by Casey Watson
My current six – Molly and Shona, Gavin, Henry and Ben, and, of course, now Imogen – seemed, in my short experience, to represent a fairly standard spread. Some the bullied, some the bullies, all of them united in their need to be heard and understood, and then carefully managed, and helped to re-integrate where possible.
And, by and large, I had a handle on them both as individuals and collectively, and sufficient strategy to see the way ahead. By that Thursday, however – the day of my meeting with Imogen’s grandparents – I was beginning to realise that understanding Imogen was going to be particularly tricky. How could you hear a child who didn’t speak? And if she didn’t talk, how could you get to know her? As for understanding her – well, I was closer to taking wing and flying round the playground.
I was also aware that Imogen was beginning to disassociate from the group. Poor Molly and Shona were trying their best but I could see they were beginning to flag now. There was only so much you could do when you weren’t getting any feedback. The boys, equally dispiritingly, were off on another tack altogether. Having clearly reached the conclusion that ignoring her was boring, they had started to tease her about both her silence and her hair colour – particularly Gavin.
‘Why don’t you whinge like all the other girls?’ he wanted to know as he raced round and round the girls’ table, like a Duracell bunny, his Ritalin having obviously been administered a little on the late side today. ‘I know why!’ he added, grinning at his own powers of deduction. ‘It’s because if you did you’d be a ginger whinger, that’s what you’d be!’
‘Gavin!’ I said, making a beeline for him, brows knitted. ‘Please go and sit in the reading area and wait quietly for me. You know we don’t tease others in here, don’t you? Now, go on, off to the book corner and choose a book, please.’
I underlined this instruction with a bit of firm, purposeful guidance, which he didn’t resist. He never did. He was just like the human equivalent of one of those bouncy rubber superballs, which boinged around in whichever direction they were sent.
My book corner was a godsend, simple though it was. And it was simple; just two bookcases, set at right angles to form an L shape, but with the book side facing inwards, towards the corner. This meant it created a cosy, square-shaped area in a previously unused corner and, with the addition of a square of old carpet and a selection of bean bags and cushions, a place where children like Gavin could have a separate and solitary place to calm down.
‘I was only messing, Miss!’ he protested, as he invariably did. ‘I don’t want to sit on my own!’
‘Well, you should have thought about that, shouldn’t you?’ I said, pointing back towards a gloomy-looking Imogen. ‘Ten minutes, then you can come back out and apologise to Imogen for being so thoughtless towards her.’
Gavin scowled. ‘Why should I, Miss? What’s the point?’ he huffed. ‘She never speaks to me, so why should I be made to speak to her?’
I was expecting the usual giggles – Gavin always liked to work an audience – but on this occasion, perhaps because they’d noticed my expression, they refrained and looked on silently while I pointed again to the corner, and Gavin, knowing the game was up, slunk behind the shelves out of sight.
I went back to my desk. Of course, there could be another reason for his classmates’ silence. It could equally be that he was beginning to get on their nerves, just as he had in his mainstream classes. I made a mental note to speak to his parents about his medication. He was supposed to be with me for just a term, while he got used to it, but it was crucial that he took it at the same time each morning, as well as early enough for it to have kicked in by the time he arrived in school.
There would seem to be no such practical solutions for Imogen, however, who I decided to keep a close eye on throughout the day, in preparation for my visit to her home later. With Shona really her only anchor among her eccentric little bunch of classmates, I noticed she was following her almost every move, so it would be interesting to see how she approached the task I had planned for the morning – whether she’d come up with her own ideas or just do what she mostly had being doing: letting someone else be the one who led the way.
We were working, as we often did, on conflict resolution. And having first resolved the earlier conflict between Imogen and Gavin (up to a point, anyway; he mumbled a sorry and she said nothing), it seemed the perfect time. Conflict resolution was a big part of what we did in the Unit, and not only as a consequence of day-to-day squabbles. We actively included it in the curriculum as well, because it was a big part of the reason why the kids we worked with needed to be with us; they had insufficient strategies to deal with the many conflicts an average day in a child’s life could throw up. It was drama based, and required teamwork, which meant collaboration and discussion – again, things that we worked hard to encourage.
The activity took the form of a comic strip, which had the normal run of pictures, but no dialogue; it was the children’s job to decide who said what and when. The scene was classroom-based, starting with a frustrated-looking teacher standing at a blackboard, glowering as two of her pupils were obviously arguing with one another, while the rest of the class all looked on.
The idea was that the children had to decide what was happening and plan two short plays around it, one with what they considered to be a ‘good’ outcome, and one where the outcome was ‘bad’. They would then perform both plays, and I’d film as they were doing so, in order that we could all watch and discuss the plays afterwards.
This sort of exercise was helpful for two reasons. It was obviously a good way for them to practise skills such as listening and negotiating, as well as making them think about such concepts as a ‘moral code’. But it was also helpful for me, being a chance to get to know what made their minds work; seeing what they’d come up with in terms of solutions without any influence from me.
I got them started, then went over to my desk, ostensibly to do some paperwork but partly so that I could watch them discreetly. I was particularly interested in how Imogen might be allocated a part in the finished plays.
And I was looking forward to seeing what they came up with. What I hadn’t figured on, however, was that Shona might be having a bad day.
With the children planning quietly, and mostly harmoniously, I was browsing the internet for Shakespeare quotes when I heard Shona’s raised voice. ‘No!’ she snapped. ‘Why does it have to be that?’
I looked up to see her looking daggers at Henry.
‘Because, Miss Bossy Boots, that’s what we chose!’ he shouted back.
I noticed Imogen, who’d seemed reasonably engaged up to that point, shrink back into her ‘closed’ posture and hang her head. It was a very clear gesture. She was keeping well out of it. Ironic that it was meant to be a lesson on conflict resolution, I thought, as I watched and waited to see what would happen. Hang your head, shut your mouth. Don’t get involved.
‘Well, if I’m meant to be the teacher,’ Shona shot back, ‘I should be allowed to pick what lesson I’m teaching! And I’m not doing a stupid “boys” lesson! There’s no such thing, anyway! No one has lessons about cars, you idiot!’
Henry, another strong personality, wasn’t about to give in, though. ‘We can say it’s a project!’ he retaliated, sneering at her as if to say that anyone with half a brain would have known that. ‘And anyway, it’s three against two, so that’s what we’re doing. You can’t always have it your own way, Shona. It’s not fair!’
Things were definitely escalating, but I think everyone in the room was taken aback when Shona leapt from her chair, knocking it back onto the floor, and lunged for a startled Henry, fists flying.
She was already hammering at him, swinging punches, by the time I’d got up and come round from the other side of my desk, sobbing and calling him names as she did so.
‘What the hell?’ Henry yelled as he tried to protect himself from Shona’s blows. ‘Miss, she’s mental! Miss! Get her off me!’
; ‘Shona,’ I said firmly, rushing to get to her and pull her away, ‘what on earth is the matter? What’s brought this on?’
I had to keep a firm grip on her wrists to keep her from wriggling from my grasp. She was surprisingly strong, and very, very angry. ‘Let me go!’ she screamed. ‘I’m going to kill him! I swear I am, Miss – I hate him!’ And I didn’t doubt she’d have inflicted damage had I not been able to keep that grip on her, before twisting her around so that she was facing me and bending down to be more at her level. ‘Shh,’ I soothed. ‘Shh, Shona. Calm down a minute, will you? What’s wrong? What’s made you so angry?’
She stopped struggling then. Went limp, in fact. She wasn’t the sort of child who regularly flew into uncontrollable rages, I didn’t think, and having just done so it was as if she had shocked herself more than anyone. She certainly seemed to mentally gather herself together. I felt her relax under my grip and risked letting her go. She didn’t move. ‘Well?’ I asked her gently.
She looked at me, her eyes full of tears as yet unshed. ‘I don’t know, Miss,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I don’t feel very well. Could I go and sit in the corner with books for a bit?’
She was certainly red in the face. I felt her forehead. It was a little warm, though that might have just been the physical exertion. ‘Do you want to go to the medical room for a bit instead?’ I suggested. ‘Or shall I have someone go and tell the office to call home for you?’
The tears welled in her eyes and I could have kicked myself as soon as I’d spoken. Why had I said ‘home’? What an idiot! That word would have been such an emotive one for her. Since the death of her parents in a road accident, she had no ‘home’, did she? She was currently billeted with her aunt and uncle and cousins. So, yes, their home, but not the home she’d always known. It all seemed so obvious, then. Of course she didn’t want to make the lesson about cars.
I quickly put my arm around her and steered her to the place she wanted to go; the place where she could compose herself in private. ‘That’s fine, love,’ I said briskly, knowing that to sympathise too much would only make things worse for her. ‘You go ahead. Have a sit down and read a book. You can skip this lesson if you like.’
Henry puffed out his chest at this, looking positively indignant. ‘What!’ he squeaked. ‘She doesn’t even get done for that? Oh my God – if that had been me, I’d have been excluded or something, for definite. Oh. My. God!’
‘That’s enough, Henry,’ I said firmly, anxious to nip any outbursts from him in the bud. The truth was that if it had been, he might well have been right. Henry only had so much rope left to play with in school, and I didn’t want my classroom to be the place where it ran out.
‘Right,’ I said more generally. ‘This was obviously a bad idea today. Change of plan. You can all get out your workbooks and write your own versions of the script. I’ll read them all at lunchtime and choose the one we’re going to act out this afternoon, once everyone has had a chance to calm down.’
There was a small rumbling of dissent, mostly, but not exclusively, from Henry, but it soon settled. No earthquake today.
‘Come on, Imogen, you too,’ I said gently as I passed her. ‘You can be one of the quiet ones in the play, if you like,’ I added, ‘the sensible one who keeps out of the argument, eh?’
I had hoped to see a flicker of a smile, but it didn’t happen, and by the time I had returned to my desk I noticed that, although she had at least opened her workbook, she’d still made no move to pick up her pen.
But perhaps that was it, I thought, mindful of poor Shona, holed up with a paperback, and who I’d need to have a chat to when the bell went. Perhaps conflict-resolution exercises were still a step too far for my current charges. I glanced again at Imogen. And perhaps for this one in particular. After all, she already had a resolution to whatever conflicted her. Say nothing.
Well, it was a strategy, I supposed. Least said soonest mended? Perhaps this afternoon I’d be some way to finding out.
Chapter 7
Lunchtime seemed to fly by with a speed all of its own. They often did if you let class time spill over after the bell went, and, by the time I’d read through the scenarios the children had written and given to me, 20 minutes had already been gobbled up.
Putting the workbooks down, I decided I’d zip up to the staffroom to see if Kelly was free to assist during the afternoon session. When you were doing something that was both physical and creative, I’d learned, it always paid to have a second pair of adult hands, to help manage any hot-heads and artistic differences.
But on my way there I remembered that I’d planned to look in on Gary Clark, too, and should perhaps do that first, as it was on the way.
Gary was the school’s Child Protection Officer, or CPO. He was based in our school but also worked with all the feeder primary schools in the area, as well as doing home visits and dealing with issues such as truancy. He also ran teacher-training sessions on emotional literacy; something the government were becoming increasingly keen for schools to foster, a child’s emotional well-being being as important, they were realising, as their academic potential.
Protocol dictated that I let Gary know if I was planning to do a home visit, such as I was going to do today after school. He was a lovely man with a calm outlook on everything. In his mid-forties and a dress-down-rather-than-up type of person, he was very easy to get along with and it seemed that all the children thought so too. I already knew he had been as interested in finding out more about Imogen’s selective mutism as I had, because Don had already told me. In fact, one of the first things Gary told me when I showed up in his office was that he’d already arranged for a clinician to come into the school the following Monday to give us a little more insight into the condition.
‘And it turns out that there are apparently several types of SM,’ he told me, ‘all of which can stem from different triggers. So it’s not a “one size fits all” kind of thing.’
‘That’s interesting,’ I said, ‘because nothing I’ve seen on the internet so far really seems to fit where Imogen’s concerned, so it would be really valuable to get the insight of an expert.’
‘Let’s hope it’s helpful, then,’ he said. ‘And I was just on my way down to find you and tell you, funnily enough. So you’ve saved me a journey. For which extremely grateful thanks. If I’m lucky, I might still be in time for whatever delights cook has whistled up in the dining room.’
‘Hmmph,’ I said. ‘Lunch? Chance would be a fine thing. Have you seen Kelly, by the way? I need to see if she’s free p.m.’
‘She’ll be in the staffroom, I imagine. Last time I saw her she was heading rapidly in that general direction. Clutching a bag that looked suspiciously like it came from the local bakers. If you’re quick you might be in with a shout at getting a muffin …’
Leaving Gary to grab his jacket, I set off myself, immediately bumping into Shona, who was standing leaning against the corridor wall.
‘Oh, hi, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Were you waiting to see Mr Clark?’ She shook her head. ‘I wanted to see you,’ she said, ‘and Mr Dawson said he’d seen you go in here … If that’s all right?’ she hurriedly added. ‘Imogen’s okay, and everything. She’s in the playground with Molly.’
I was touched by her rush to reassure me, but also concerned that Shona had taken it upon herself to be Imogen’s guardian to the extent that she thought I’d tell her off for not being at her side every single minute; if so, she was taking on a responsibility too far.
Gary joined us in the corridor. ‘D’you want to use my office?’ he said, gesturing back inside, obviously having heard us. ‘I’ve got some photocopying and stuff to do so I won’t be rushing back.’
I smiled gratefully. ‘That would be lovely, Mr Clark,’ I said, motioning to Shona that she should go in. ‘Might just pinch a couple of your biscuits, too. I seem to have forgotten about eating lunch today.’
We exchanged a smile and I followed Shona in. I was glad to se
e her looking better after her unexpected outburst of the morning. Unexpected, I judged, by her as much as me.
‘Are you doing okay, love?’ I asked her, grabbing a spare chair rather than heading behind Gary’s enormous desk. I’d struggle to see over the piles of paperwork in any case.
She nodded. ‘I’m okay, Miss. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ I said. ‘Sweetheart, it’s me that should be saying sorry. I should have realised, shouldn’t I? I don’t think Henry knew for a moment the he’d be upsetting you, do you? But cars are going to be the last thing you want to talk about, aren’t they? It must have been very upsetting.’
I paused to let her speak, but she didn’t. It often worked that way. Kids came to talk, but when they got to it they couldn’t. Not at first. ‘Though, you know,’ I added, ‘you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
Shona sighed. ‘I know he didn’t do it on purpose, Miss. But … but, it’s just that sometimes I get so tired of feeling like I do. I mean, my auntie and uncle are lovely, but … it’s just, well, there’s my little cousins, and I feel terrible if I cry in front of them, because they start crying then as well, and my auntie … she cries sometimes, because she misses mummy too, and I feel bad about that as well, and that makes me want to cry more and … it’s just … it’s just so hard, Miss, trying to pretend you’re not upset when you are.’
The sadness in the room felt almost touchable. It was a terrible thing to have happened and it couldn’t be undone. The poor child had such an unbearable weight on her shoulders, it didn’t bear thinking about, really.
‘Oh, love, I do know. I know exactly what you mean. It’s horrible feeling you have to bottle your feelings up all the time, isn’t it? Tell me, are you still seeing your bereavement counsellor?’ She nodded. ‘And are they helping?’
‘Kind of,’ Shona said. ‘I just …’ I could see her chin beginning to wobble. ‘It’s just that I wish I knew how long it’ll be before it stops feeling like this. I just feel so sad. I miss my mummy so much, and my dad, and I …’ She could no longer speak now and instead let out a huge racking sob. One that tore at my heart as I pulled her into my arms.
