Trial separation.

Notice how I haven't been blogging much about school lately? It's because I'm caught in a loop. Same shit, different day. So after 37 years, I've decided I need a trial separation. 

I've been agonising over this for months. In fact, it's the hardest decision I've ever made in my life. Getting evicted from 'our place' at school probably gave me the shove I needed.  So too did turning sixty. When you get there, dear reader, remember this: you still feel the same inside but everything around you makes you conscious of your age and time running out. Especially having a couple of dads die – mine and my husband's -  and a couple of eighty-something demented mums in aged care.  

Ah, normal vicissitudes notwithstanding I've had everything I've wanted in my teaching career. But it's really hard to give up something for which you intuitively prepared throughout your childhood. I liked the whole idea of teaching from the minute I became a student. Not a student teacher, a kid at school. School felt comfortable. I must have had some good teachers. Some weren't, but that's another story. 

A week ago, after much deliberation and an emotional pain in the core of my being - drama queen? - I called my principal and asked whether I could see him the next day regarding taking twelve months leave. After I made that call, I stood outside the green grocers in the local shopping centre hyperventilating. Because until I suddenly made the decision to make that call I had no idea I was going to leave.  

Despite having largely relished my teaching career, I'm generally under-stimulated by teaching year 8 and 9 students. Careful what you wish for. Back in 2011, I wanted an easier life – less responsibility and less marking. Thus I went part-time, relinquished English coordination – a role I was enjoying 'at the governor's pleasure' - and gave up teaching my regular allotment of two year 12 VCE classes. It was a great relief to reduce my full-time load to three days.  

Back to those year 8 and 9 students. I'm assuming you're all teachers reading this so you know how challenging class management can be at this level. Yes, I really like most of the students I teach but I teach about ten students over my three classes who are very difficult to manage. Of course they all have their own back story and we work with that as we try to educate. But really. Sheesh.  

Many middle school kids, even those without difficult home lives, are hard work. They are wrestling with hormones and drives they've never experienced before. They're emotionally charged, histrionic and will argue that black is white. (If they read that last line I'd be accused of being racist. I kid you not.) They argue and bicker amongst themselves and their allegiances are constantly shifting. Suddenly, almost overnight, they are sure they know everything, much more than any adult, particularly one of my gender and age. It is incredibly difficult  to educate these kids. But we do it, year after year. And when it's working – as it has been every day with one of my year 8 groups this year, it's magic. 

Then there are those adversarial -'oppositional defiant' - students. Usually it's girls in my classes. They're always there waiting to pounce on any perceived transgression. They can be downright rude, and when they gang up, holy mama, it takes all my wiles to ameliorate the situation. (I'm not bad at this. I can make them feel like I'm issuing a detention because I love them so much! You know the line: I care about you too much to let you think that your behaviour is in any way acceptable, and words to that effect.) One rude, bold student who's 'not afraid to express her opinion because she's going to be a lawyer and earn lots of money', can instantly destroy the learning of an entire class – sometimes for the rest of the year if it's not skilfully managed. (Ah, memories.) If one loses patience with this type of student, one is fucked. They can, and will do or say anything but one must keep calm and follow one's management plan, but by god they push the buttons. Some of them will grow out of this behaviour but some of these students will just grow into older ignoramuses, constantly convinced of their entitlement to their own opinion, loudly voiced, no matter how self-absorbed and ill-informed they are. You know the type. 

There's a lot of anxiety in a teacher's life, isn't there? You're constantly on stage and expected to perform. You're judged to within an inch of your existence. Anyone else have anxiety dreams at the start of a new term? You know the one. You're totally unprepared and you get caught out. Or is that just me? One of my recurring dreams involved variations on a scenario where Mr Incredible and I have been evicted from our classrooms and office. I've dreamt that our area has been trashed, bulldozed and reconfigured in some unsuitable way. Meanwhile I'm floundering around the campus facing the impossible goblin's riddle of trying to find my way home to my class, but my home is gone. 

Well, in real life on the last day of last term, my nightmare having eventuated, I'd packed my car with my swivel chair and boxes of stuff I thought I couldn't manage without. It was pouring rain and I was alone unpacking my car at 5pm, trying to make my new office – no heating or cooling but more space – look less bleak. There was something premonitory about it.  

First day of the new term, I didn't know where my period 1 class would meet. My nightmare again. Turns out my new classroom for six periods a week would be a windowless converted former locker bay. My challenging year 8s, in a classroom situated in what we call Siberia, went ape-shit in their new room with its different seating arrangement. One day I puzzled over the unusual absenteeism, marked the roll, wrote my goal – don't get me started – on the board, got twenty minutes into the lesson before about ten kids emerged bright eyed with hilarity from a back office where they'd secreted themselves.  (Everyone's a winner: I enjoyed the twenty minutes without them.)

But we all got used to it and life went on. On the up side, I probably walk an extra k a day getting around the campus. On top of my cycling commute to and from school that's a good work out. 

Now when I'm up at briefing in the main staffroom, I look out through the windows at my fenced off, former haven standing forlornly amidst the rubble incurred during a major school renovation. My nightmare realised. Having coped with that change I'm hoping I'll cope even more easily with a trial separation from teaching. 

I'm interested to find out who I will be if I'm not a teacher.  

Slam poetry. And the other stuff.

Nearly finished week three of term one now. It's challenging, the start of the school year, isn't it?

If you're lucky you score a group of amenable students who know you and already approve. You just roll happily with it. This is me this year with my year 10s given all those teething battles were played out back in 2010. Our first session was an emotional reuion. Even teared up a bit seeing how they'd grown. They were all smiles and sheepish laughter as they automatically sat in their year 8 'seating plan'. 

In a big school like mine - nearly 1200 students - you can easily go for a year without seeing any of your former students. It was great to see my year 10s and I look forward to watching them develop as the year progresses.

And then there's that other class; amongst the 25 students there are five fourteen year old boys giving me what for, yelling over me in a  constant barrage of testosterone-fuelled insolence. These lads are IN MY FACE and DID YOU SEE THAT? SHE'S PICKEN ON ME! WHY ARE YOU PICKEN ON ME?? They're chesting up to me, anything to disrupt, to draw my attention, to grab an opportunity to assert themselves over me. My adrenal gland's been getting a bit of a workout. Have to remember to breathe; act angry before I'm really angry. Be patient, tolerant, understanding. This isn't about me, I'm just generic 'old female teacher' now.

Leap on those opportunities to praise, to build self-esteem like a seagull on a cliched chip. Oh so many complex personalities to fathom before it subsides. Well, usually.

My other year 9 class has been a gift; 25 bright, eager students who are open to possibility so why not try out some slam poetry? I attended a VATE conference session last year on slam poetry. (Thanks, Anthony Young @ProffPoet) I showed the students some examples of other students performing slam poetry - a YouTube search was helpful here. The students were a tad skeptical but they gave it a go. I gave them a list of possible topics - places such as the city, the beach, holidays and so on, and emotions that they could write about. As per Anthony's instructions I got them to work in groups as a strategy to help them to overcome their performance anxiety.

I used Anthony's formula for constructing their poem. Poems had to contain a metaphor, an anecdote, a repeated line, a really long line and a really short line. They brainstormed their ideas individually then collaborated with other group members. I darted around the class offering suggestions and encouragement, as you do when you're the alleged teacher.

The students, bless them, ran with it. Today they presented. It was wonderful and they knew it as they savoured the power of their own and each other's words. 

If you haven't given slam poetry a try, it's worth doing. The kids loved it and so did I.

Walking target: an apple for the teacher

All teaching staff have been issued with fluoro vests. These must be worn when one is on yard duty. I've already written about yard duty/aka fruit watch. Well, I'm on duty in the same area this year

'Prin Class', as it likes to be known, has added to our pleasure by increasing our visibility whilst we're on patrol. Suppose this helps the friend of the kid who's having an anaphylactic reaction to find me in a crowd.
Teachers do compulsory anaphylaxis training annually. A good thing. As a parent, I'd want to know that teachers knew first aid in this event. I'm not knocking it.

But as a teacher on duty, I'm highly visible anyway, given I'm in my mid-fifties - albeit with dyed hair. Perhaps I could be mistaken for a dumpy, jowly girl with a dowager's hump? Oh, hang on. I'm not wearing a school uniform. I'm possibly going to be visible as I amble around the yard with my tongs and beatific smile. As I've previously written, kids easily find me when they want someone to hide behind when another kid's chasing them.

Yesterday I experienced my second real assault, in 32 years of teaching. I'm naming the beast. It was an assault. I may be mistaken, but I think my fluoro vest turned me into a target. As I walked through my little slice of the danger zone I was pelted, at close range and with considerable force, by a 'projectile'. I'm reluctant to say it was a piece of fruit cos it sounds so freaking benign and ridiculous.

That apple for the teacher really hurt, so much so that tears sprouted on impact. I turned to see who'd thrown it but just faced a row of hefty 'innocent' year 10 boys, none of whom I teach. Had I known them, it wouldn't have happened.

I was unable to take any retributive action against the culprit, who simply had the delight of seeing he'd hit his target and that his target was really angry and hurt. What a hero.

I went in search of a fluoro vested colleague. Lucky he was wearing it cos I'd never have identified him by the business attire, tongs - de rigueur for prin class on duty - and sun glinting off his bald pate.

He bawled out all the kids in the area, but basically they got away with it. Trouble is, you can't identify your assailant (and issue a 5 day suspension) when it hits you from behind. And of course, none of the kids saw anything.

I felt like packing in teaching. Had I driven to school, instead of cycling, I would have taken the rest of the day off. I was shaky and profoundly hurt by the incident. In my time I've stepped between warring boys and grabbed them by the shirt-fronts, narrowly avoiding being clouted in the process. But that's not about me. I don't think yesterday's incident was particularly about me either. I was just 'generic teacher'.

My assault yesterday was about disrespect. Made it really hard for me to teach my year 9s and 10s for the next two lessons. But I'm okay now. I got to document it on Edusafe, so everything's all right, isn't it? I've got my day off to get over it.

Fruit watch. Another side of secondary teaching.

Best to keep on the move on yard duty, twenty-five minutes of which I endure each week.  (Full-time teachers get more.)  Even better to grab some barbecue tongs and a bucket and pick up kids' rubbish.  The time goes more quickly, the yard gets cleaned up and I can avoid engaging too closely with some of the bestial behaviour one is sure to encounter on one's tour.

But on this particular Friday, fate had other plans for me.

Morning briefing.
"Teachers on yard duty in Zone A need to be particularly vigilant.  Especially at recess.  We've had some serious fruit throwing incidents."  That's the principal speaking.  He does a spoonerism on fruit-throwing and laughs at his tongue trip.  It is hard to say fruit-throwing fast.

Guess who's on yard duty in Zone A at recess.

I'm to plant myself amongst the picnic tables and watch for rogue Year 10 fruit throwers.  Great.  Standing still on yard duty invites confrontation with randoms: kids who don't know me and don't care that I Am A Respected Former VCE English Guru and Coordinator.  Kids will generally utilise me as they see fit.

On good days, especially when the sun's shining, some kids will bail me up for the simple pleasure of a catch up.  I love that.

Other days, I can be a prop in whatever boisterous game they're playing.

"Miss! Miss! Did you see what he did?" they cry as they climb up each other.  I'm also 'barley'; the safety zone.  If a kid's chasing you, run behind 'Miss'; dodge behind her, grab her by her hips and whip her around, your human shield preventing your assailant from catching you.  That's me.  Buffer zone.  No matter that buffer zone is a 56 year old woman.

That's all good; part of what I signed on for back in 1974 when I accepted my studentship and guarantee of three years work in one of our state secondary schools. Thirty-two years later...

But on this particular TGIF, I am stuck guarding Zone A, at recess. I'm eating an apple.  Several teachers scurry by on their way to the refuge of the staff room.  "Now don't throw that apple core!"   They all say words to that effect; wagging fingers.  Hilarious. 

I'm already attracting student attention.  A couple of big boys gawp at me and laugh.  I resist flipping them the bird.

My problem? I can't ignore all the blatant littering going on around me when there are three big green bins in the immediate area.

Girls are generally more discreet than boys.  Girls gather in groups on the very expensive and quite aesthetically pleasing fake lawn. (Seriously, this stuff works.)

They cross their ankles and lower themselves effortlessly to the ground as thirteen year old girls are wont to do.  Some hands are thrust deep into those little multipack snack bags.  They blithely drop empty bags by their sides and let the breeze have them.  Or they stand simultaneously and walk away, leaving a circle of tetra packs, orange peel, half eaten apples and sandwiches.

"Girls!  Pop your rubbish in the bin, thanks!"  I have to shout over school yard noise but my tone is polite.
"That's not ours.  It was there when we got here." They're all stunned by my rude accusation.  "Is she serious??  Oh my god!!  Get a life!!"
"Put it in the bin! Now!"

They sullenly comply, casting me filthy looks, muttering.

How dare I demand that they put their own rubbish in the bin?  Clearly I'm deranged and a Big Bitch to boot.

If I have somehow communicated that this school yard interaction is benign, it's not.  You have to really stand your ground.  Doesn't affect everyone like this, but my little heart will be thudding in my chest.  It's a battle of wills.  Yes, I know.  I could just ignore it, and often I do.  But yesterday I was stuck there.

That was when a portly boy strolled down the steps.  He threw the lid of his icecream cup vaguely towards the bin.  Suppose I should have just given him credit for trying and picked it up myself.  But I didn't.

"You missed," I say.  Well, he's had eye contact with the hapless teacher on fruit watch.  What could I do?  "Go back and put it in the bin."

He keeps swaggering towards his group of mates, all the time, eye-balling me.

I step towards him to block his path.  "You can either pick up your own rubbish, or you can clean up this whole area."

Reluctantly he backs up. leans down and hurls the lid into bin, snarling at me now.  He stomps to his group who've been watching the show, which unfortunately must go on.  He scoops a huge spoonful of icecream and plops it onto the fake lawn. 

"Clean it up."
"No."  He's huge; towers over me.  The crowd closes around me and Mr Plop, who continues to defy me. 

My hackles rise as I'm  taunted by twelve year olds, none of whom I can put a name to.  My arms are out now, clearing a space around me.  I order them off.

"Coordinator's office.  Now."  Mr Plop stands his ground.  I reach behind him and steer him in the appropriate direction.
"Get your hands off me!" this gruff giant threatens.
"Yeah, what are you going to do?"

Without further physical contact I barrel the kid along the gauntlet of year 7s who part in front of him, with his melting strawberry swirl in one hand and his plastic spoon in the other.

He sits outside the coordinator's office and I feel ridiculous explaining the situation to the twenty-something male coordinator - who's in his second year of teaching, BTW, but, you know, he's the Year 7 coordinator; he has power - and a shitload of work that he's welcome to.

Mr Plop, true to form, denies any transgression.
"So you're calling me a liar?" I demand.
"Yes," he sneers.
"Leave it with me," says my young champion. 

I trail off back to fruit watch, dragging my dignity behind me.  Definitely didn't win that one.

Bet Mr Plop is in my class next year.

First world problems.

A Glut of Junior Students

Making a big production number of it, I walk to the whiteboard.  Detention, I write on the top right hand corner.  The ruckus continues.  Raising my eyebrows in mock surprise at the foolishness of youth, I slowly underline the word; turn to face the class.  I quietly exude the appearance of calm.  Some students nudge other kids to get them to stop whatever they’re doing.  ‘SHADDUP!!!’ someone yells, adding to the racket.  After about a minute the group settles.  I start to mark the roll.  Someone, I can’t tell who, ‘blows a raspberry’.  Raucous laughter.  I wait.  I return to the whiteboard with my marker. 2 mins, I write under Detention.  To no effect.

‘I will keep certain people in at recess for fifteen minutes,’ I pronounce. 

Brief silence.  Then dramatic nose-covering.  Girls have pulled the fronts of their dresses over their noses and mouths.  Boys roar with laughter; fall off their chairs.

‘P-PHWAWWW!’  Don’t know how to spell that sound people make when they’re exaggerating how they feel  because someone’s farted. 

And someone had.  It was snaking its tendrils right out to me at the front.  Hard to quell that sort of disruption when you don’t know any of the students.

Giving up on settling the class, I turn to write the absent teacher’s instructions on the board.  Some girls start mocking my name.  Can’t tell who.  Try not to emotionally engage with them.  If I follow my ‘discipline plan’, I’ll cope.  Five minutes later I evict a belligerent girl who’s screaming at me.  Fifteen attempts at the ‘broken record’ technique – acknowledge the kid’s grievance then repeat assertive statement – failed to achieve anything.  Clearly, she hadn’t read the book

For the next sixty minutes, the first fifteen having been wasted, I pace the room, assisting here and there – it’s a science lesson on light - and putting out ‘spot fires’.  I have a heightened sense of anxiety for the duration.

At recess, I detain four students.  I release one because she’s threatening to physically assault one of the other detainees, who’s called her a lesbian.

Twice each day since early November, this has been my reality.. 

A glut of junior school students.  Not a bad collective noun for thirteen year olds one doesn’t know with whom one must interact.  What I’ve failed to capture in the above scenario is the abject rudeness of these students.  They are nasty.  They treat me like shit.  And they don’t even know me.  This seems to be the default setting for so many teenagers these days.

Why the glut?  I taught two year 12 classes.  When they finished in November, the reward for all that extra-curricular preparation and marking is that one takes replacement classes.  Fair enough.  Junior and middle school teachers are still teaching and I’m swanning off. 

When I tell non-teachers about replacements/extras/supply teaching they say things like ‘they wouldn’t do that to me’ or, ‘if you don’t like it get another job.’  

And then I get defensive.  Secondary teaching has been hard work, but mostly a great career.  Or has it?  It’s been manic, occasionally depressing, regularly bowel twistingly boring – that’s meetings – and joyous.  A bit Ground Hog Day.  I hope I’m still learning what I need to know.

Next year I’ve swapped my two year 12s for two year 8s. 

Dropping the C bomb

Don’t know much about Mireille, a girl in my year 7 Creative Writing class, but thirteen years ago, someone thought to give her a pretty name.  Her mother, perhaps.  Her mother who now, for whatever reason, lives on the other side of the country.

Mireille is short, physically mature and overweight.  Her permed bleached blonde hair hangs kinkily around her face and shoulders.  There’s a darker row at the parting where the roots are growing out.  Her facial features are regular, and could be considered attractive, if you catch her at the right time.  When she’s not sneering at you.

Mireille is at that point in the discipline handbooks where the ‘goal of her behaviour’ is revenge.  Which translates into doing whatever the hell she wants.

That’s partly why she called me the c word today.  (Weird.  I can’t even bring myself to type it here, although I typed it out in the obligatory discipline report.)  She said it under her breath, but I heard, and I couldn’t let that one go.  Now she’s on a two day suspension.  Dad’s been advised to find her another school because she’s just this side of expulsion.  Very serious.  Not my fault that she’s now at the expulsion stage.  Swearing at me was just the last straw. 

Mireille arrived late to class, ‘announcing’ herself by wearing a livid red cardigan, against the strict uniform rules of the school.

‘But it’s co-old!’ she declaimed, for the benefit of the other twenty-four students, when I asked her to remove it.  School rules require a note, or a detention for uniform transgressions.  ‘I didn’t have anything else to we-ar.’  A loud affronted whine. ‘I stayed at my friend’s last night, orright!’

It wasn’t cold, but I didn’t want to have that centre stage fight over something I didn’t really care about.  I decided to let it go and didn’t issue a detention.  She wouldn’t have cared anyway and probably already had one with a different teacher.

Mireille is fearless, confrontational and powerful.  She has no respect for my teaching status.  ‘I hate all teachers,’ she brags.  It's as if she has no decent, ‘better’ nature to appeal to.  I’ve goaded her into working occasionally but it’s been a waste of time praising or encouraging her.  She wants to be bad; she thrives on disrupting.

Once she wrote a terrific piece.  She’s a natural.  Surprisingly neat – beautiful, careful handwriting, each paragraph in a different colour pen.  Error free.  She’d nailed the writing task, albeit in an abbreviated way.  Of course, eager to encourage her, I was like a seagull on a chip.  Great writing; terrific details, I wrote on her work. Can’t wait to read what happens next!  

‘Nothing happens.  It’s finished.  Why should I bother writing more?  I know how to write already.  I’m really clever.’  This is yelled in my face, in response to my exhortations that she should keep writing because she’s good at it.  And watching her while she wrote it, it was obvious that she enjoyed writing.

‘I don’t want to learn.  Why would I want to be a goody-goody like them?’ She waves a hand towards a row of neat, enthusiastic, well-behaved students.  ‘It’s more fun being bad.’ She’s unafraid of offending them, or anyone

Once she turned up to school with her school skirt hitched up under her large breasts, her school shirt splayed open and knotted at the midriff to showcase her black lace bra.  Like a hooker, really. 

It hasn’t been terrible having Mireille in my class.  Just avoid cornering her; avoid the fight, which she’d inevitably win because she’s no holds barred, like many students these days.

But yesterday, this late in the year, I was under pressure to get the students to complete their ‘Individual Learning Plans’; to reflect on their personal learning goals – what a joke, but that’s another story.  The kids were a bit loud and unfocused as I moved around the room trying to get the job done.

‘I haven’t got any goals.’ Mireille was loud and ostentatious, boldly defying the task, summoning her audience.  Again I decided it wasn’t worth it.  The ILPs are a crock anyway.  So what if she doesn’t have one in her report?  Move on.  There were books she could read but she was happily drawing love hearts and silly pictures with a felt pen.  As long as she wasn’t drawing on the desk I was happy to let it slide.  Twenty-four other students needed my attention, including several other ‘discipline problems’.

Towards the end of the 75 minute period, Mireille was flagrantly breaking rules.  Sharing headphones with another student, she was doing some exaggerated dancing motions, hands in the air, fingers twirling.  Treating me like a fool.  Challenging.  I walked up behind her and her hapless, half-asleep side-kick and plucked the headphones out of their ears.

Mireille, outraged, turned in her seat.  ‘You have no right to touch my property!  If you’ve broken them, I’m suing you!’  This was screamed at me.

‘Hand over the phone, Mireille.’  My voice was calm, assertive.

‘It’s not a phone.  It’s an ipod.’  One to Mireille, but stand back, for I am an expert in the ‘broken record’ technique.  (Thanks, Lee Kantor.)

‘I hear what you’re saying, but hand it over.’

‘No, it’s brand new, you can’t take it.’  She’d zipped it into her uniform pocket.

‘Okay, it’s new, but hand it over.’  Reluctantly she surrendered it.  Feeling pleased that she responded to my third request, I put the device in my office drawer.  She was furious and let fly with the c bomb.

If only she’d called me a bitch.  Could have let that one go through.  Hate my part in this sorry mess which seems so pathetic written down, twenty-four hours later.