DANCING ON THE TABLES - PART 3
EMBARRASSING TIMES
During my teaching career, I was fairly immune to embarrassment: if things went wrong, I was usually able to laugh and joke about it and, more importantly, get away with it. There have been the odd occasions though, when I wanted to just slip away quietly. One Christmas, our school choir was invited to sing at an event being held in the local leisure centre. All the town’s dignitaries would be there and we practiced long and hard to ensure that we did ourselves proud. The concert was to be held during the first week of the Christmas holidays and when, on the last day of term, one of the organisers rang me up to ask if one of the children could do a reading, I was faced with a dilemma. I would have to approach someone to do this and then have absolutely no control over the situation. One of the eight year olds in my class was quite a decent reader and I knew her mother was a fervent evangelical Christian. The solution presented itself because surely, mum would coach her daughter with what turned out to be quite a tricky biblical passage. It was the best I could do in the circumstances, so I wrote a note to the mother and went through the passage with the child. A few days later we all assembled in the leisure centre for the Christmas festivities. The choir did an excellent job and I was rightly proud of them. Then my reader came forward to relate the story of the shepherd on the hillside seeing the angels and heading off to find the baby Jesus. They hadn’t chosen one of the more modern translations of the bible and so the passage she had to read was full of archaic words. She began confidently enough but pretty soon began to stumble. The account was punctuated with errs and ums and plenty of sounding words out. It quickly became obvious that the mother, evangelical Christian or not, had made absolutely no attempt to support her daughter who was now struggling every third word. I felt so uncomfortable for her and for the reputation of our school. Finally the ordeal was over and she retook her seat with the rest of the choir. It was not one of my better moments.
Maybe the occasion got to her. It certainly did to George, Henry and Lydia who all took part in something called the Big Toe Radio Show. It was our third year of taking part in this programme which was broadcast on the now defunct BBC7. We would take youngsters on the train down to London to a recording studio in Broadcasting House. The presenters wanted children who would discuss their love of books and react to the events going on during the recording. The first couple of years, my articulate children did themselves proud and those listening told us how well they'd come across. Year three was a different proposition. George, Henry and Lydia all had a lot to say for themselves in school, but put them in a radio studio and they became reticent, mumbling their answers when they could be bothered to give any. I apologetically collected the children at the end of the session and, feeling rather embarrassed, began our journey home. We found ourselves in the quiet zone of an Inter-City train full of tired businessmen and women commuting home – and the nightmare began. Their joyful exuberance, completely absent during the show's recording, returned in bucket loads. George was the worst, pulling faces, making rude comments, telling jokes. I tried all my best 'teacher's not happy' looks with him but whenever I managed to silence the little devil, one or both of the other children would start giggling. I'd turn to whisper to them and off would go George again. My usual array of sanctions was useless: I could hardly send George out to stand in the corridor or keep him in once the train arrived. I just issued threats about the dire consequences of his actions when we got back to school the next day. It was the longest train journey of my life.
The earliest embarrassment of my teaching career came when I was student. I had a five-week teaching practice at a lovely school on the edge of the city where I lived. I found teaching came naturally and, apart from wanting to throw Sally out of the window, things ran smoothly until the PTA Music Hall. By then the staff had discovered my piano playing abilities and it was suggested that I accompany one of the acts. In retrospect, it was an accident waiting to happen. Two of the dads were going to dress in drag, tell a few jokes and then do a striptease down to some frilly underwear. I was to provide the musical accompaniment with a rendition of 'The Stripper'. It might have gone as planned, had the previous act not been so dreadful. One of the mothers was giving a rendition of a poem which featured a family trying to blow a candle out. Using a lit candle, she attempted to show how the person whose mouth only opened on the right hand side couldn't blow out the flame, and neither could the one whose mouth only opened on the left. However, each time she demonstrated their inability to extinguish the flame, she actually blew it out. There then followed a hiatus as the candle had to be relit. After what should have been six unsuccessful attempts, the candle had gone out six times and she had long overrun her time slot. The drag artists had used this extra time wisely, to consume increasing amounts of alcohol so that when they finally arrived on stage, they had added a number of additional jokes to their repertoire. Unfortunately, the jokes were rather risqué and after their third rendition the deputy head, standing in the wings, motioned for me to start playing. I began but immediately the drag artists turned on me and told me to stop. I stopped. The jokes continued, the audience shifting uneasily in their seats as the subject matter beame more and more distasteful. Again the deputy signalled for me to play. Again I started and again the men waved me to stop. Finally, with the whole performance collapsing around them, I started playing again and this time kept on to the end, leaving the stage determined not to do anything like that ever again.
These were exactly the same sentiments I expressed to staff many years later during my first headship. I was in charge of a village school and, as May Day approached, the staff started telling me about the wonderful maypole celebrations they had every year. Apparently, parents were invited in and each class did their own little dance around the maypole. It sounded lovely. At my previous school we had done something similar that I would organise for the summer fair. I'd chose sixteen of the oldest children and we would practice at lunchtimes until we had perfected a range of intricate dances that would see the ribbons woven into ever more complex patterns, the spider’s web being the pinnacle of our performance. I should have been suspicious when, with a few days to go, I had neither seen any dancing nor heard any folk music. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even seen the maypole. Whenever I tentatively questioned this, I was reassured that all would be well on the day. I arrived at school on the first of May with some trepidation but my fears were somewhat allayed by the sight of the maypole in the middle of the playground. The caretaker had put rows of chairs around the edge – we were expecting a big crowd. At the prescribed time, the first class, children aged five and six, trooped out in front of the parents and took up their ribbons. Their teacher put on the music and they turned and bowed to each other. I had been worrying in vain. For about ten seconds all went perfectly well as the children followed each other round in a circle, the ribbons ballooning out, the children skipping merrily And then things began to go wrong. As soon as the children made any attempt to weave, the ribbons quickly became entwined in ways that defied the laws of nature. After another ten seconds the order was given to stop, the music was turned off and the teacher along with two teaching assistants began the job of untangling the mess the children had created. This stage of the performance lasted a good five minutes and then the children bowed and skipped off to the improbable applause of the watching crowd. I was horrified but realised that, as these were the very youngest children, subsequent performances could not possibly be as bad. They were. If anything, the gung ho attitude of the older children created even more impressive knots that took much longer to disentangle. Eventually it was all over and as the last class trotted off, in an attempt to save some face with the parents, I invited them to have a go. Thankfully, they were every bit as inept as the children had been and that made me feel a bit better. The next day we met for a morning briefing. I thanked the staff for their efforts the day before and informed them that under no circumstances would we ever be repeating the May Day maypole dancing.
If these embarrassments were at the hands of others, sometimes I was solely to blame. I had a wonderful governor at my last school who was always looking for ways to help. One day, a few weeks before Christmas, he popped into my office to show me a calendar that his grandchildren’s school had produced. Each page featured drawings the children had done of themselves with the youngest children decorating January and the oldest December. He wondered if our Parent Teacher Association might like to do something similar: the calendars were sold to parents, grandparents and friends with the money going to fund those little extras that schools value so much. I thanked him and took the calendar along to the next PTA meeting. As it was, they had already planned a fundraiser for that term but decided to work on a calendar the following year. I took the calendar back to my room and put it on a pile of things to deal with, intending to give it back to the governor, but as time passed and he never asked for it, it moved its way down the pile until, one day during a blitz on the detritus accumulated on my desk, I discovered it and deposited it in the bin.
The very next day, the governor popped his head around my door and asked if I had taken the calendar to the PTA. I informed him of their decision and, happy to have helped, he finished with, “I’m pleased they like the idea. Can I have the calendar back please?”
“Ah,” I replied, thinking on my feet, “One of the PTA members still has it but I’ll get it back for you for tonight’s governors’ meeting.” Panic now set in. Was the calendar still in the bins or had they collected the rubbish already? There was only one way to find out. I crept out of the school through the caretaker’s door and made my way to the area where the bins were kept. There were four giant bins, one of which belonged to the playgroup that used a building next door. I released the brake on the first bin and pulled it onto the car park. Relief – they were still full, but as I delved into the bin I discovered that I’d chosen the playgroup’s bin first and found myself delving through a mass of soiled nappies. Withdrawing my hands quickly, I maneuvered the bin back into place, secured the brake and removed the next one. There is a law that states, if you’re looking for something then it will be in the last place you look. By bin number 4, I was getting pretty fed up, but after removing some used exercise books, some discarded drawings and plenty of scrumpled up tissues, I came upon the calendar. I pulled it out, a little crumpled and slightly marked, but nothing that a bit of wiping and pressing wouldn’t sort out. I replaced the contents of the bin and wheeled it back into its place. Then turning triumphantly, I gave a little punch in the air and set off back to my office. Pretty soon, the calendar was almost back to the pristine condition it had been when the governor had given it to me, or rather had lent it to me.
I settled down to do some work in my office, happy that a crisis had been averted but after a few minutes, I became aware of a commotion in the administration office next door. Whenever I heard raised voices, I was concerned and so I popped into the office to see what was going on. I found my two office staff with one of my teaching assistants. The teaching assistant looked fairly cross but I didn’t interrupt at this stage; better to find out what was going on and then see if I could help resolve it. At this point, the CCTV monitor which had been showing eight small live shots from around the school, turned into one big picture and I noticed my office manager was fast forwarding the tape. Then I noticed that the picture was from the camera overlooking the car park. There, centre stage, were four large rubbish bins. As we all watched, a figure appeared on the screen and the office manager slowed the tape down to normal speed. I had a sense of foreboding. Quiet sniggering began as they recognised the man walking across to the bins, looking furtively all around. The sniggering became giggles as they watched me, in turn, remove each bin from where they were stored and then start sorting through the contents. Even the teaching assistant now had a smile on her face. The final shots were of me pushing the bin back into place, turning and thrusting a fist of triumph into the air. However, it became apparent that I had forgotten one tiny detail: to secure the brake on the bin. As I walked back into school, calendar in hand, smile on my face, the bin began travelling in the opposite direction, down the slope of the car park and into the teaching assistant’s car. As the office descended into fits of laughter, I chose to make an exit, quietly. Fortunately, no damage had been done to the car, just to my reputation.
THOSE WONDERFUL CREATURES CALLED CHILDREN
There are a number of books written that contain the amusing things children sometimes say or the howlers they make in exams. If I’d have written down what had been said at the time, I’d probably have enough for a small tome myself, but as soon as they’d been repeated and we’d all had a laugh, they were forgotten. Only two instances remain in my memory. The first was a seven year old taking the tests that are required at the end of year 2. Sometimes, questions had two marks for the correct answer and one if the answer was wrong but the calculation was a sensible method. These questions would be accompanied by a box with the instructions, "Show your working out." Elliot took this literally and drew a very nice picture of himself, sitting doing the test, working the question out. The other instance happened on a residential visit in Derbyshire. As we traipsed up a steep hillside, one of the ten year old boys decided he had had enough and sat down. “Come along Ron,” I said, “You can’t stop there. We’ve another five miles to go.”
“I’m not going any further,” was his response.
“You’re going to have to, I’m afraid,” I replied, “But it will soon be downhill, just a bit more up to go.”
“I’m not going,” he repeated and he looked at me defiantly as if to say, “Make me!” Ron was a strange child. For three years, he’d been the perfect pupil and then, in his final year with us, he turned into a little demon. I suspect the reason came from his life outside of school as everything in school remained the same as it always had been for him. I knew how stubborn he could be and so I called for everyone to take a break and then got to work trying to persuade him that being alone on a Derbyshire hillside all night would not be a pleasant experience. I didn’t tell him there was no way I could leave him there but I was working out my options. Eventually, probably because he’d got his breath back and his friends were starting to give him looks, fed up with hanging around and wanting to get back to playing table football at the youth hostel we were staying in, Ron conceded defeat and got to his feet. As we continued our walk, one of the girls sidled up beside me.
“You’re very patient,” she said. “My mother always says, ‘Patience is a virgin!’” I suspected mother didn’t quite say this but having to explain the difference was not something I wanted to get into. A postscript to this story: Ron spent a fair amount of his final year visiting my office to explain his behaviour. He had an answer to everything and I was often at my wits end as to how to deal with him. It was some relief when the last day of term finally arrived and we saw our leavers off. When I returned to my office, I found a letter on my desk. It said: Sorry I’ve been such a pain this year, and was signed Ron. I was both touched and also surprised by his self-awareness. It would appear that he knew he was being totally unreasonable and making my life difficult. I was almost sorry that he had left – almost.
I encountered a different reaction from Stephen. It was my first Christmas as headteacher at the school and I discovered that the previous head used to send every child a Christmas card. I was still in the ‘make a good impression’ period and decided to continue the tradition whilst grumbling at home as I spent a complete evening writing inspiring messages in over a hundred cards. The next day, I put them in the school’s postbox for some of the older children to sort and deliver. Stephen was another child who had an interesting attitude to the rules and that lunchtime he was sent to my office. He got a good telling off and missed the rest of his free time. Perhaps I had overreacted or maybe he was innocent because he appeared to carry a sense of injustice with him throughout the afternoon, not that I was aware of this until he knocked on my door at home time. I told him to come in and, looking me straight in the eyes, he plonked the card I’d sent him down on my desk. “I won't be wanting this, thank you,” he said. My reaction was one of surprise, but before I could speak, he turned and left the room. So, for telling him off, I'd had my card returned. That told me.
I was determined, once I became a headteacher, that I would continue to take on a teaching responsibility, both to keep my hand in and also to give me credibility when talking to other teachers. One way to do this was to take the more able mathematicians in the oldest class once a week for an enrichment session. This comprised me setting them various mathematical challenges, introducing weird and wonderful concepts and pushing them to the limits of their thinking. I loved it and so did they. Of course, when the dreaded SATs neared on the horizon, all this was jettisoned for extra revision much to everyone's disgust but I still managed to make the sessions fun and enjoyable. Whilst all the children I taught in these sessions were of above average ability in maths, a few were gifted and the conversations we had were stimulating. One particular child called Hope was probably the most talented mathematician I encountered in my career. She absorbed new ideas effortlessly and was able to apply them with ease. In one lesson, I had set the children a challenge, to discover how many combinations were possible through arranging a set of shapes and whilst everyone was busy working away on this, Hope and I began a discussion about one particular shape. I played devil's advocate, opposing her views and postulating alternative positions to which she responded. It was a highly logical discourse with neither of us prepared to give ground. Slowly, the other children in the group stopped what they were doing to observe this verbal clash. Later, one of them told her mother, a governor, how rude Hope had been to me. What they perceived as insolence was actually a brilliant mind holding to their theory and rebutting arguments against it. Just so we're clear, mine was not the brilliant mind.
Children can sometimes be insensitive. You’d think that, given the positive relationships you build up with them and the care you show whenever any of them gets hurt, there would be some sort of reciprocal arrangement. Not a bit of it. You bang your head – they laugh at you; you fall over – they fall about in fits of giggles. It was one of things that really irritated me. And of course, they are big sneaks. I was only in week three of my teaching career when, whilst giving the children the benefit of my words of wisdom, I leant on one of the windows in my mobile classroom. There was an ominous snap and, when I turned around, a crack was now running from top to bottom of the huge pane of glass. I was distraught, and how did the children react? “You’ll have to go and tell the headteacher,” was their reaction, “He’ll probably be ever so cross.” Well, thanks for your support, children.
Listening to children is one of the ways you can find out what they’ve learned and their views and attitudes. In preparation for Ofsted inspections, we were encouraged to carry out questionnaires with both parents and children. The parents’ replies were, for the most part, incredibly supportive and encouraging, something the inspectors mentioned when they looked at the results and spoke to parents in the playground. I did have one parent who handed her questionnaire in late and when I saw it, I was horrified. Every single statement where the majority of parents had put, ‘strongly agree’, she had marked, ‘ strongly disagree.” Fortunately, my office staff knew whose questionnaire it was, so I got straight on the phone and began by saying, “You’re obviously not very happy with us.” In fact, as we discussed a couple of issues in my office later in the day, she was perfectly happy with everything except these two issues and I was able to explain them more carefully and allay her fears. She was just in a bit of a mood when she filled the form in.
The children’s responses to a different set of questions were also broadly positive until you reached: Do you feel safe in school? This always seemed to buck the trend and come out strongly negative. Not only was this not a great thing to share with inspectors, but one that concerned us as staff because it was vital that children felt safe. It also went against all the evidence we saw on a daily basis; children wanting to come to school; children enjoying their lessons; children having fun in their learning. One year, I decided to add a section after the question where they could list the things that made them feel unsafe. This was quite a revelation. Top of the list were nettles! When we’d had the grounds developed, the areas at the far end of the field were left to be reclaimed by nature. We had some large bushes there where the children could make dens and, over time, they trod down a network of pathways where they could play all kinds of games. Part of letting things return to nature is that you have no control over the wild flowers that will grow there. It would be lovely if they were all pretty dandelions, poppies and daisies but, inevitably, there will be brambles, thistles and nettles. I refused to have them cut down, my attitude being: if you don’t like them, don’t go there. Apparently the nettles made them feel unsafe. Another response that year focused on a man who’d once walked past the school. Most likely he was just a passer by but he somehow looked a bit suspicious, never mind that he was separated from the children by an eight foot high fence with dinner ladies supervising and it only happened the once, it made them feel unsafe! I despaired. Finally there was the ‘Big Storm.’
The ‘Big Storm’ happened one afternoon during the autumn term. It was a humdinger of storm with near gale force winds so we kept the children inside all day as it blew itself out. The main casualty of the storm was my office. Two years previously we’d had a new roof installed even thought the old one was only a few years old. The firm that carried out the work were dreadful and a two month job over the summer holidays became a six month job with us having to import mobile classrooms and shunt classes around. Once completed, the roof sprung leaks on a regular basis. The firm would come out, plug the leaks, and the next time it rained, the water would find a new way in. I once had to close the school as water ran down over the main fuse box. On the day of the ‘Big Storm’, the water had found its way to the space above my false ceiling and, fortunately whilst I was somewhere else in school, it brought the polystyrene tiles down along with a few gallons of water. My office looked like a disaster area. Because of the high winds that came with the storm, rainwater outside the boys’ changing rooms and toilets was forced up against the door. When some of the boys went to the toilet, they saw water coming in under the door. This also made them feel unsafe, the poor little dears.
Another question that usually came out negative concerned bullying. Bullying is such an emotive topic and can be devastating for those who suffer as children and as adults. It is, however, a spectrum that can run from a child who always pushes in front of another one in the dinner queue, to the child who takes their own life because things have become so unbearable. We did a lot of work talking about bullying and what to do if it happened to you. We then had procedures in place to confront the bully and to monitor subsequent behaviour in order to irradiate it. Sometime it became incredibly difficult. Frequently, I’d have girls who would fall in and out of friendships on a fairly regular basis and often, when relationships were cooled, they would accuse their ex-friends of bullying. I’d spend some time trying to get to the bottom of what was going on and then they’d suddenly announce they were friends again and there was nothing to worry about. It was a little frustrating. The worst case I had was a girl who would bully other children by accusing them of bullying her– try sorting that one out in the company of highly stressed parents. I once challenged an eleven year old as to why he’d answered the bullying question with an answer that intimated that bullying was widespread.
“Have you ever been bullied?” I asked. No came the reply.
“Have any of your friends been bullied?” No came the reply.
“Do you know of anyone who has been bullied?” No came the reply.
“Then why on earth did you tick the box that said a lot of bullying goes on in school?”
“Well,” he smiled, “You’re always talking about it in assembly, so there must be a lot of it going on.” So much for awareness raising.
Children were always surprising me, with their views, their actions, their behaviour. James was usually a well-behaved eleven year old but one lunchtime, he let his enthusiasm for a game of tag land him in a bit of bother as he visited the toilets prior to afternoon lessons. As one of his mates made an attempt to grab him, James locked himself in the toilet cubicle. His friend bashed against the door which caused the bolt securing the door to bend out of shape, trapping poor James inside the cubicle. When I arrived, fetched by a posse of concerned and no doubt guilty boys, James was in floods of tears. My first job was to reassure him that he did have a future beyond life in a toilet cubicle and I would soon have the door off to release him. I then made my way to the caretaker’s room where I’d hoped to find the caretaker. As she wasn’t there and urgency was key, I gathered together a few likely looking tools and returned to the incarcerated child. I set about undoing all the screws on my side which took some doing. I’d expected the door to come off at this point but it turned out there were an equal number of screws on James’ side of the door. I passed the screwdriver under the door and he removed the lower screws but quickly found the ones at the top of the door were too high for him to reach. As the library was next to the toilets, I popped in there and returned with a pile of large thick books which I also passed under the door. Standing on the books allowed James to tackle the remaining screws and so in a matter of minutes, well, nothing happened. With all the screws removed, the twisted bolt was now holding the door in place. Next, under the door went a large hammer. I instructed James to bash the bolt as hard as possible in an attempt to straighten it out enough to slide it back. After a lot of banging from inside the cubicle, I heard the bolt being pulled back and a rather shaken child emerged. It had taken about half an hour. Thinking about it, I must have been away on the day that the our teacher trainers taught us how to release children from inside locked toilets otherwise I'd have probably had him out in half the time.
INFANTS!
Peter, the headteacher, was calmly explaining to his infant teachers the way he wanted them to work when teaching maths. His meticulous instructions were greeted with nods of the head from the two members of staff; it was a lesson in leadership and management and one that I, as an aspiring headteacher, would follow if and when I too became a headteacher. Then Peter left the room and I learned another valuable lesson.
“What a load of rubbish,” said the younger of the two women.
“Peter’s problem is that he’s never taught infants,” added the other. “He hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about.” I determined to ensure that would never happen to me. Two years later, Peter moved to a bigger school and for a term I became the acting headteacher. This was very useful on two fronts. Firstly, I enjoyed it and secondly, I found I could do the job, albeit in a holding capacity until a new head was appointed. As soon as she was, I approached her with a request: I’d like to teach in the infants. I was given a year 2 class the following year and for three years I worked with these six and seven year olds getting valuable experience of teaching younger children. I found them absolutely delightful and hugely frustrating in equal measure. They had a constant need for support and reassurance and they completed their tasks at break neck speed. Their response to my questioning was frequently surreal.
“What do we call a flat shape with three straight sides?” I would ask. A host of hands would go up and I’d choose a likely looking candidate to answer.
“I like your shoes,” the child would say.
“Thank you Amelia, now can anyone tell me what we call a flat shape with three straight sides? Yes, Rowan…”
“I’m going to Sam’s house after school.”
“That’s really interesting Rowan. Yes, I know Sam, Rowan’s just told us all hasn’t he. So, what do we call…” Eventually someone would supply me with ‘triangle’ and I'd move on to the next question.
I tried to move my teachers around the age groups whenever possible to broaden their experiences. Carrie was not a happy person when I asked her to teacher six and seven year olds because she thought of herself as a teacher of older children, but she was a natural and, after moving into the advisory service, thanked me for providing her with the opportunity to cover the different age groups. She was one of those teachers who would have been brilliant with any age group and also one that I enjoyed teasing from time to time, as part of her professional development, you understand. One day, sitting in my office and thoroughly bored with some data exercise I was being obliged to carry out for the government, I heard Carrie's class come into the hall for a PE lesson. The lesson began with the children following her expert instructions: running, jumping, rolling, squatting. It was all done in complete silence, the children behaving far too well. I decided I needed to do something about it. On my cupboard was a box of glove puppets that I delved into when I wanted to bring an assembly story alive. I chose a rather fetching grey rhino from the box, placed him over my right hand and thrust my hand through the curtains that covered the hall door. Then, moving the rhino's head from side to side, I waited. Initially there was no reaction. Then I heard a murmur, then some whispers and finally giggles. As the lesson came to a shuddering standstill, I imagined the children pointing to the surprise guest who'd gatecrashed their lesson. Suddenly a voice rang out, "Thank you Mr. Rhino, that will be all." I withdrew the puppet and returned to my data activities a contented man.
Just as some teachers are happy with any age, others feel most comfortable with a particular group. I found teaching older children a richly rewarding experience: I found teaching infants an experience. My frustrations reached a peak during a maths lesson early in the first term of teaching infants. I'd spent hours the night before cutting various shapes from coloured sticky-backed paper. I’d organised the lesson so that the majority would be working with these shapes whilst I concentrated on a group who were struggling with the concept of tens and units. I gave out the instructions, “Take the shapes children, and stick them in your books so that they make pictures. For instance, you could take the rectangle and put a triangle on top and turn it into a house. Then,” I continued, “write a sentence about the shapes such as: The house is made from a rectangle and a triangle.” It seemed straightforward to me and the children appeared to understand their task. I then sat down with the tens and units group. We had a pile of matchsticks and everyone, including myself, counted out 15 sticks. “Now take ten of those and put an elastic band around them,” I said. This we all did and then we all counted the matchsticks that were left. I had five but none of the children had. One child had three, one had six, another had nine!
“Alright, let’s try that again,” I continued. This time we counted out thirteen. I checked to make sure that each child had thirteen sticks and then we put ten in a bundle and counted those remaining. Again, I was the only one who had the correct number left over. I checked the bundles and they all had ten in them, so I was at a loss as to what was happening. We repeated this procedure two more times with depressingly identical results. And it was at that point that the first of the shape-sticking children began to assemble by my side. Wondering what I was going to do, my ten minute shape exercise having taken some of them just three minutes, I looked at the work they were proudly holding out. They had created a series of beautiful pictures by taking the circles, squares and hexagons that had taken me so long to create and cutting out of them flowers and trees , cats and dogs. There was not a single rectangle or triangle in sight. I stood up and addressed my students: “Children, “ I said in a calm and steady voice, “I am just going to go outside for a moment but I will be back very soon. Keep on with your work.” I then walked over to the door, closed it behind me and, alone in the school entrance hall, I screamed. It was a long painful scream. In seconds, the cook, busy setting tables in the dinner hall for lunch, had appeared looking anxiously at me from the doorway. I smiled and offered a simple explanation
“Infants!”
I did three years teaching infant children and equipped with that experience, I felt confident applying for primary school headships. A few years later, my plans were in total disarray when I became head of a school with a nursery. I had never taught three to five year olds: the support staff knew more about it than I did, but then I never preached at my nursery staff but worked with them, drawing on their knowledge of this age group to develop practice. I would frequently cover for staff in the nursery, arriving in the room full of my own importance.
“Have you come to look after us?” the children would ask.
“Look after you, why no,” I would pompously reply, “I have come to teach you.” I would then proceed to look after them!
There was some direct teaching but most learning was through play, either free play or structured activities where staff could guide the children, model the skills they wanted them to acquire and observe how successful the children were at carrying out the various activities. A lot of learning went on outside, whatever the weather. It was strange thing – every time I was covering a member of staff, it was always they who were timetabled to be on outside duty, without fail. And without fail, I would have left my warm office in shirtsleeves to be faced with a bitter Siberian wind and icy rain when I got outside.
One of the topics that my nursery staff covered was the jobs people do. The school nurse would be invited to come in and talk to the children. She would bring some medical equipment and the home corner would be set up for the week as a surgery. The following week it would be the local librarian, equipped with lots of books that she’d read and share out amongst the children. The home corner then became a library. After that came the village shop and so on. A highlight was always the visit of the fire brigade. Not only did the children get to climb inside a real fire engine and press the siren repeatedly, so disrupting every other class in the school, but the female members of staff got to see some very fit young men in uniform. Maybe they were just interested in fire fighting but I’ve never seen such a scramble to be the person taking the firemen their mid-morning coffees. Of course, such visits were always dependent on there not being an emergency. When my own children were at primary school, I was involved in organising a fortnight’s summer holiday club. One of the things we did was a visit to the fire station. As we walked towards the building, the doors opened and out shot the two fire engines, sirens blazing, lights flashing. After that bit of excitement, we entered the station. There, a rather embarrassed firefighter greeted us and confirmed what we had suspected: there were no fire engines for the children to look at. He did his best but, after describing how the sixth almost identical hose worked, he’d lost the accompanying adults, let alone the children.
Completing the visits from the emergency services were the police. A pair of young constables spoke to the children about the work that they did. At the end of their presentation, they asked if anyone had any questions. Now this is a dangerous move even for a highly experienced nursery teacher. We had a young lad, Kieran, who came from quite a difficult background. His behaviour was often very challenging – he was the only child ever to bite me. However, he was very engaged by the PCs and thrust his hand in the air. One of the PCs invited him to ask his question but what he got was more of a statement:
“The police came round to my house last night. They wanted to talk to daddy.” The constable was at a loss as how to react to this whilst the staff smiled knowingly, ‘daddy’ having a bit of a reputation for indulging in the odd bit of criminal activity. The constable thanked Kieran for sharing this and asked if there were any other questions. Much to everyone’s concern the only hand that went up was Kieran's.
“Yes, young man,” the PC said wearily. Again it was a statement:
“My mummy sometimes dresses up as a policewoman at night time.” This left the officer struggling for a response whilst the staff suppressed their giggles, knowing 'mummy' equally well and in no doubt whatsoever as to the reason she had for her unusual nighttime attire.
THE INTERVIEW
During my spell as an acting headteacher I discovered, not only could I do the job but also that I quite enjoyed it. Consequently, a few years later, I began applying for headships. I must have had a cracking letter of application because I kept getting interviews. Unfortunately when it came to the actual interviews, I was not so impressive. I’d practice all the possible answers that I could give, produce stunning presentations, bat off all the awkward questions and leave the schools feeling that I’d done a cracking job only to receive a phone call later that evening that would always begin with, “I’m sorry.” I would meet with the local authority representative on the interview panel for feedback, some of which was very pertinent and some of which was definitely not. Being told the interview panel had a problem with your choice of glasses or the tie you’d worn made me wonder about their priorities. When the feedback began contradicting previous feedback, I decided it wasn’t worth it and stopped requesting it. A job at a small school in the north of the county not far from where I lived came up and so, off went the letter of application, followed by the inevitable call for interview. After two intense days that seemed to have gone well, I waited for the inevitable ‘I’m sorry’ phone call. But when the call came through, the chair of governors began with, “We’d like to offer you the job.” I was so taken aback that, after saying yes and thanking her profusely, I put the phone down and began to think that I’d imagined it all. My eldest son had been in the room and so I began an interrogation:
“You’re sure that you heard me say, ‘I’d be delighted,’”
“Yes, dad.”
“I really said that I’d like the job?”
“Yes, dad.”
“You’re sure you heard me say that?”
“Yes, dad!” I was finally convinced and when my wife returned home after picking up our youngest son, the sympathetic smile that she had perfected for these situations turned into a broad grin when I told her the news.
Even before I’d started my new job, I had the chance to be on the other side of table, as I had to appoint a new teacher to start at the same time as I did. The acting headteacher, Roger, and I went through the applications to shortlist the applicants. One application caught our eyes immediately. It was just too unusual to be true. The young lady was in her first year of teaching which made us wonder why she wanted to move so soon. However, it was her CV that surprised us. She listed her interests as swimming, netball, art and design. We were fairly impressed with the information that she had swum for her county, even more so to read about playing netball for her country. Further down the page, she mentioned how she had designed posters for the Prince of Wales and we became suspicious. Then we noticed her date of birth was the first of April. Someone was having us on. We decided to interview her out of curiosity whilst wondering if she was really one of our respective friends winding us up. That evening, I actually drove out with my wife to see if her address really existed. It did. When I arrived on the day of the interview, Roger met me with the news that all the candidates had confirmed they were coming except one. We had obviously called her bluff but when I met up later in the month with Roger, he told me that he’d contacted the school where the young lady worked to see if she really existed. They confirmed that she did and that she was just a very driven person.
They say that interviewers make up their minds about a candidate within the first few minutes of meeting them. Whilst I wouldn’t always go along with that, there were definitely some people whose manner, on entering the room, would make me question how they would fit in with our staff team. For others, it took some time before I had the creeping realisation that there was absolutely no way that they were going to work in my school. This was the case with Mrs. L. On paper, she looked a really good fit for the temporary infant teacher post we were looking to fill. She’d had a long and varied career across the four to seven year old age range and she entered the room full of confidence. Our first question concerned the steps she would take towards introducing a new concept in maths. She launched into her answer and I was particularly impressed with the cross-curricular approach she’d adopt at the end of the lesson, getting the children around the piano and singing some counting songs: so far, so good. The next question concerned teaching phonics. Again, she outlined a perfectly acceptable way to teach the letter sounds, ending with singing phonic songs around the piano. As we made our way through other curriculum-based questions, her replies always ended with the sing-song which appeared to be a regular part of every lesson. Then the interview began to get a little weird as her answers to assessing children and dealing with challenging behaviour also featured the inevitable session around the piano. By now, I was convinced that I wasn’t going to be appointing her, mainly because the children in her class would be spending most of their time singing. When we asked her if she had any questions she wanted to ask us, she thought for a moment and then asked, “Will there be a piano in my classroom because I do like to get the children around it to sing songs?” We'd never have guessed.
In more recent times, I experienced a phenomenon cursing English schools: recruitment problems. When my deputy head moved to a headship, we advertised his job nationally. Just two people applied but, as both met the criteria, we decided to go ahead with interviews. With my governors, we worked out a schedule for the day that would allow the candidates to meet the staff and governors, demonstrate their teaching and present their thoughts on what the school needed to do next, as well as attending a formal interview. The day before the interviews were due to take place, I had to attend a meeting in the city and, as I sat, waiting for it to begin, a fellow head came and sat next to me and began sharing some of the issues he was facing in his school. "Still," he concluded, "At least Stuart, one of my best teachers, has decided to stay put. He'd got an interview for a deputy headship tomorrow."
"I know," I replied, "at my school!" I was down to one candidate. I left the meeting, annoyed that my withdrawn candidate hadn't the decency to inform me of his decision with less than 24 hours to go, and returned to school. We couldn't interview just one person so I asked my office manager to ring the other candidate, explain the circumstances and assure her that when we re-advertised, her name would be shortlisted automatically. I then set about sorting out another advert and interview date. A few minutes later, my office manager popped her head around the door. "I spoke to Miss J'" she said, "She informed me that she'd meant to ring before. Her boyfriend is moving to Manchester and so she was going to withdraw from the interview anyway." Now we had no candidates. Eventually the advert went out nationally again, costing a small fortune in the process I might add, but it was worth it when we got an amazing response: two applications!
It was important to involve governors on interview panels but I always made sure that I had another member of my leadership team in there with me as well so that, if push came to shove, the professionals could outnumber the volunteer. This is not to disrespect governors. I’d served as a governor for many years at my sons’ primary school, and I understood the huge commitment many put into the role, becoming skilled in various areas of school life and taking overall responsibility for the progress the school makes. However, my staff member and I were the ones who worked in the school every day, knew our strengths and weaknesses, knew the kind of people we wanted to join our team and knew a great deal more about education having been trained and immersed in it for many years. When my deputy rang in on the day of an interview to say he was unwell and not coming in, I was left with candidates already on their way, having booked time off work, and so I continued with just my chair of governors, Karl, and me interviewing. It was a mistake. We had just three candidates for yet another temporary infant teaching post. My Key Stage 1 teachers would keep having babies! The first interviewee was very nervous, mumbled and stumbled her way through the questions and left us very unimpressed. Because of what happened later in the day, I never rang her back as I’d promised to do, to tell her she hadn’t got the job. She rang me the following Monday morning to enquire if she’d been successful. I felt terrible knowing that she’d have been hoping she’d got the job all over the weekend. Anyway, back to candidate number two whose experience was mainly in inner city schools. I knew the class the successful candidate was to teach had a number of very challenging children, including Billy, a traveller child who could be quite physical, so candidate two's experience would come in very handy. It was Billy who, sitting on my office floor in disgrace after breaking an impressive number of rules in an equally impressive short period of time, tried to engage me in conversation. Looking at a photo on my desk he asked,” Is that your granny?” Despite that fact I was supposed to be ignoring him, I felt moved to answer and told him I didn’t have a grandmother any more to which he replied, "Is she dead?" I informed him that she was which elicited this unusual enquiry: “Was she a big woman?” I suspect quite a few of the traveller grannies must have fallen into the 'big woman' category. I digress.
After an impressive interview, the second candidate left and number three entered. An older lady, she was asked why she had applied for the job. “I only work two term each year and I choose the schools I apply to very carefully. Your school looked suitable.” My chair of governors was delighted – we had been chosen: I found it condescending – weren't we the lucky ones. She'd deign to let us appoint her. I decided almost immediately that candidate number two was going to get the job. On completing the interviews, Karl and I compared notes on the answers the candidates had given. We dismissed number one almost immediately. I was heavily for number two, Karl for number three who thought the lady’s experience and calm manner would be a great asset to the school. I thought she would discover that the school wasn’t quite the easy touch she seemed to think it was. Eventually, Karl bowed to my professional knowledge and I rang candidate number two who, surprisingly, declined my offer. On her way home, she had been thinking hard about the kind of school she wanted to work in and decided that my school would not provide her with enough challenge. She was wrong, but I had no option to offer the job to candidate three. Karl was delighted but I told him I thought she would last about five weeks. I was wrong. Two weeks into the new term, she handed in her resignation: Billy had trapped her fingers in the door.
BEING THE HEAD
After finally succeeding in my quest to become a headteacher, I was keen to make a good impression with the staff at my new school. I arranged to meet Roger, the acting head, during the holidays. It could have been awkward because he'd also applied for the job but a few weeks after our interview, he'd been successful in getting his own headship at a nearby school and so we wouldn't ever be working together. Officially he remained in charge over the summer holidays and I wouldn't take up the reins until the training days, two days before the children began the new school year. The reason for meeting Roger was for him to furnish me with all the relevant information I'd need in order for a smooth transition to take place. We also had to shortlist for the teacher's job I mentioned in the previous chapter.
It was a hot summer's day and I'd gone for smart casual dress. Once school began, I would wear a suit and tie but that was inappropriate for an informal meeting. Cream trousers and a light blue t- shirt seemed to fit the bill. Once I'd become a head, my choice of attire became a constant headache. I'd turn up at a conference in formal garb, only to discover all my colleagues dressed casually. Drawing on this experience, I'd arrive at the next conference in relaxed mode, and walk in to a room full of suits and ties. I never could work it out. Roger met me at the entrance to the school and greeted me warmly: no hard feelings then. Even though our paths wouldn't cross, I knew he would be in contact with the staff at the school, reporting back on what the new head was like, and so when he asked me if I could help him sort out a small matter before we got down to business, I readily agreed. The school had an agreement with the parish council that, in the absence of a village recreation ground, the youth of the village could use the school field during out of school hours. It was an arrangement that worked well, the school supporting the local community, the children generally respecting the school grounds. Unfortunately there are always one or two who spoil it for everyone else, and in this case the one or two had lifted a paving slab and thoughtfully deposited in the school pond. My task was to help Roger carefully retrieve it. In no time at all, we had raised it from the depths, at which point my desire to create a good impression overruled all other rational thought.
"I can manage this on my own," I assured Roger, tilting one side of the slab downwards as I tightened my grip. What I had failed to notice was the considerable amount of stagnant pond water which had accompanied the slab out of the pond which now, finding the slab at an angle, began a downwards descent, first of all over the slab and secondly down my cream trousers. I felt so stupid as I waddled into the school, seeking out the gents toilets where I spent the next fifteen minutes scrubbing away to remove as much pond as possible. As the afternoon meeting with Roger wore on, the small room where we were working was filled with the disgusting stench of pond. I left that day, my dignity destroyed, my reputation in tatters. "And he's going to be running our school." I could hear the conversations.
I believe one of the secrets to becoming a successful headteacher is to create a good team of people around you. I worked alongside four deputy heads during my eighteen years at the helm and all four of them became headteachers themselves. I became a headteacher before any formal training for the job became available: it was very much learning on the job. Because of this, I spent years waiting for someone to discover that I was making it up as I went along, not a real headteacher at all. After I'd retired, I made a return visit to the school and the new headteacher, who'd been one of my four deputies, confided in me, "I've been doing the job for three years now, but I feel like I'm making it up as I go along, not a real headteacher like you were." Somewhere along the line, I'd morphed from insecure novice to seasoned professional. Not that my fellow heads helped in this process. During my first couple of years in charge, I'd attend meetings with other headteachers. They were forever going on about how much monitoring they were doing, a key requirement of the job, but one that had become quite bureaucratic under the Ofsted inspection regime forever hanging over us all. I carried out formal lesson observations because I was expected to, but I hated doing so. I'd much rather work alongside colleagues, observing them informally and engaging in constructive discussion afterwards about how to develop their practice. Instead, I had to formally grade the lesson, using criteria that changed with the passing whims of whichever government was in Westminster at the time. When the lead Ofsted inspector of my first inspection noticed a folder in my office which bore the label 'Monitoring', she asked what was inside it. "Not a lot," was my honest reply, but I handed it over to her. Half an hour later, she returned it, informing me that my folder contained a great deal more than she found in most schools. What, my fellow headteachers' revelations about their extensive monitoring procedures were totally fabricated? Surely not! It was a valuable lesson learned.
My four Ofsted inspections went as follows: surprised, annoyed, delighted, cynical. Surprised because we came out a 'very good school' the first time. I'd had many sleepless nights in the months waiting for it to happen, not least because of the National Literacy and Numeracy strategies that the Labour government introduced just as I became a headteacher. Huge amounts of information was dispatched to schools, at the rate of one major document every two days at one point: it was ridiculous and a huge waste of some really excellent materials, churned out unremittingly because of political expediency. I saw one of my roles as protecting my staff from this deluge and would operate a three tiered approach: useful stuff was disseminated to staff at a time I felt they would be able to appreciate it, not quite so useful stuff would be put on a shelf to be dealt with if the need arose, totally useless stuff, which was the majority, was filed in the little round filing cabinet on the floor by my desk. I had a real issue with filing. I can remember a meeting for heads new to the authority when I moved from a county to a city school. Some heads, completely new to the job, complained that they struggled to separate the important information from the rubbish. Others countered, they could do this but never knew how to file the information away. Then I spoke, telling those present I had no problem deciding what to keep and what to throw away, I had no problem knowing where to file it, my problem was trying to remember where on earth I'd put it when I needed to retrieve it.
One of the key elements for training teachers 'how to teach' the Literacy and Numeracy strategies were a series of videos that I was required to show to my teachers. After a few minutes of putting on the first video, I noticed some restlessness in the room, and then whispers, followed by giggles, turning to outright derision. I paused the video. Why were they reacting like this? One teacher spoke for the rest. "That will never work here," she declared. Admittedly, the teaching group on the video had featured fifteen very well behaved children of average ability with a teaching assistant on hand, just in case anyone stepped out of line, sitting on the carpet for fifteen minutes. My teachers were working with classes of over thirty, some of whom had challenging behaviour, many of whom were in the lower ability range, without a teaching assistant in sight. They'd struggle to sit still on the carpet for fifteen seconds, let along fifteen minutes. I went home that evening a troubled man: should I listen to what the government was telling me to do or to my experienced teachers. I chose the latter and, whilst we adopted the principles of the government's strategies, we adapted the programme to meet the needs of our children. The lead inspector, ten minutes after setting off to carry out lesson observations, returned to my office. "Thank goodness," she exclaimed, "We find so many schools just slavishly following the new strategies, but you have made changes so that it really works for your children." Phew!
My second inspection, after I'd moved schools, came out as 'satisfactory' when 'satisfactory' meant you were doing as expected. In the never-ending world of Ofsted-speak, the word changed to mean 'unsatisfactory' a few years later! They pointed out areas for us to improve on which I agreed with. What annoyed me was that they came into school with preconceived judgements based purely on our test results and worked very hard to make everything fit in with these. So behaviour, which was no different four years later when it was rated 'good', could only be 'satisfactory' this time. By inspection three, we had become a 'good school'. So good, in fact, that the inspectors struggled to find any points for improvement. "What you need to do," the lead inspector informed me, "Is to achieve significantly good test results year on year and you'll be judged 'outstanding'." So that's what we did, and when inspection team four arrived, we told them so. "Ah," came the reply, "if we'd come here three months ago you would have been 'outstanding' but Ofsted have changed the rules. You're 'good' though." At this point, I decided I'd quit whilst the school was in a good place, not wanting to become the cynic I had seen other heads become.