by Anon
I began addressing her directly, trying to make my negative body language as clear as possible.
‘Mrs Brodowski, I must impress upon you the need for Milosz to improve his attitude.’
I held up the spreadsheet and waved it beneath her nose.
‘Look! Here! It’s all red! It should be green but it is all red!’
She nodded and smiled.
‘He is bright enough to go up a set. But he won’t, not at this rate. He might go down.’
She nodded and smiled.
‘Milosz, do you want to improve?’
‘No,’ he said, nodding and smiling.
I looked at his mother, who was smiling.
‘OK. Nice to meet you.’
*
Salim sat down with his dad, and gathered himself, his knees touching each other, his palms neatly placed on each thigh. His father looked at me wearily, and told me how concerned he was. I told his dad that things were under control. That we would speak often. That he was in the best possible hands.
*
When Donnie’s dad arrived, he looked me up and down suspiciously. I told him that Donnie had been staying at school to do his homework.
‘Well, stands to reason, dunnit?’ he said. ‘You keep makin’ ’im do all this work on computer. He ain’t got no computer at home, ’as he? So now ’e’s gotta stay at school to do it.’
I told him that he could do the work in his book if he wanted, but that he was choosing to stay at school. I said how proud I was with the improvement he had made.
‘Yeah, well. I don’t see it myself. What was that work he done the ovver day? Whatever. Somming. Anyway, I couldn’t read your writing. And if I can’t read it, then he certainly can’t. Now I’m not bein’ funny, but what chance ’as he got of improvin’ if he can’t read what you’re writin’?’
I apologised and told him I would try to write clearly, but that he needed to be assured that his son was the most improved student in the class, and that he would go up a set next year.
‘Yeah, well. I told ya he shouldn’t be in that set wiv all those idiots. Should listen to me next time.’
*
Chika’s mother wasn’t happy with what Chika was reading. She said the Greek Myths were full of ‘bad witches’. I said that we were going to do Macbeth and His Dark Materials in the subsequent years, and that witches and superstition featured in much of English Literature. She said she didn’t want me to teach those books. I told her they were just stories. She told me to tell better stories. ‘Like what?’ I asked. ‘Like the ones from the Bible,’ she said.
*
Mercedes was happy to see me, and said, ‘You gonna be nice about me, Sir, innit?’ I said I was. She started combing her fringe. I told her carer that – while we had not got off to the best of starts – she was the most rewarding student I had taught that year. She was now focused and determined and producing excellent work. She had improved by such a degree that she was going to go up a set next year. She beamed, grizzled, and said, ‘Fanks, yeah.’ I asked what she had enjoyed the most from the year. ‘Singing,’ she said. (She was now officially labelled a ‘Gifted and Talented’ student.) Her carer agreed that singing in the Gospel Choir had made all the difference to her. I told her she had to carry on. And to keep reading!
*
I told Saadia’s parents she needed to speak more in class. They didn’t say anything.
*
Neither of Kieran’s parents showed up.
*
I looked around. The hall was finally emptying. A few SMs were talking to parents. I watched Mercedes as she walked through the double doors of the gym, and choked back a rush of emotion. Totes emosh.
Lesson #148
Emotion Creeps Up on You.
You Have to Keep It in Check.
10
Fanks, Yeah
The kids were immaculate from Parents’ Evening onwards. For two weeks, at least. Whenever they misbehaved, I said, ‘Remember what we said at Parents’ Evening?’ and they got down to work. But after two weeks, no one could remember what was said at Parents’ Evening. This is why it is best practice to call home every week, especially if you have something good to say, no matter how small – whether it is an idea they came up with in class or an act of kindness. Developing communication with parents is a vitally constructive element of education. I had kids in all my classes battling for who could do the best work or be the kindest or the most punctual; once they were, they would say, ‘Can you call my mum?’ Sometimes this became ridiculous, like when a kid would open a door for me, and then say, ‘Can you call my mum?’ It made me slightly concerned about how this reward of mum-calling would translate into the real world; in any other sphere of life, that would be a very odd interaction. Imagine leaving your job in a bank, and your fellow clerk opens the door for you. You thank him, and he says, ‘Can you call my mum?’
Spring sprung; the days lengthened; it was no longer dark at the beginning or end of the day. A mood swept across Key Stage 3, which, while not exactly relaxed, was no longer batshit stressed. The stress had been pushed upwards, like a bolus of pus, towards Key Stages 4 and 5. The SMs were now all over GCSE and A Level classes like bacilli around vulnerable blood cells.
I had fun with my classes at last. I was on a level with them where they could take the piss out of me, and ask me questions about my life. Break through the carapace. Reveal the secrets. They like nothing more than bantz about Sir’s or Miss’s personal life. You don’t have to say much. Just bat back their manic questioning occasionally with a dry rejoinder.
‘Has you got a wife?’
‘No. Look at his finger!’
‘Doesn’t mean he don’t have a wife!’
‘Yes, it does! You gotta have a ring to get married!’
‘’E’s got a girlfriend! ’E said so! Innit, Sir, you gotta girlfriend?’
‘OOOOOHHHHH! Sir’s got a girlfriend! Sir’s got a girlfriend!’
‘You got a picture? Lemme see!’
‘Is she as fit as Persephone?’
‘Or Beyoncé?’
‘Yeah! Sir’s got swagger!’
‘Is it Miss?’
‘LOW IT!’
‘Yeah, blatantly it’s Miss.’
‘Has Miss met her? Do you let her go pub?’
‘Does she buy your ties?’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Where?’
‘How dja get there? In a plane?’
‘Has they got chicken and chips dere?’
‘Don’t you ever go chicken and chip shop for kissy-kissy time?’
‘Naah, he’s too busy in the pub with Miss! Sir, you’re bad, you know. I’m gonna tell Miss dat you got a wife at home while you’re leading her on.’
‘Sir! You’re bad you know. I was talkin’ to Miss. Innit, Sir, you’re mentally unstable?’
If you can deal with that at rapid fire, you will become quite the Bantosaurus.
At the end of a lesson in which we just shot the breeze, Kieran said, ‘Why can’t we always do this?’
I told him I had no idea. But then I thought about it, and realised that if every lesson was like this, then not every lesson would be like this.
The kids were much more settled with each other. Mercedes changed her fringe. Chika finished all the Harry Potters, despite her mother. Milosz began to speak more in class. Saadia still wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Salim no longer needed to go outside the classroom to do his classwork; Paula even cajoled him into working with other kids, who were beginning to appreciate him as his confidence grew. Donnie worked and worked and worked, staying behind every day to do homework, even if he didn’t have any. I was proud of them. They had made great progress, even if I had made up their levels so they were in line with the ridiculous predictions of what they should be getting.
*
‘You are only as happy as your most unhappy child’ is an old saw of parenting. The same is true of teaching. It doesn’t matter if the m
ajority of your pupils have succeeded, and become happy, sociable, successful kids. You will only remember the failure.
Kieran’s purple patch didn’t last too long. One Monday he came in surly and slumped down at the back of the class, without taking his Puffa off, hugging his rucksack to his chest. I could tell the wheels had come off the bus over the weekend. Mondays are like that.
He refused to work all week, spent every day in detention, falling further and further behind in his work. He didn’t seem to care; he no longer saw the point in improving, or in being in school at all. Paula took him out of lessons, but he was rude and recalcitrant when he was with her. All of his teachers logged complaints on the school’s network, most of which were filed under ‘Attitude’.
‘Gave me a dirty look as he came in. When I told him to come in again, he sucked his teeth. Gave him a detention.’
‘Refused to work. Gave detention.’
‘Distracting other students. Gave detention. Talked back. Gave Late Det.’
‘Came in late, refused to take off Puffa. Talked back. Sent to VP’s office. Tried to call home. No response. Late Det. Refused to work. Week of Late Dets.’
We prided ourselves on not letting any kid fall through the net and never giving up. But when there is no support at home it is very difficult. His attitude deteriorated to such a degree that it was difficult to see him lasting. He was a ticking time bomb.
*
We had been working on Holes by Louis Sachar. This is the story of Stanley Yelnats IV, an overweight teenage boy from a poor family who is wrongly accused of stealing a pair of shoes. He is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile prison in the middle of the Texan desert, where he must dig holes that are exactly five feet deep by five feet wide because it ‘builds character’. The family suffer from a ‘hex’, an inheritance from Stanley’s ‘no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather’, who was made to carry a pig up a hill in Latvia to win the heart of his beloved. He escapes to America, bringing the curse with him.
We drew maps of Camp Green Lake. I asked what they thought the digging was a metaphor for.
*
Silence.
*
Please tell me they know what a metaphor is.
It’s not like I don’t tell them every lesson.
It’s not like I have taught them anything else.
*
Chika said, ‘It is a simile without “as” or “like”.’
Zackly.
Milosz said, ‘It’s a metaphor for school.’ I asked him to go on. He said, ‘Well, because you are made to do this thing over and over again, but you don’t know why.’
Boom ting.
Is that what school is?
Yeah!
Should it be?
No!
I asked what they really thought of school.
Kieran sucked his teeth.
‘Rubbish,’ he said, as he sunk deeper into his Puffa.
Mercedes said, ‘Nah, nah, it’s all right, you know.’
‘Shut up. Wha’ you sayin? Suck-up.’
‘Come den.’
‘Why do you hate this, Kieran?’ I asked. ‘You used to love books.’
‘Some loser pushin’ a pig up a hill. Like dat guy who pushes a rock up a mountain. Who cares?’
I asked him if it reminded him of school. He shrugged and looked out of the window.
To illustrate how oracular stories are passed on, I asked them to play Chinese whispers. A story was whispered around the room, passed from partner to partner, and then Chika told the final story to the class. It was completely different from the original story. Helpless giggles ensued. For the rest of the lesson, I made them write stories about travelling to another country. They wrote them up in their books for homework.
The next lesson I decided to broach race and immigration in an attempt to integrate some ‘British Values’. It was something I had been avoiding – my classroom was the ‘noblest kingdom’ in the world, after all, an enlightened, label-less, wall-less palace of light – but recently, I had noticed they were becoming more aware of what made them different.
I put up a slide with images of refugees and immigrants on the board and asked them to brainstorm. After a couple of minutes, I asked who wanted to come to the board. Mercedes’s hand shot up. I was pleased to pick her; this had become her thing.
Mercedes bowled up to the front of the class, took the red pen and wrote ‘FRESHY’ in massive letters across the board. I asked her to explain what she meant.
‘Dey’re all freshies.’
‘Who are?’
‘All the Eastern Europeans and Africans.’
Er … quick. Pull out. Abandon ship. Next slide. Semicolons. Anything.
*
Chika looked hurt. Milosz bridled. He was usually scared of Mercedes, and averted his gaze from hers, but this time he stared her down. She sucked her teeth at him. He muttered something under his breath in Polish. Mercedes lurched across at him and screamed in his face, gesticulating like a windmill. Donnie said, at the end of the day, they were all freshies, and he was the only proper English kid there. Everyone turned on Donnie. Kieran joined in – not because he was particularly exercised by the issue, more because it was a chance to be disruptive – and soon the whole room was reverberating with caterwauling and stomping. I had never heard them so incensed. Even Saadia was getting involved, and I hadn’t heard her speak all year. Mercedes pushed Milosz out of his chair. She was swiftly disappeared. Chika screamed as loud as she could at Donnie. Donnie threw a book at Chika. There was a brief lull in the shouting as I heard Kieran shout at Saadia that he was going to ‘wipe his arse on her headscarf’. He was disappeared all the way to VP’s office.
*
I gave the rest of the class a stern talking-to. I told them they were all in detention and that I would be speaking to their parents and that I was very, very disappointed.
*
That was bad.
That was really, really bad.
Lesson #144
Just When You Think You’re in the Clear, They Bite You in the Arse.
In detention, they had to write about a worse punishment than digging holes. While they were doing that, I called home.
*
‘Hello. Is that Milosz’s mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘Hi. This is Milosz’s English teacher?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hi. I just wanted to talk about what happened in English today.’
‘Yes.’
‘He won’t be home for a while, because he is staying here at school with me.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is a shame, because I have noticed a real improvement in Milosz’s behaviour and attitude recently. Really. He is contributing much more in class. In fact, too much. Today, things got out of hand and he said some things which are frankly unacceptable. I didn’t understand them all. But he ended up shouting at other students. There was a fight. He needs to learn to control himself.’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, well, I am just letting you know. That he is here.’
‘Yes.’
‘So you are happy for him to come home alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, good to talk to you, Mrs Brodowski.’
*
‘Hello. Is that Chika’s mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘This is her English teacher.’
‘Wha’ ’appen?’
‘Nothing. No, nothing. Well, something. There was a little problem in English today. We were talking about immigration and things got out of hand. Chika wasn’t the main perpetrator, but she did start shouting –’
‘I do not like this book.’
‘No?’
‘No. What are these curses? What are you teaching them?’
‘They’re just made up.’
‘Why are you teaching things that are made up?’
‘Er … that’s my job.’
*
‘Hello.
Is that Donnie’s dad?’
‘Yeah. ’Oo’s ’is?’
‘This is Donnie’s English teacher.’
‘Wasseedone?’
‘Well, we had a bit of a scene in English today. We were talking about immigration and Donnie became quite … animated. He shouted and threw a book at a student. I have him here in detention.’
‘Oh, right. ’Ave you now? Don’t sound like ’is fault. Wasn’t Donnie’s fault. Sounds like all them other idiots. You need to get tough on ’em.’
‘Donnie needs to control himself. Not get involved –’
‘What, so ’e’s not supposed to say nuffing if he is provoked? You’re the teacher. You’re supposed to be teachin’ ’im ’ow to behave. Why you stirring them up like that?’
He’s got a point.
*
‘Hello. Is that Saadia’s mum? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry …’
*
Mercedes needed the next level up on the disciplinary ladder: Late Detention, followed by a raking over the coals with HoD and VP.
HoD, VP and I gathered in VP’s office for the police procedural preamble: Mercedes waited in the purgatorial anteroom outside, while VP established the facts on the ground. I nervously explained what had happened, feeling increasingly guilty and inept. It’s all the teacher’s fault, after all. I should have prepared a lesson that headed off the race riot at the pass.
Mercedes was readmitted. We stared at her for some time, a triumvirate of doom. She glanced nervously from HoD to VP to me and back again, grinning slightly less with each glance.
VP began her Pintersque Inquisition, speaking even more deliberately and gravely than usual, leaving cavernous pauses to give Mercedes the opportunity to respond, playing Jedi mind-tricks, gently guiding her towards her ultimate admission of guilt.
‘Why. Are. You. Here. Mercedes?’
She grizzled and stared at the floor.
‘I am going to tell you what I know and then I want you to tell me what you know. Is that understood? OK. Mercedes. What happened in English this afternoon?’
