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A final fling story from the Yorkshire/Lancashire border!

Working in Oldham recently at the local authority outdoor education centre, I have been struck by the number of recent refugees turning up in our primary school classes. These people are literally grabbing their children and heading for the UK, being 'processed' in London and shortly afterwards turning up in Oldham with no food, money, clothing or a common language.

In response, Oldham council has created a new primary school (up to three form entry) right in the town centre.

Last July, I was briefed on this school (it was open, but had many empty classes; year 5 and 6 being the only operational year groups).

Meeting my group of year sixes, that Thursday, I knew I was in for a good day: there were smiles, eye contact and a general feeling of wellbeing. Their teaching assistant confirmed their positivity, expressed her own disbelief at how this was possible (many had arrived VERY recently) and reminded me that we didn't have English as a common language.

Kurdish, Egyptian, Latvian, Syrian and Afganistani children looked back at me and smiled as I explained the days' proceedings, trying to put across a vibe of 'you'll be safe with me and we'll have a lot of fun, even though you haven't a clue why you're here'.

Then, as we headed out to do some climbing on our on-site tower, something clicked with the group and a tall girl, bursting with energy, posted herself alongside me. Olga from Latvia then launched into a beautiful speech in Italian, asking the other children to listen to me, enjoy themselves and basically 'go with the flow'. My Italian's not great, but my teaching assistant confirmed what she had said and explained that all the children, after facing atrocities and fleeing their own countries, had been living in Italy for a few weeks or months. We therefore had a common language of Italian and Olga (obviously an extremely talented 11 year old linguist) was able to talk to me in broken English.

The rest of the day was a delight. Olga told me everyone's names, translating back to the others throughout in Italian. There were children with english-inspired names from Africa (Baby, Hope, Charity); Olga explained this concept to them. There were several Muhammeds or 'Mo s'; she explained the meaning of the name and gave them gentle nicknames so we could pick them out. As we began to climb, she assessed their strengths and fears and in a supportive way, challenged them to achieve and compete with each other. She seemed to have a true grasp of how to make every individual feel valued and was encouraging the group to survive through 'solidarity'.

My only tasks for the remainder of the session (putting aside checking ropes and harnesses) were to laugh at their translated jokes, wipe away a few tears and watch them in awe.

When they left I could only image what situations they were going back to in the middle of Oldham, far away from remaining families in devastated towns abroad, with parents hysterical with the need to protect them and set up a new life.

I often think of Olga and though I'm sure she's doing well, it reminds me in equal measures of the injustices in our world.

Thanks for reading! You know who I am..

Keeping it clean

Working in Reception is a laugh a minute.  

At the end of free flow in the morning the children tidy up and then come to the carpet...mainly so that I can check I've not lost any of them.  

They're all there, little expectant faces turned up, and I notice one of my little girls has something in her mouth.  I look a bit closer and she's clearly very engaged, turning it this way and that with her tongue.  I ask if she's got something in her mouth and she pulls out a snail! I ask her why she's sucking it...in retrospect I know this wasn't the most urgent thing to be done...she replies that she's washing it.  I ask her to go and pop it outside at which point she then removes a handful more from her pocket, beautifully clean, and asks if they have to go out too. We put the snails out, wash her hands, encourage her to rinse her mouth and seek advice.

At the end of school I chat to mum and tell her what has happened and she replied "oh yes, she used to do that all the time. I thought she'd moved onto worms now though!"

Skype yipe....!

Working during lockdown (not exactly a school story, but it is current)

Back to back zoom, skype, blah calls take their toll and one day was particularly busy, and I’d got up late, sprinted the short distance to the ‘office’ first thing in the morning and done without tea or toast. Despite lack of nourishment I bravely managed 4 hours of ‘meetings’. Come 1pm I staggered in a dazed state to the kitchen, felling slightly giddy with the excitement of a break. 

The sun was shining, the day was glorious and I made a cup of coffee and told the people I live with that I had another call at 1.20. So far so good until I spotted a patio layout dilemma and went out and began faffing around, arranging chairs and moving planters, I was thoroughly enjoying myself, relaxed and happy in the sunshi………..WHAT ABOUT YOUR CALL!!!!!.... 

Now I’m not known for speed, I took the stairs two at a time, sat on my chair while still travelling at speed, it’s an office chair with wheels, I began to travel at speed on the chair. Good thing I wasn’t logged into the meeting, they’d have seen me glide across screen from left to right with a terrified look on my face as I headed towards a cupboard. I picked myself up, logged onto skype and pretended I’d been there all the time but had had problems with my connection. ​

Work experience

This is one memorable moment from my first teaching job at a secondary school in Carlisle. I spent 3 years here teaching children who hadn't even visited the Lake District, let alone another country - so you can imagine how well German lessons went down. (Did you know that Carlisle has the highest proportion of people who are born and die in the same place?) 

Anyway, the kids were ok, but more importantly the staff were brilliant. You could sit anywhere in the staff room and feel welcome. PE teachers talked to English teachers. Linguists mingled with scientists. And on a Friday night we all walked round to the pub for a few beers. The head of house kept a box of wine in his bottom drawer for emergencies (you can see this was a little while ago now).

The deputy head, Tony, was an lovely bloke, and morning briefings were always enlivened with a story or two. One morning he updated us on how the year 10s were getting on in the work experience, included Darren (no idea actually what his name was anymore, but let's go with that). Darren was a pain in the proverbial: arrogant, mouthy, knew it all. He was doing work experience in a garage as a mechanic, and on his first day was sent off to the suppliers to get a part. A fallopian tube. Oh how we loved those mechanics. (I believe 'a long weight' is also a common request')

It was funnier if you were there, but hey, it still tickles me all these years later. Sadly my second school - an outstanding specimen, was nowhere near as friendly, no-one went to the staffroom as we all had our own subject offices in a new build. And definitely no wine in drawers :(

Stinking CPD

CPD at school can be brilliant. One area of professional development tends to provide more than its fair share of very poor CPD, and more often than not, it can be a cringingly, hilarious awful, pointless waste of time. Whilst I think well-being of staff and children should be at the very heart of what we do (particularly now), training for improving well being can do anything but improve your mood.

An absolute cracker was a staff meeting on essential oils. It was a twilight session, so longer than the normal staff meetings, towards the end of a spring term.

Teachers and TAs gathered in the hall and one of the senior leaders introduced the trainer for the evening. She began by working through a PowerPoint showing how she had been working with another local school to improve the mood and motivation of their children. A good start! She passed round swatches of paper with lemon essential oil on them and invited us to take a sniff. To be fair, it smelled lovely and much better than the old Victorian dusty hall we were all sitting in. Even if we did all feel a bit self conscious and silly sniffing paper and passing it round.

Then she started telling us about other oils and what they could do for us. Oils that would make us calmer, or happier. As we passed round yet more paper to sniff we agreed that they did have a different effect on us and of course all the old jokes about the various smells classrooms contain when populated by primary aged children started. The reception teacher, with a highly trained sense of smell, thought lemon might be a good antidote to the 'brown balls' she was finding this week in various places (Lego box, under the water tray) but had yet to discover who had left them there. A year 6 teacher thought Lavender would perhaps be strong enough to cut through the dense odour in her classroom after a vigorous PE session.

Then came the oil diffusers. Plug in machines to circulate the smell of the oil around the room. She put one on and by now we were beginning to feel a little queasy as sage, lavender, cinnamon and eucalyptus started to mix and fill the hall.

She then passed a whole range of oils round in their neat form. As all teachers know, you never give out a resource without explaining it first. I'd already put some peppermint oil on my fingers to rub on my temples to help the headache that the trainer had just said it would cure, when she added that this particular oil shouldn't be put near the eyes. As the tears began to run down my face, I could see why!

Next came extra special oils, and what they could do beyond making things smell nice, cheering you up a bit or just making the environment a bit more pleasant for everyone. I forget exactly which one would stop the child with ADHD from having a meltdown, or the one that would help children with dyslexia concentrate on reading because I had begun to switch off (and I was still trying to dry my tears).

However, we all heard her say which diseases oils could cure. Cancer was top of her list followed by a long list of other chronic illnesses. At this point we'd been in the hall for almost two hours and patience was wearing very thin. Most of us had mentally started to count the books that needed marking, or think about how we might adapt tomorrow Maths starter.

The final, cringing conclusion to the evening was the trainer giving out order forms for us to buy the diffusers (£35 each) and oils. With our own money. There then followed a rather hostile and lengthy silence when she asked who would be buying which oil and how many the school would be ordering. None. She actually asked again, saying the other school had bought a diffuser and oils for every classroom and then when it was clear we weren't going to buy any, turned her back to us and started to pack away noisily.

Some of us laughed it off as the funniest evening we'd had in a long time, others were resentful of two hours wasted. It certainly went down as a memorable session!

So, two hours of smelling stuff, being told it could cure cancer and then a heavy sales pitch wasn't the best professional development I had ever had. I bet there are plenty of other stinking CPD tales to share! What's yours?

A mis-spelt youth....

On Twitter someone posted an extract from a Times article, describing how respected Times journalist Philip Howard had once misspelt ‘misspelt’ in one of his columns. At once the years fell away, and I was an NQT in my first teaching appointment, in Hammersmith. I am omitting names, as I believe at least one of those involved may still be with us. This story will reveal its insights just as well, anonymously.

Someone's been sitting in my chair

As with all staff rooms, there were factions amongst the teaching staff. One faction, the liberals, was led by a much-respected Head of English, approaching retirement, with a brilliant mind and anarchic tendencies. I made the mistake, on one of my first days, of unknowingly sitting in HIS chair in the Staffroom. He glared at me, I didn’t know what was going on, then he just laughed and introduced himself, as I hurried leaped across to the next seat to permit him to regain his throne. He was one of the most loved and respected of teachers, and idolised by the sixth-form who admired both his brain and his anarchic nature. I remember that Mel Smith, preparing to go up to Oxford and already an impressive comedian, was a particular fan.

Another faction I would loosely classify as the bureaucrats. Those people, essential in every school, who organised things, carrying clipboards and folders at all times as spreadsheets hadn’t yet been invented. Who posted notices, popped missives in pigeon-holes, and generally made sure that the school ran efficiently.

Now just before I arrived at the school, one such bureaucrat, possessed of a particularly smooth and oily manner, had been appointed as Deputy Head. As he had only been Second in Geography, and was significantly younger than many of the better-known Heads of Department, this had apparently caused a certain kerfuffle in the staff room. He had already upset many of the senior staff, and this promotion, against their unwritten rules of seniority and popularity,  was the last straw.

The Head of English, with his crumpled tweed sports jacket and flannels, and mop of unruly white hair, was the natural adversary of the new Deputy Head, with Brylcreemed hair (Google it, kids) who invariably wore dark suit and tie, and an impeccably-ironed white shirt. However, each was polite with the other, and there were no open hostilities, though a fair amount of ‘behind the back’ comments allowed me to grasp the situation. Then came the day of the Great Notice-Board Humiliation.

A loud report

Each term we had to produce hand-written reports on each pupil that we taught. None of the ‘Could do better’ one-liners at this school… each child got half a page of A4 (or, in those days, more probably its Imperial equivalent) from each teacher. No technology was involved, and the constant rows about the location of folders, and anger with colleagues who took a particular form’s folder out of the ‘marking room’ had me terrified as a beginner of getting the ritual wrong.  And woe-betide anyone making a spelling mistake, as that meant you had to find all the other teachers for that pupil and persuade them to write their report again.

The Deputy Head loved to pop up his little hand-written notices daily, in the section of the staff room notice-board reserved for this purpose. Usually reminders of various expectations and deadlines to remind the staff of expectations and commitments. Always in a style guaranteed to irritate as much as inform.

Then, one day, he put up the notice about the exam folders. It had a distinctly hectoring tone, and rebuked staff about various aspects of the process, but in particular chastised them for the the number of mis-spellings that required correction. As I was reading the notice, early at the start of coffee-break, the Head of English joined me at the notice-board, and read the latest offering. He smiled, reached into his pocket, and produced a red pen. Circling, then crossing through,  the misspelt ‘mispelt’, he added a ‘See me’ above, and chuckling went to his usual seat.

Teacher after teacher came into the staff room, got their coffee, and went to the notice-board to join the giggling staff enjoying the modified notice. Then one of the bureaucrats arrived, saw the amendments, and scuttled out of the room towards the Deputy Head’s office. Minutes later the Deputy Head burst into the staff-room, red-faced and absolutely fuming, marched over to the notice-board, tore down the offending item and bore it back out of the staff room, without saying a word, or even looking anyone in the eye.  Nothing was said. Ever. But for me it was a master class in school politics, and a lesson in the essential importance of mavericks in educational establishments. The Head of English retired a few years later, and had a wonderful and most moving leaving do.

Uneasy lies the (Deputy) Head…

I myself had a rather strained relationship with the deputy over the next few years, never open hostilities, but I was always viewed with deep suspicion, as somewhat of a maverick. So, many years after I had left the school, I was most surprised to receive an invitation to the Deputy Head’s retirement. I hadn’t really kept in touch with the school, the young staff I had mixed with had all left, and the older ones had all retired too, so I was unsure why he would have invited me back for this event.

However I went along to a rather small-scale event, and had a civilised chat with him, and one or two of the other teachers that I recognised, who all now seemed to be at other schools. It gradually became clear that hardly any of the current staff were at this retirement party. This explained my invite – they had raided the school archives for ex-colleagues to invite. We were there to make the numbers up, and reduce the embarrassment, as it seemed almost the entire current staff had agreed to boycott the event. Which actually really saddened me. But apparently he had grown increasingly officious, and even more unpopular, as he grew older.

Lesson re-inforced. Bureaucrats may be essential to the running of a school, but if they adopt an officious manner they will not make themselves popular with their colleagues, and will have a crap retirement party. Thanks to this lesson, I eventually had several wonderful retirement celebrations when it was my time to leave my final place of work. Including a wonderful one up north organised by a fellow CampEder! At least mavericks tend to reap such rich, if probably undeserved, rewards.