It was a Tuesday afternoon. I quite like Tuesdays. I hate Fridays because there are far too many kids who don’t get on, or who get on far too well for much productive work to be done, and Mondays, well I don’t like Mondays because you’re picking up the pieces after the weekend. But Tuesdays are usually ok, a good mix of kids but not too quiet, or I’d have time to think and that’s not good for anyone in these troubled times. It’s Erik Bloodaxe in with me today; he’s the head of year who spends most time in here and we make a good team. The kids are usually a bit wary of him because he’s known to have a temper, but they know he’s on their side so long as they play by his rules. So not your usual bad day.
So, we have the usual mix of sad kids (bereavement a speciality), kids nobody wants in their classroom (disruptive, aggressive), kids who don’t know what day it is, so have come to school instead of going to their placement. Dylan is either permanently stoned or has serious memory problems. Violet is a looked after child who seems to spend her time crying or telling teachers to fuck off. I have a soft spot for her because she’s really funny and she has a strong sense of justice, so she won’t let anyone bully our more fragile kids. We’re a real community in the bungalow; people who don’t have anything in common except that they spend time with me, really look out for each other. Usually. We also have two girls who go to a drama group in the morning and come into the bungalow in the afternoon. One of them, Beth, has been with me for ages, after it was decided that this is the last resort before permanent exclusion. You never know how she’ll be, but she just leaves you exhausted and having a headache when she goes (and sometimes she won’t go- her record is staying till 5pm.) So she’s a challenge, but not awful. The other girl has been here a month now, while she has anger management. She attacked another girl, but SMT have not felt it necessary to tell me any details, just that she can’t go onsite. Except when they want her to.
So this girl, we’ll call her Naomi, she’s a bit angry because a boy at her drama group laughed at her spots, so she walked out in a huff and came here with Beth. We’ve phoned the tutor at drama and I’ve agreed to take the girls back in tomorrow to try to resolve the problem with the whole group. So now they’re both doing some coursework on the computers and everything seems quite calm. Tears and tantrums over, so I make everyone a nice cup of tea, just to reward the good behaviour. Erik gets a call that one of his parents has come in on the bounce; he checks that I’m quite ok about him going to deal with it, and of course I am. What can possibly go wrong? So we’re all having a quiet time when the ginger ninja arrives. He’s come to pick up some work he did here earlier. As he walks up to the front door, Naomi rushes and locks it. She seems to think it’s funny, so calmly I tell her we can’t stop people coming in, even if they do have funny accents. The ginger ninja just laughs. He really has improved- at one time he said he had anger problems but not now. Then I go to get the work we printed out earlier and arrive back to see Naomi throwing her hot tea all over him. It must have been seconds that I’ve been out the room and I could hear them. Nothing sounded wrong, just a bit of banter. He leaps up and rushes into the kitchen, obviously shocked by the hot tea all over his face. Naomi shrieks and runs away as I turn to see GN running towards her with a boiling kettle in his hands. She shoots out and over the wall slamming the front door on her way, while I try to follow, shouting all the time. Luckily she’s too quick for him and can’t be caught. Erik arrives back to see GN in the front garden still brandishing a kettle of boiling water, and me screaming like a banshee.
So I don’t really like Tuesdays as much as I used to.
Footnote: 2 days later our esteemed Assistant Head brings Naomi into the bungalow, says nothing to me but puts her in the office. Ginger Ninja is due in for a lesson, but we’re not consulted. Naomi tells me she’s there all day cos she’s got an exam. I phone her head of year who had told me we wouldn’t be seeing her again to see if he knows what the plan might be. He explodes and goes off in search of Esteemed Assistant Headteacher, returning quietly to say she’ll probably be gone after she’s done her exam, but can I make other arrangements for GN? Er, like what exactly? Well, I don’t know but you’ll think of something won’t you.
And then Britney walks in, looking shaken. She’s pregnant, but that’s another story.
Tuesday 1 April 2008
Episode 2, in which we learn when a redundancy is not a redundancy.
So, the day that I’d known was coming, finally arrived. And it came as a shock: how stupid is that? My line manager just popped into the bungalow to see how I’d got on at my hospital appointment, which gave me that warm glow that somebody cared. How very ironic, hey? Shortly afterwards my least favourite assistant headteacher arrived and asked after my health; she rather spoiled the effect by telling me that it was bound to be nothing, so I had to ask about where she’d studied medicine, and all in all, the warm glow had evaporated. I told my teacher colleague that something was not quite right, but she felt I might be a bit paranoid.
Half an hour later my line manager came back. Now since September the frequency of our weekly meetings has slipped a bit (ok, we’ve had exactly 2 and it’s now late February), so this was a bit of a surprise. She took me to one side and told me that He Who Must Be Obeyed wanted to see me the next morning. She did not want to pre-empt what he was going to say, but if I wanted to bring someone with me that would be ok. Who might I want to take? Yes, I had an idea of the sort of person she might mean, but making her squirm a bit did help make me feel better. Well, you know maybe the teacher who had taken over when they made my colleagues redundant, wouldn’t I like him to be there? Well, he’s a nice enough bloke and all that, but he’s not exactly an employment lawyer, so no, not really. She swallowed hard. She was going to have to say it, but it wasn’t easy for her. Maybe I might want to contact the union? But why? She couldn’t say. Not exactly good news then? She still couldn’t say. It was a bit petty, but that’s how I felt.
The next day, a Tuesday, at 11 am, we trooped into the office of He Who Must Be Obeyed. And very quickly, so if you’d blinked you’d have missed it, he said what a good job I’d done and now we can’t afford you. He blathered on about budgets and contingencies and not being in a redundancy situation, just not renewing temporary contracts. So, if you’ve only been there 7 years like I have and like Old Bill the Attendance Officer, then you don’t have rights. That doesn’t seem quite right to me, but they say they’ve taken advice and it’s perfectly legal, so we’ll see. And then I was supposed to just go back to working with a group of disaffected kids like nothing’s happened. After all, I knew it was on the cards, and it’s not as though I haven’t had a good run for my money. Come again? Well, yes, warming to the theme now, it was originally only a 2 year contract, so I’ve been very lucky. And don’t forget, The Teacher Who’s Taken Over from my former colleagues is doing a good job so he’ll be able to carry on when I’ve left. Yes she really said that, like it was a good thing, like I don’t do a good job on half the money, like it would be a comfort to me. But I don’t see it the same way.
Thursday saw the staff meeting where everyone was told. I walked out and I swear I saw tumbleweed blow past me. Nobody spoke to me. The next day some people were lovely and outraged on my behalf (it may have been an act, but I’m grateful for any crumbs these days!), but others seem to think it might be contagious, and cross the road to avoid me. Great hey? The only thing keeping me going now is the wording of the official letter. Apparently I can bring anyone I want to a meeting with the governors to appeal against the decision to terminate my contract. Well there are 4 of us going, and I spend my time idly speculating on the Dream Team for us to take in with us. One of the joys of my job is that I am befriended by some very tough parents, who actually appreciate my help with their children’s problems. And some of the kids who’ve left, well they can be quite scary too. But then I go and spoil the tough woman image by crying again. Who will look after these kids? No, really, who’s going to be there when they need someone? I’m going to have to start preparing them for life after I’ve gone, and I don’t want to add to their stress yet.
So, the day that I’d known was coming, finally arrived. And it came as a shock: how stupid is that? My line manager just popped into the bungalow to see how I’d got on at my hospital appointment, which gave me that warm glow that somebody cared. How very ironic, hey? Shortly afterwards my least favourite assistant headteacher arrived and asked after my health; she rather spoiled the effect by telling me that it was bound to be nothing, so I had to ask about where she’d studied medicine, and all in all, the warm glow had evaporated. I told my teacher colleague that something was not quite right, but she felt I might be a bit paranoid.
Half an hour later my line manager came back. Now since September the frequency of our weekly meetings has slipped a bit (ok, we’ve had exactly 2 and it’s now late February), so this was a bit of a surprise. She took me to one side and told me that He Who Must Be Obeyed wanted to see me the next morning. She did not want to pre-empt what he was going to say, but if I wanted to bring someone with me that would be ok. Who might I want to take? Yes, I had an idea of the sort of person she might mean, but making her squirm a bit did help make me feel better. Well, you know maybe the teacher who had taken over when they made my colleagues redundant, wouldn’t I like him to be there? Well, he’s a nice enough bloke and all that, but he’s not exactly an employment lawyer, so no, not really. She swallowed hard. She was going to have to say it, but it wasn’t easy for her. Maybe I might want to contact the union? But why? She couldn’t say. Not exactly good news then? She still couldn’t say. It was a bit petty, but that’s how I felt.
The next day, a Tuesday, at 11 am, we trooped into the office of He Who Must Be Obeyed. And very quickly, so if you’d blinked you’d have missed it, he said what a good job I’d done and now we can’t afford you. He blathered on about budgets and contingencies and not being in a redundancy situation, just not renewing temporary contracts. So, if you’ve only been there 7 years like I have and like Old Bill the Attendance Officer, then you don’t have rights. That doesn’t seem quite right to me, but they say they’ve taken advice and it’s perfectly legal, so we’ll see. And then I was supposed to just go back to working with a group of disaffected kids like nothing’s happened. After all, I knew it was on the cards, and it’s not as though I haven’t had a good run for my money. Come again? Well, yes, warming to the theme now, it was originally only a 2 year contract, so I’ve been very lucky. And don’t forget, The Teacher Who’s Taken Over from my former colleagues is doing a good job so he’ll be able to carry on when I’ve left. Yes she really said that, like it was a good thing, like I don’t do a good job on half the money, like it would be a comfort to me. But I don’t see it the same way.
Thursday saw the staff meeting where everyone was told. I walked out and I swear I saw tumbleweed blow past me. Nobody spoke to me. The next day some people were lovely and outraged on my behalf (it may have been an act, but I’m grateful for any crumbs these days!), but others seem to think it might be contagious, and cross the road to avoid me. Great hey? The only thing keeping me going now is the wording of the official letter. Apparently I can bring anyone I want to a meeting with the governors to appeal against the decision to terminate my contract. Well there are 4 of us going, and I spend my time idly speculating on the Dream Team for us to take in with us. One of the joys of my job is that I am befriended by some very tough parents, who actually appreciate my help with their children’s problems. And some of the kids who’ve left, well they can be quite scary too. But then I go and spoil the tough woman image by crying again. Who will look after these kids? No, really, who’s going to be there when they need someone? I’m going to have to start preparing them for life after I’ve gone, and I don’t want to add to their stress yet.
An everyday story of disaffected folk
But Miss, I’m not ***king swearing!
I work as a Learning Mentor in a post-industrial town in the North West of England. There are young people in this comprehensive school who live in households where nobody has worked in three generations. This leads to a certain degree of disaffection, and unwillingness to complete coursework, because really, what’s the point? At one point in the seven years that Excellence in Cities has funded the work of Learning Mentors there were 6 mentors employed in the school. This has now dwindled to one. The number of disaffected pupils in the school has not reduced appreciably, although overall numbers in the school have fallen. Excellence in Cities funding ceases in March 2008, and my contract ends at the end of August. The difficulties these kids face (or their barriers to learning, as it says in the jargon) will not have gone away, but what the heck? The money’s been spent, so end of problem- don’t know why I didn’t think of that!
So, last week in the bungalow I was working quietly with a few of our regular kids. One is a Young Carer who looks after her mother. We learned last week that her father is terminally ill. This girl looks as though she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, so that makes her a target for the bullies. So I’m trying to work on self-esteem with her, but it’s not going so well this week, what with her father phoning her up at regular intervals during the day to tell her how scared he is.
There are also two sisters whose granddad has liver cancer. This is more of a problem because he is the main support for the family, the one house they know that always has electricity and food when mum has spent her benefit on heroin. These two girls are 11 and 12, but if you passed them in the street you’d put them at 6 and 7. In spite of living in a world where it’s normal to be woken up by police drug raids, (“We couldn’t come to school cos there was a lockdown at ours this morning, Miss”), these are the sweetest, most innocent children I’ve met. They like to play games and make clothes for their teddies, and colouring in cards for their granddad makes them able to go back into lessons again. I don’t suppose it translates into anything Ofsted is interested in, but it makes me happy. There was also a Year 11 boy whose mother has died and whose father is currently drinking himself to death. He comes into the bungalow when he needs a quiet place to gather his thoughts before going back into lessons. I don’t usually do much for him apart from making cups of tea and making sure there is a constant supply of tissues. Sometimes he wants to talk, but usually he prefers to sit quietly and listen to his ipod.
Oh, I almost forgot. Now that the school can’t afford mentors, they give me teachers who have gaps in their timetables. Well, we couldn’t make them redundant could we? But on this particular day, my teacher colleague was off sick. But it’s ok, they’ve sent me a supply teacher. Yes, he is a newly qualified art teacher, and actually he’s dyslexic so finds the work we’re doing a bit hard to understand, but he seems quite good at drinking coffee so that’s just fine. So you can picture the scene: kids working ok, a bit emotional but trying hard, teacher minding his own business, mentor going between the kids trying to keep things calm. And then I saw HIM walking down the path, in a new tracksuit and box-fresh trainers. Nobody told me he was out. And they certainly didn’t tell me he was coming here. He is a year 11 boy who hasn’t attended fulltime school since Year 8. He was permanently excluded and sent to the PRU, but they excluded him and we got him back again. Last year he had to work one to one with a mentor in a separate room because he kept threatening other kids. So I can’t say I was too unhappy when he went to Young Offenders for 12 months. And then I heard he was charged with gun crime, and that meant he would have left school before he was released. Except here he is, looking well, if a little agitated. He’s off the drugs now, he says, because he’s going back in a few days. If you pass your drug tests you get a Playstation in your pad. His brief managed to get him out on tag before his trial. One of the conditions is that he attends school for an hour and a half each day. They’ve agreed that I’ll do basic skills with him. What do you mean, am I trained in teaching basic skills? Do I have any materials? Of course not, but Johnnie Be Good is standing there and he’s been promised, and he doesn’t like it if people break their promises. He punches the wall. Why is he waiting? The teacher is remarkably enterprising and locks himself in the toilet. So I think fast: we’ll write letters. Everyone needs to be able to write letters of application, so we’ll work on that today. I’ll just phone over to Attendance to let them know he’s in- wouldn’t want anyone to think he was in breach of his bail conditions. Speak to ex-police attendance officer, Bill. He sounds alarmed for me, says he’ll get Assistant Head to phone me. She duly rings. Oh, had she forgotten to mention it? Yes he won’t be a problem, just needs a little TLC, really thought that mentors would be less judgemental. And on Wednesday all went well, if you don’t count a bit of racist graffiti on the walls, and a few sexually explicit cartoons drawn on the desk (did I mention that he was once the star of a porn movie?)
Then it was Thursday. Thursday was not a good day. There were the usual people in need of TLC, a few boys who are unteachable in their Spanish lessons, disrupting the class, and who are therefore deemed to be no trouble at all in the bungalow. (Did I mention that I don’t speak Spanish, and they didn’t have any textbooks with them, just some photocopied worksheets? No? It’s par for the course.) And a girl from Year 10 who would make a hooker blush in her choice of clothes for school. This girl, Britney we’ll call her, won’t go to lessons. She doesn’t like them. And if we try to make her try some she turns up dressed in the sort of low-cut top that lets you see her bellybutton piercings. She knows we won’t try that again in a hurry. So, feeling more harassed than ever, I welcome Johnnie Be Good into the bungalow. I think that it will be best if I keep him and Britney with me, away from the fragile kids and the annoying Year 9’s. So I have some work prepared for them, and I can keep popping back to the others, who are supposedly supervised by a different supply teacher. And then he starts threatening Britney. Her brother is the one whose evidence put JBG in Lancaster Farms. The Assistant Headteacher knows this, but does not think it’s a problem (“They have short memories round here, because of the drugs”), so thought it best not to worry me. How kind! Fortunately rugby playing former head of inclusion unit (when we used to have one), arrives for a chat and sees that all is not well. His intervention may well have saved the school from the sort of report we wouldn’t want in the local press. (You know the sort, Local school negligent about pupil safety, pupil murdered by other pupil, something like that.) We once made front page in The News of the World, but that’s another story.
I work as a Learning Mentor in a post-industrial town in the North West of England. There are young people in this comprehensive school who live in households where nobody has worked in three generations. This leads to a certain degree of disaffection, and unwillingness to complete coursework, because really, what’s the point? At one point in the seven years that Excellence in Cities has funded the work of Learning Mentors there were 6 mentors employed in the school. This has now dwindled to one. The number of disaffected pupils in the school has not reduced appreciably, although overall numbers in the school have fallen. Excellence in Cities funding ceases in March 2008, and my contract ends at the end of August. The difficulties these kids face (or their barriers to learning, as it says in the jargon) will not have gone away, but what the heck? The money’s been spent, so end of problem- don’t know why I didn’t think of that!
So, last week in the bungalow I was working quietly with a few of our regular kids. One is a Young Carer who looks after her mother. We learned last week that her father is terminally ill. This girl looks as though she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, so that makes her a target for the bullies. So I’m trying to work on self-esteem with her, but it’s not going so well this week, what with her father phoning her up at regular intervals during the day to tell her how scared he is.
There are also two sisters whose granddad has liver cancer. This is more of a problem because he is the main support for the family, the one house they know that always has electricity and food when mum has spent her benefit on heroin. These two girls are 11 and 12, but if you passed them in the street you’d put them at 6 and 7. In spite of living in a world where it’s normal to be woken up by police drug raids, (“We couldn’t come to school cos there was a lockdown at ours this morning, Miss”), these are the sweetest, most innocent children I’ve met. They like to play games and make clothes for their teddies, and colouring in cards for their granddad makes them able to go back into lessons again. I don’t suppose it translates into anything Ofsted is interested in, but it makes me happy. There was also a Year 11 boy whose mother has died and whose father is currently drinking himself to death. He comes into the bungalow when he needs a quiet place to gather his thoughts before going back into lessons. I don’t usually do much for him apart from making cups of tea and making sure there is a constant supply of tissues. Sometimes he wants to talk, but usually he prefers to sit quietly and listen to his ipod.
Oh, I almost forgot. Now that the school can’t afford mentors, they give me teachers who have gaps in their timetables. Well, we couldn’t make them redundant could we? But on this particular day, my teacher colleague was off sick. But it’s ok, they’ve sent me a supply teacher. Yes, he is a newly qualified art teacher, and actually he’s dyslexic so finds the work we’re doing a bit hard to understand, but he seems quite good at drinking coffee so that’s just fine. So you can picture the scene: kids working ok, a bit emotional but trying hard, teacher minding his own business, mentor going between the kids trying to keep things calm. And then I saw HIM walking down the path, in a new tracksuit and box-fresh trainers. Nobody told me he was out. And they certainly didn’t tell me he was coming here. He is a year 11 boy who hasn’t attended fulltime school since Year 8. He was permanently excluded and sent to the PRU, but they excluded him and we got him back again. Last year he had to work one to one with a mentor in a separate room because he kept threatening other kids. So I can’t say I was too unhappy when he went to Young Offenders for 12 months. And then I heard he was charged with gun crime, and that meant he would have left school before he was released. Except here he is, looking well, if a little agitated. He’s off the drugs now, he says, because he’s going back in a few days. If you pass your drug tests you get a Playstation in your pad. His brief managed to get him out on tag before his trial. One of the conditions is that he attends school for an hour and a half each day. They’ve agreed that I’ll do basic skills with him. What do you mean, am I trained in teaching basic skills? Do I have any materials? Of course not, but Johnnie Be Good is standing there and he’s been promised, and he doesn’t like it if people break their promises. He punches the wall. Why is he waiting? The teacher is remarkably enterprising and locks himself in the toilet. So I think fast: we’ll write letters. Everyone needs to be able to write letters of application, so we’ll work on that today. I’ll just phone over to Attendance to let them know he’s in- wouldn’t want anyone to think he was in breach of his bail conditions. Speak to ex-police attendance officer, Bill. He sounds alarmed for me, says he’ll get Assistant Head to phone me. She duly rings. Oh, had she forgotten to mention it? Yes he won’t be a problem, just needs a little TLC, really thought that mentors would be less judgemental. And on Wednesday all went well, if you don’t count a bit of racist graffiti on the walls, and a few sexually explicit cartoons drawn on the desk (did I mention that he was once the star of a porn movie?)
Then it was Thursday. Thursday was not a good day. There were the usual people in need of TLC, a few boys who are unteachable in their Spanish lessons, disrupting the class, and who are therefore deemed to be no trouble at all in the bungalow. (Did I mention that I don’t speak Spanish, and they didn’t have any textbooks with them, just some photocopied worksheets? No? It’s par for the course.) And a girl from Year 10 who would make a hooker blush in her choice of clothes for school. This girl, Britney we’ll call her, won’t go to lessons. She doesn’t like them. And if we try to make her try some she turns up dressed in the sort of low-cut top that lets you see her bellybutton piercings. She knows we won’t try that again in a hurry. So, feeling more harassed than ever, I welcome Johnnie Be Good into the bungalow. I think that it will be best if I keep him and Britney with me, away from the fragile kids and the annoying Year 9’s. So I have some work prepared for them, and I can keep popping back to the others, who are supposedly supervised by a different supply teacher. And then he starts threatening Britney. Her brother is the one whose evidence put JBG in Lancaster Farms. The Assistant Headteacher knows this, but does not think it’s a problem (“They have short memories round here, because of the drugs”), so thought it best not to worry me. How kind! Fortunately rugby playing former head of inclusion unit (when we used to have one), arrives for a chat and sees that all is not well. His intervention may well have saved the school from the sort of report we wouldn’t want in the local press. (You know the sort, Local school negligent about pupil safety, pupil murdered by other pupil, something like that.) We once made front page in The News of the World, but that’s another story.
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