing I steal these days are an extra Tim Tam when I think no one is looking.
MIND YOUR P’S AND Q’S
Here’s a story that a friend shared with me about her primary school days:
I went to an all-girls’ school—gloves, hats, ribbons and regulation underpants were the order of the day. Non-compliance with outerwear was fairly easy to spot . . . but woe betide anyone who thought underwear might be different. The PE teacher also acted undercover as the underpants compliance officer and a mere flash of pink or bloom of floral peeking defiantly from gym gear would be enough to be sent to the office for a second-hand pair of grey, high-waisted cottontails.
Our school principal was a spinster in her eighties. As the school’s founder, she was untouchable in her role and refused to retire despite her advanced age and declining faculties. Not only was she a living relic with outmoded ideas of what a good girl should be—she also had a rather elevated view of herself and her position. Literally. She’d sit on the balcony outside her second storey office on a throne-like chair and survey all beneath her. When she bought a new fridge for the tuckshop, we all had to line up across the playground, climb the stairs and file past her to say thank you. As there were hundreds of us, this took quite a while and a number of girls fainted in the sun as if overcome with devotion.
10
NOT MY MONKEYS
You know that old Polish proverb, ‘Not my monkey, not my circus’? Well, that’s the opposite of what you’re faced with if you choose a career in primary school teaching. Suddenly you are the ringmaster of the most crazy circus of all.
A disturbing number of people think teachers have it easy, what with the short hours and the long holidays, but the reality is that teachers slog away for hours behind the scenes, require the patience of ten saints, must have a working knowledge of psychology and a mind as sharp as a bear trap.
My first realisation that teaching was no skip through the park came when I had a kindergarten class full of children who, at the beginning of the year, were all unable to do any of the following:
• Tie their shoes.
• Use scissors.
• Stand in a line.
• Open a lunchbox.
• Work a zip.
• Write their names without it being backwards.
• Remain awake after lunchtime.
But, geezers, they were adorable. Even when the nit infestation hit.
Still, it was very taxing, and being a rookie teacher, I had plenty to learn that was not covered in any of my university lectures.
Let me take you through one scenario that I survived.
As Easter drew close, I had decided to do a fun craft activity and follow it up with a little Easter egg hunt, which would then turn into a little maths lesson about counting. Seems straightforward enough, right?
I ran off the stencil, which was the template of an Easter basket, and I wrote each child’s name on his or her basket (thereby saving us at least an hour). The kids were then instructed to colour in the basket, which took forever, and then cut them out. It was then I discovered that not one child in the class was capable of using a pair of scissors.
So I sat at my desk while the kids lined up with their baskets, and I cut out like a motherfucker. When I’d finished cutting, I had to fold along the dotted lines, and then use my stapler to fix the resulting basket into place. I had to do this thirty-one times.
Thirty-one times.
I was at my wits’ end. What educational purpose did any of this serve, apart from me having a small breakdown?
My lesson plan was thrown out the window as the baskets took shape. After I had made thirty-one baskets, we wandered outside to find a large, stray dog of mixed breed scoffing down the tiny Easter eggs, foil and all.
Cue mass hysteria. The dog fled and I surveyed the carnage. A couple of eggs had been spared, but not enough for everyone. I threw my hands in the air and took the crying mob back inside, where I told them that they could have free play for the rest of the day. ‘Free play’ is code for ‘Do whatever the fuck you want’. Which means destroy the classroom. But I didn’t care. I was over it.
Classroom management is not an easy thing to get your head around. If you expect the unexpected at every turn, you will be better equipped to survive the school day. Like, if one of the kids in your classroom turns green, stands up and announces that they don’t feel particularly well, then empties the contents of their stomach and bowels simultaneously, you can pretty much assume that you are on the beginning of a gastro highway that will, in a very short time, wipe our your entire class, and end with you succumbing to it yourself.
Classroom management is about trying to make your class aware that you are waiting for their attention by standing at the front with your arms crossed, saying nothing but just waiting and waiting and waiting until one kid realises that you are pulling the old ‘I will just wait until you notice that I am waiting for you all to shut up’ move and starts letting his fellow pupils know that there might be a hell of an explosion if they don’t acknowledge that I am playing the waiting game.
Classroom management means being aware of the worst-case scenario for every part of your day. What if the slide projector doesn’t work? What if the mums who promised to come and do reading groups don’t show up? What if the strange mark on that kid’s arm is actually a ringworm?
Classroom management is about using another tried and true method of gaining the class’s attention: CLAP. CLAP. CLAP-CLAP-CLAP. Do it now, as you read this book, and if there is a primary school kid within hearing distance, I bet you will hear them clap it back to you. It is ingrained in them from the age of six.
There are some teachers who are experienced guns at classroom management, who could tell you what they were planning on teaching a month out, to the minute, and which outcomes they will be focusing on from the syllabus. These are the teachers who, when you turn up to their classrooms, have the students all doing small group work in hushed tones while she or he wanders around, all nice and in control.
You see, the thing is, if kids sniff out a weakness, they will exploit it until the teacher has to flee the classroom in tears. But teachers, being humans (yes, really), are all different, and we have different ideas of what we think is acceptable behaviour.
You have to hand it
to those teachers who run their classroom like the circus. Their room looks like a craft cupboard has exploded. Their desks are littered with empty coffee cups. The kids might be sitting on the floor finger-knitting while listening to Mozart. These teachers are usually dressed from head to toe in floaty garments bought at Tree of Life. They have a high tolerance for noise and chaos. One of my kid’s teachers actually carried a turtle in her pocket. These teachers are golden.
I once worked with a teacher whose passion was art, and together he and his class would create amazing artworks. He would then go into his classroom every weekend to spend time mounting the kids’ artworks onto carefully cut card, before laminating them and putting them up on display, so the kids would get a thrill when they came in on Monday morning.
And then there was the teacher who taught dance. She would spend hours and hours choreographing routines and teaching them to the kids in her group. She also made their costumes herself and spent her own time and money making sure that her dance group got to perform at several concerts, thus giving them a sense of pride, accomplishment and confidence.
What do Sheryl Crow, Billy Crystal and J.K. Rowling have in common? They all started out as primary school teachers.
Before Gene Simmons put together a little musical group called KISS, he taught sixth grade at a New York public school, before he was fired (allegedly for a bit of freestyling with the curriculum, replacing the works of Shakespeare with the more popular option of Spider-Man comics).
If you attended Litchfield Prep in Connecticut back in the day, your maths teacher might have been Art Garfunkel.
And Mr Sumner, a teacher from Cramlington, England, is quoted as saying, ‘One of the most important jobs in the planet is to teach children. Our entire future depends on children being educated.’
Wise words indeed . . . STING!
Famous or not, primary school teachers play one of the most important roles in modern society, and we neither respect them nor pay them enough.
