by Rosie Lewis
The diversity of my pupils’ needs meant that no day was ever just like another and, unlike most of the mainstream teachers, who had clear curriculum-based briefs, I couldn’t plan too far ahead because I never knew from one day to the next just who I might have in my classroom.
Today, though, I was completely child-free. ‘Well, I hope they sort it out soon,’ I said, declining the proffered biscuit packet and reaching for my coffee, ‘or we’ll have a hard time engaging our new brood tomorrow, won’t we? I don’t think there’s anything moodier than a kid that’s too hot or too cold.’
Kelly nodded as she cupped her own plastic vending-machine cup. ‘Have they told you who’s coming in yet?’
I shook my head. What with all the kerfuffle over the heating, my scheduled meeting with Julia Styles, the school’s Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (or SENCO) had been knocked off the morning’s agenda. ‘No names, no pack drill, not as yet,’ I told her. ‘All I know is that there are three of them – a lad from year seven, another from year eight and a girl from year nine with long-standing learning difficulties. I’m hoping to get more up to speed on them later on today.’
‘I tell you what,’ Kelly said, ‘I think I know who the girl might be. I remember someone mentioning to me she was joining the unit when you came back. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, her name’s Chloe Jones. Mother’s a long-standing alcoholic and social services are heavily involved with them, though as far as I know there are no plans to place her in care. There are moves afoot, however, to try and get Chloe moved out of mainstream education. She can be difficult to keep an eye on, bless her.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked, having had my fair share of serial absconders since working at the school. ‘You mean she runs off all the time?’
Kelly shook her head. ‘No, not that – it’s more that she’s rather vulnerable, particularly now she’s an adolescent; tends to put herself in potentially dangerous situations. She has this thing where she wants to hug and kiss almost everyone. She automatically assumes that everyone loves her. The other kids tease her mercilessly and she believes anything they tell her. You’ll love her though, Casey, if it is her. She’s so adorable.’
‘Well, that’s always a bonus,’ I said. ‘I’d much prefer a surfeit of hugs than tantrums and rages. And I guess we’ll see what we’ll see come the morning. Right now I’m looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet in that classroom of mine.’ I picked up the piece of paper I’d been scribbling on before my pen gave up the ghost. ‘And a little light shopping from the stationery catalogue. You know me – I do like to be organised to a fault.’
‘Well, you know where I am if you need a hand in the morning,’ Kelly said as we gathered our things together. ‘You know, to help settle them in, whoever they turn out to be. Just give me a buzz and I’ll be there. I’m only helping out in the learning support room for the rest of the week, and at the moment there are more staff than children. ‘Oh, and Casey,’ Kelly added, grinning, as I slung my satchel over my shoulder, ‘remember Baden-Powell!’
‘Baden Powell? I don’t get you.’
She handed me a nail file, a packet of tissues, my purse and some lip balm. ‘Yours, I think?’ she added, with a mocking salute. ‘Be prepared!’
Only in schools, I mused as I walked the chilly corridors on the well-trodden route to my classroom. In no other job I could think of did you hear about all the staff being sent home because the temperature had dropped by just a few degrees. A great occasion for most of the children, no doubt about it, but not so much for teachers, some of whom had travelled miles to get to work, and definitely not for working parents who would have to quickly arrange transport and unexpected childcare.
Hopefully the radiators would chunter into life before it came to that, and we could all warm up and get to grips with the day. Not that I imagined I’d be cold for long as I had lots of physical work to be doing before welcoming my new brood to the Unit. I unlocked the door and opened it onto the cold, empty room, which smelt faintly musty from its long period unused. Since coming back to school after Christmas, I had had an unusual sort of term; one where I hadn’t really had the usual set group to work with. Only three kids from the previous term had returned to me after the holidays: Gavin and Shona, who’d both returned to mainstream classes by mid-January, and Imogen, a girl who’d had selective mutism and had come to us from another school, and who was settled into a new class by the end of the month. Since then the Unit had been temporarily de-commissioned, as I’d been working away from the main school, helping set up a new off-site facility that would deliver a brand new teaching programme.
It had been a big project, led by our visionary headteacher, Mike Moore, and enthusiastically supported by our Child Protection Officer, Gary Clark. Called ‘Reach for Success’ it was the culmination of research, endless meetings, and lots of political toing and froing with the education authorities, most of which I wasn’t personally involved with, but some of which I was, and we were now the proud ‘owners’ of a dedicated teaching facility in the local youth centre. It was designed to bring out the potential of a specific group of children – those who would not, in all probability, achieve academically in the same way as the majority of the kids.
It was an important step, not least because it meant we could target those kids that might leave school feeling academic ‘failures’ but were of course supremely capable of succeeding beyond school, and deliver an alternative and more appropriate teaching programme for them, including cookery, health and social care, basic food hygiene, childcare, beauty and more manual training in mechanics and carpentry than they could get in the main school. It was to be delivered as a rolling six-week course of learning exciting new, career-focussed skills, and would also include targeted work on behaviour and self-development, which was where I came in, of course. I’d also had to provide the teaching staff down there with some specific agendas, which could be implemented during timetabled lessons.
All the hard work now completed, and the key staff in place, we were almost ‘open for business’, as it were. All that remained for me to do was to help identify the first group of pupils that we would send on the programme, make a weekly visit to the centre to check on their progress, and keep teachers and parents in the loop about how each individual was performing. It was a really exciting and innovative development for our school and I was proud of how much we’d achieved in a relatively short space of time.
It had been a pretty full-on job over the past few weeks, as well. So much so that it meant that I had spent even less time at home with my husband Mike and my own two children. Who weren’t exactly children any more, to be fair. Riley, my daughter, was almost 19 now, and my son Kieron had just turned 17, though sometimes, when I came home after a physically exhausting day spent painting and decorating at the centre, you’d think they were kids. I’d more than once come in to find the house in complete chaos – which I hated – and to find two starving teenagers and a husband with a hangdog expression, all obviously of the opinion that a law had been passed forbidding them to eat until I arrived home.
Not that it wasn’t a situation of my own making. I might stomp about a bit, do a lot of martyred sighing and so on, but that didn’t mean I was blind to my own failings. In fact, it often amused me that I spent all day teaching other people’s kids how to look after themselves, only to then go home and insist on doing absolutely everything for my own.
‘You’re making a rod for your own back, Casey!’ my mother was rather fond of saying, and even though I’d huff and puff at her, I was inclined to agree. Not that I’d have it any other way of course. I secretly loved still being needed by my two older teens, no matter how much I pretended to protest.
Right then, Casey, I said out loud to myself, since there was no one else to talk to. Best get cracking – these walls aren’t going to sort themselves out! I then rolled my sleeves up, both actually and metaphorically, and, after placing a hopeful hand on the nearest radiato
r and having my hopes dashed, prepared to do battle with the displays. With any luck, I’d have an uninterrupted hour and a half now, so, before tackling the remaining backlog of paperwork in my pigeonhole, I could do a good job of stripping down all the previous students’ work, and prettying it up again, ready for the work my new charges would produce.
But that’s the thing about school life; it was almost always unpredictable. So much so that I could probably have predicted that the sudden rap on the classroom door 20 minutes later would mean a complete change of plan.
And it did.
Chapter 2
My room wasn’t like a regular classroom. For one thing it was half the size, and for another, it wasn’t even a classroom. It had been once, back in the dark ages, when the school had first been built, but after a spell as a learning support room, it had gone the way of many a backwater space – home to a small, motley collection of tables and chairs, and not a great deal else. It had been passed over, forgotten, trapped in a time warp at the end of a corridor, and it suited my purposes perfectly.
The headmaster, Mike Moore, who showed me various options when I’d first secured the job, had expressed surprise; in terms of size and spec he’d definitely shown me better. But there was something about that little room that had chimed with my sensibilities, both as a work space for me and as a safe space for my pupils – who I had an inkling would know all about being passed over and forgotten.
Best of all – and, to be honest, it was probably the deal-breaker – it had double doors that opened out onto a lovely grassy area, tucked away at the back of the school. Oh, the things we could do out there, I’d thought.
And, if I did say so myself, I thought I’d made it quite special. I sectioned off an area at the front for myself, which contained a desk, a set of drawers and (important, to my mind) space to make hot drinks and toast. This last addition had caused a few raised eyebrows. In these days of health and safety consciousness, one couldn’t just turn up and plug in a toaster as one might do at home – no, Mike Moore had been required to call an engineer in specially, to test and ‘pass safe’ my two electrical appliances, which I heard on the grapevine caused a ripple of mild disgruntlement in some quarters, due to the ‘unnecessary’ expense.
I believe I then made matters worse (no, to be fair, I know I did) by going out and spending some of my precious teaching budget on such fripperies as bright emulsion, half a dozen floor cushions and a selection of potted plants – all of which I deemed essential too. Essential to the creation of the warm, calm environment I was after, so, knowing all about politics after years spent working with vulnerable young adults for the local council, I simply ignored the whispered grumbles and exasperated glances, which, once it became common knowledge that my Unit would mop up the most challenging children, did not continue very long, to no one’s surprise.
I had several large display boards and had got to work on them quickly, taking down what remained of the previous bunch of students’ work and, while I was at it, wondering how they were all doing. Being out of school for a few weeks meant being somewhat out of the loop, and I made a mental note to try and track them down when I could. In the meantime, I decided, surveying the newly barren walls, I’d hang on to the gold card frames that we’d put up for Christmas but would be perfectly serviceable for a while yet. I could then turn my attention to my ‘quiet’ area.
A good number of the children who came to me had a tendency to become volatile, so a ‘chill out’ space was another essential. It was a place I could send kids to calm down if they needed to and, equally, it was a place that might prove preventative on that front – not to mention being somewhere a shy child could escape to, should the bustle of the classroom get too much.
It was a simple space – the only seating being those half-dozen floor cushions – and bound on two sides by a pair of bookcases at right angles, facing inwards. There were books, of course, but also a selection of stationery: trays of paper, pens and pencils, in case creativity blossomed and the urge to be artistic took hold.
The knock at my door came just as I was deciding if I had time to rearrange the muddle of books, while putting a new label on the crayon tray. I bobbed up to find Donald Brabbiner, the deputy head, had put his head round the now open door.
‘Casey, do you have a minute?’ he asked, looking stressed. Not that Don looking stressed was anything unusual in itself, currently. The school was in the middle of preparing for an OFSTED visit, and there wasn’t a member of the senior staff who wasn’t stressing about it – the furrowed brow and frazzled expression was very much the look of the moment.
But, no – he looked more stressed than even that, I decided. ‘Yes, of course, Don,’ I said, pulling myself upright and brushing chalk dust from my skirt. ‘I don’t have any children in till tomorrow, and I’m about done here. Is there a problem?’
He nodded grimly. ‘Apparently so.’
He was obviously keen to return to it, too, I decided, as he was already turning and heading back out into the corridor. I quickly followed him, opting for grabbing my satchel, rather than spending time finding my key and locking the door. There was nothing in there worth pinching currently, after all. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. I was having to jog intermittently to keep up with him as we headed off down the corridor, and not just because I was five foot nothing to his six foot two. He was the sort of man who was born to lead and a great asset to the school, and with his brisk manner and his ‘everything must be done yesterday’ attitude, he was hard to keep up with at the best of times. But he was well liked by both the staff and the students, because he was down to earth, fair to a fault and enjoyed a laugh with the children, attributes that made for the best kind of teacher – well, in my humble opinion, anyway.
‘Year eight assembly,’ he said, directing his words half over his shoulder. ‘Some sort of incident going on involving two of the pupils. I was told I was needed and so were you –’ He turned and smiled a grim smile. ‘And as you were on the way, I thought I’d scoop you up en route.’
So he was on his way to it. Which meant he must have been sent for or paged. ‘A fight?’ I asked.
‘I believe so. Though I’m not yet quite sure … Ah –’
He didn’t need to finish whatever it was he was about to say as we could hear the commotion before we saw it; well, the tell-tale sound of massed kids who, as our eyes soon confirmed, were all being herded out of the hall, most of them over-excited, chatting nine to the dozen about something exciting that had obviously gone down – and which probably livened up their morning no end.
‘Settle down,’ Donald barked, to no one in particular. He didn’t need to – just his presence in the area was enough. The various form teachers were busy trying to wrestle back some order too, but the decibel levels suggested that whatever had happened was something more serious than just some radiator-related unrest.
That too was soon confirmed, as Andrea Halstead, one of the year eight form tutors, emerged from the hall and beckoned us to both follow her in.
‘Oh, Mr Brabbiner,’ she said, sounding as if she was still getting her breath back. ‘Casey, hi. Bit of a to-do, I’m afraid. Might have been something and nothing, but Thomas over there’s hit his head and Mr Reynolds and I were thinking that someone will probably need to take him down to A and E.’
‘A and E?’ Donald went straight into accident mode. ‘What sort of head wound? Any bleeding? Did he pass out at any point?’
I looked across to where a group of assorted teachers, teaching assistants and one of the school secretaries, Janice Wells, were forming what looked like two separate human cordons around what must have been the two pupils in question, neither of whom I could properly see yet. What I could see, however, was a large muddle of chairs, several of them overturned, around which Barry, the caretaker, was methodically working, stacking the unaffected rows of chairs both in front of and behind the groups, and dragging them to their positions back against the walls. It was a c
ircle of devastation that looked a little like something had been dropped in the middle of the hall from a great height. A fight, then, for definite.
Or perhaps not. ‘I’m not sure,’ Andrea said, ‘We don’t think so. But it’s been bleeding rather copiously. It’s up in his hair at the back –’ she gestured to her own head to illustrate. ‘Just above the back of his neck. Quite a nasty gash.’
‘Wouldn’t an ambulance be simpler?’ Donald asked.
‘We weren’t sure,’ Andrea said. ‘I was going to call one, but then Janice reminded me about the roadworks on the way to the General. We were wondering if it wouldn’t be easier for someone just to take him in their car. Mr Reynolds seems to have got the bleeding under control.’
‘You want me to take him down in my car?’ I asked. ‘Who is it, anyway?’
‘Lad called Thomas Robinson,’ Andrea said. ‘You probably haven’t come across him – he’s only been at the school for a couple of weeks or so, bless him. But, no, we were hoping you’d be able to take charge of Kiara, there. She’s in no fit state to go back to her friends.’
She nodded towards the second of the two huddles, at the centre of which I could just make out a second pupil, who I now realised wasn’t the gender I expected. ‘Kiara?’ I said. ‘So it’s a girl?’
Andrea nodded while Donald strode off to take charge of the patient and decide how best to get him to A and E. ‘Kiara Bentley,’ she confirmed. ‘Have you had any dealings with her?’
As if to underline that even if I hadn’t I might well do very soon, the subject of our discussion then started shouting. Shouting quite loudly, in fact; and making a great deal of noise for what looked like quite a small amount of pupil.
