The Secret Teacher Read online

  He stared at my jumper.

  ‘Ah. The old NQT jumper. The M&S classic. The first, and perhaps only thing you need to know about this job: never, under any circumstances, wear a jumper. Certainly not one as revolting as that. Pure hubris. A jumper will invariably become too hot within fifteen minutes of a lesson starting,’ he said, stuffing a finger of Twix into his maw, ‘and nothing will be more disempowering than taking your jumper off in the middle of a lesson, yanking your shirt out of your trousers and revealing your belly and potentially your pubes. But at least it isn’t a cardigan.’

  ‘Er … why’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘That diktat came through the other day. NO CARDIGANS. You have been warned.’

  He hitched up his trousers over his belly and belched, then watched me as I warily unpacked my Post-its.

  ‘I’ll wager a Cheese String that you don’t use those all year.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like Cheese Strings.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had one.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Where do they find you people?’

  He took a Cheese String out of his desk and threw it at me.

  ‘Your first assignment. Get your laughing gear round that. And describe the sensation, using a simile, or even better, a WOW word.’

  I gingerly unwrapped the Cheese String and bit off the end.

  ‘Like a … slimy eel.’

  ‘Have a merit.’

  A tall man with floppy hair and steamed glasses entered, threw his bag on the floor and declared, ‘God, that newsagent is a filthy bastard.’

  ‘This is Tom,’ said HoD. ‘He trained here last year and we decided to keep him on. God knows why. He’ll take you under his wing. Show you the ropes. Keep you out of my face.’

  ‘Mate, how’s it going?’

  Tom was a proper posho. Definitely TeachFirst.

  The TeachFirsters tended to be ‘bloody good blokes and top lasses’ from the 7 per cent of the population who had been privately educated, and yet were imbued with a moral curiosity to find out how the other 93 per cent lived. If this had been a few years previous, some of them would never have been seen dead in a state school. They would have done the Milk Round in their final year of uni and snaffled a job at a Big Swinging Dick firm, but the Crash had put paid to that. Now they were part of ‘the greatest generation to enter teaching’, as Michael Gove put it when he was Secretary of State for Education. It felt good to be part of The Greatest Generation. A bit like it must have felt to fight in the Second World War. But there was always a nagging doubt that The Greatest Generation would stay until they decided to trade in those brown brogues for black ones and go suck Mammon’s titties after all. The truth was that they were extremely well trained, and came armed with all the strategies, skills and energy you need to work in an inner-city state school. And they tended to stay in teaching, because they fell in love with it.

  I looked over Little Miss Outstanding’s shoulder at her laptop as she carefully tweaked the slides of a lesson. Images of storm clouds, blazing suns, snow; a grumpy face, a happy face; a sepia photograph of a man alone in a cell. In the corner, a small cartoon wizard waved a wand. A speech bubble in 72-point Comic Sans read:

  What are we doing today??!!!

  ‘Misery? Pain? Torture?’ I guessed.

  ‘Pretty much,’ she replied.

  She clicked on the rain cloud and rain fell onto squares that washed away to reveal the words:

  PATHETIC FALLACY

  She clicked again and the letters levitated back into the ether.

  Fuck. Look at that shit. She’s got proper production values. She’s going to put me to shame.

  ‘You can borrow it if you like. I’ve copied all my lessons onto the system,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks. Erm, yeah. I might do that.’

  I put my empty USB stick into the computer and copied all her lessons onto it.

  Why was I so lazy? I had done nothing on my training year. Literally nothing. Got eaten alive in Helmand, then got parachuted into a private school. They say it’s like going from walking on glass to walking on velvet. I got used to the luxury lifestyle. My standard lesson, which I gave most days to most classes, was to read Bartleby the Scrivener with them, then get them to write on a Post-it why they would prefer not to do their homework.

  The Department door opened. It was like opening the boot of a car in which puppies had been trapped all afternoon. A litter of teachers leapt and licked and panted and barked and ran round and round in circles, chasing their tails. They talked very quickly about various extraordinarily monikered children – who were either wankers or geniuses – grabbed papers, spilt coffee and passed comment on my jumper. A young woman approached and beamed a smile that seemed to have originated in the first sunbeam that warmed the world. The 2nd in Department. My Mentor.

  ‘Hello! Sorry, it’s been mad. Have you met everyone? Ooh, nice jumper! Is it teal?’

  A heavily pregnant woman shook my hand.

  ‘Hi. You’ll be taking over from me. Because I’m leaving. Obviously.’ She handed me a bag, paper and a pen. ‘Just write down any names of famous people and put them in the bag. I’ve got a double next and I’m getting quite bored of trying to do a charade of Kim Kardashian.’

  ‘How do you do that without –’

  ‘Exactly. I’ve got about twelve Malalas and Nelson Mandelas in here, but they just keep picking bloody Kim. And Wayne Rooney. It’s rigged.’

  ‘Shut up, you CRETIN!’ The Head of Sixth Form charged in, shouting. ‘Yes, you know who I am talking to!’ She shook her head as the door to the Department closed, still eyeballing the boy through the glass. ‘Yes! You! I’m talking to you! WHERE’S. YOUR. ESSAY? WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHICH ONE? (Why do I bother. Seriously. I mean, look what I have to work with.) ON MY DESK BY THE END OF THE DAY OR I AM CALLING MUM. (What’s he doing? He has no clue. Not one clue. Unbelievable. I might as well be talking to myself.) AND TUCK YOUR SHIRT IN!’

  She turned from the window, took a deep breath, and surveyed me with gathering alarm.

  ‘My God. That jumper is doing wonders for my hangover. Let me guess: one of the newbies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you had a Cheese String? Oh, good. Where did they find you? Apart from M&S? My God, look at him, he’s shaking! Don’t worry, I won’t bite. Not you, anyway.’

  I muttered something that was supposed to be witty but was, in fact, lame and inane. Dry as vermouth, she said, ‘You’re gonna get nuked.’

  She looked at HoD, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘Has he made you stack the books yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Er … no,’ I said.

  ‘God, what’s going on round here? Going to the dogs. It is customary for you to spend most of this week in the stock cupboard. You need to become acquainted with the Great Library of Alexandria before it is finally incinerated.’

  ‘I was just getting to that,’ said HoD. ‘Thank you, Miss, for reminding me. You need to get in there and stack all the texts neatly. It’s a pigsty after a year of this lot taking books out and then dumping them wherever.’

  ‘I will have you know, Sir,’ Ho6 shot back, ‘that every time I have returned a set of books, I have put them back neatly exactly where I found them. If you would care to peruse the shelves, you will see a full set of Great Expectations – from Year 8 Set 4, no less – and a full set of Tempests from my cretinous 13s. You need to get in there sharpish, newbies. I have scheduled a nap on that yoga mat during my free this afternoon.’

  Little Miss Outstanding and I entered the pigsty. The shelves and floor were scattered with textbooks, exercise books of every colour, plastic covers, French and Spanish dictionaries, a yoga mat and bottles of water. We decided that she would stack the Jane Eyres and Great Gatsbys while I put all the exercise books into boxes. ‘What an incredible smell you have discovered,’ I said, but she didn’t respond. I explained that I felt a bit like Hans Solo when he falls into th
e garbage chute with Princess Leia, but as soon as I said it, I realised it made it sound like we were destined to fall in love, which made the rest of our time in there pretty awkward.

  *

  After a couple of days of cleaning the store cupboard, I was told by HoD to go and watch some lessons. I followed a girl called Leila around, which was even more awkward.

  Leila was in Year 9 Set 3, so I expected some trouble. The first lesson was Home Economics. Here we go, I thought. Year 9 troublemakers armed with knives and ovens.

  The class filed in and stood looking at images of different types of bread on the board. We had to guess what they were going to make that lesson. Hands shot up; no one called out. Leila asked if it was pizza. The teacher corrected her warmly, telling her that we were going to make focaccia. After a brief written exercise, we put on aprons and chef hats, and arranged ourselves into groups, whereupon we began rolling pastry and dicing rosemary. The instructions were clearly written on the board and on a handout. The teacher had such control, she barely needed to speak. We put the focaccia in the oven, washed our hands, took off aprons and chef hats, and completed a written comprehension about the regional variations of focaccia in northern and southern Italy. Then we took the focaccia out of the oven; while it was a little bit soft, Leila and I agreed that it was delicious. She said she would try and make some for her mum at the weekend. For the Plenary, we stood behind our chairs and answered questions about how best to cook Italian delicacies.

  We filed out into the playground. Leila ran off to join her friends, and looked back at me, giggling into the sleeve of her jumper, as I stood alone with my spongy focaccia.

  Thanks, Leila. Just leave me hanging.

  The rest of the day continued in the same vein. PowerPoints in ICT, samba in Music, basketball in PE, the Battle of Hastings in History. In every class, the behaviour was immaculate, the group work perfectly marshalled, the tasks imaginative, the outcomes extraordinary. I was dazzled as entire classes wrote, put up their hands, drummed, threw baskets, retrieved facts, moved and thought in unison. It was like being inside a giant robot as it learned to breathe.

  Then I observed some of my Department teach. Mentor was the Queen of Lesson Design. She made works of art on each slide, and spent hours on each lesson, carefully plotting each transition (the period between activities, when disruption is likely). Tom got them all going with drama, group work and debates. VP taught all the Set 3s and 4s because she had the most difficult kids at her beck and call. Every lesson followed the same formula, and they lapped it up. Ho6 and HoD, who had buckets of charisma, spent most of their lessons ripping the piss out of the kids and had them eating out of their hands. They had the all-important bantz. They were Bantosauruses. They must have qualified from uni bantum cum laude.

  Lesson #3

  Every Teacher Teaches in Their Own Unique Way and Must Be Encouraged to Find Their Own Style.

  In most schools, there is at least one weak link, a teacher who makes you just think, ‘Yeah, I’d have you’, or ‘If I was in this lesson, I would be bored shitless.’ Not here. Here was a Cabinet of Many Talents. The true Jedis.

  At the end of the week, HoD saw me looking overwhelmed in the corner of the Department.

  ‘Freaked out, are you? You should be. Don’t worry. They all feel like failures most of the time. We all do. Teaching is built for failure. Once you understand that, it’s the best job in the world.’

  *

  On the last day of term, the whole school gathered for the Final Assembly for the Old Head. On the way up to the gym, I asked HoD why Old Head was leaving.

  ‘Done his time. Brought us to the Promised Land. But he’s the wrong sort for the New Regime.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s a History teacher. A human. Who talks to the kids and is interested in them. He wears cardigans.’

  ‘Who’s going to replace him?’

  ‘Well, that, my friend, is a sad tale we must save for winter. This will be a very different place next year. You’d better be prepared. I’m not sure I can help you with the Brave New World because I’m not sure I understand it myself.’

  *

  Old Head approached the dais at the front of the gym. He cleaned his glasses with the arm of his cardigan, then raised his hand with graceful solemnity.

  ‘Pax.’

  Pure silence.

  ‘That is how my old History teacher used to begin every lesson. My History teacher who made me want to teach. Teaching is a noble profession. Perhaps the noblest there is.’

  A cough. A whimper. A sob.

  ‘To the staff, I say farewell. We are a happy Band of Brothers. We happy few. We have been together for many years at this wonderful school. I know many of you feel uncertain at all the changes. Do not fear. Your New Head’ – he turned to acknowledge a man in a black Armani suit at the end of the row of Senior Managers on the stage – ‘will lead you to bigger and better things.’ New Head stared implacably, raising one foot so we could see the sole of his black brogue. ‘You are on the brink of a very exciting new chapter in the school. You have brought us to the precipice. Don’t lose faith. To the kids, I say: I have taught all over and the one thing I have learned is that “kids are kids are kids”. But there are no kids like you. I shall never forget you.’

  Some teachers sobbed into their hankies. Others were unmoved; they glared at the kids, who didn’t know how to react: some cried, some laughed, some did both simultaneously, bending over and shaking, disrupting the whole row. The disruptors were swiftly disappeared.

  HoD looked along the line of sobbing teachers and whispered, ‘Après moi, le déluge.’

  Old Head wiped the tears from his glasses as the school Gospel Choir sang ‘All You Need Is Love’.

  *

  At the end of the day, I went to see the Head of HR and signed up for the Golden Handcuff contract, which guaranteed I would work at the school for at least three years. ‘That’s you tied up!’ he said, as he stuffed large pencils with kitten-head erasers into his fluffy purple pencil case.

  I walked over to the gate and placed my finger on the scanner with pride.

  Buzz.

  It lives.

  And so do I.

  2

  Imperial Death Stare

  The summer passed quickly. Amy and I went on a cheap holiday to Greece, mainly because I was going to have to teach the Greek Myths next term. Amy was already resentful that we could take holidays only at the same time as everyone else in the world; she now had to contend with my desire to go only where the books I was teaching were set.

  ‘Come on, it’ll be great!’ I said. ‘Next year, I’ll be teaching The God of Small Things. We can go to Kerala.’

  ‘I thought you said you would be teaching Heart of Darkness?’

  ‘Congo will be fine by then.’

  ‘Can’t wait to go to Dunsinane in the winter,’ she said, as she shielded her eyes from the sun with her Kindle.

  I waved my edition of Greek Myths in the air excitedly. ‘God, these myths are the nuts!’ I shouted. ‘The foundational stories of Western literature: simple pure gems with morals, adventure and magic. We’re going to have so much fun with them.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Amy.

  ‘I don’t know … Like, we could make wings for Icarus.’

  ‘Bit messy,’ she said, as she squirted sun cream on her legs.

  ‘I’m just going to read to them,’ I said. ‘It’s what they need. They’ll love it. I will be a carrier of the culture! I will lead them through “the vale of soul-making”! And they will never forget me!’

  ‘I’ve never seen you so excited. I’m really happy for you. And proud,’ she said, almost admiringly.

  She kept saying that, but I knew she was still slightly disappointed in my career path. She was happy I had a proper job at last, but it wasn’t a proper, proper job, one where I made some proper money. I kept telling her that all the old jobs had disappeared, and this was the only show in town. Teac
hing was different now. It was dynamic, sexy and well remunerated. I had Golden Handcuffs, after all. After centuries of being ignored and neglected, the Teacher was returning to the front of the class – like in France, where they are professeurs, or Japan, where they are sensei – someone who is a ‘master’ of their art.

  On the first day of teacher training we were shown a grainy old photograph of a classroom in Ancient Sumeria: rows of stone, with a vacant space at the front for the teacher. After the apocalypse, only teaching will remain. Rows of stone facing an empty space surrounded by rubble.

  ‘This is it now. I swear. I’ve found it. This is the thing. I will do nothing else for the rest of my life. These are the best stories. I’m at the best school in the world. And if this really is the Greatest Generation Ever to Enter Teaching … That means I am on track to become the Best Teacher Who Has Ever Lived!’

  ‘Am I totally rubbed in?’

  *

  Autumn rolled in with the Back-to-School sales. I had everything I needed, mind. I buffed my brogues the night before the first day of term, and went to bed at nine o’clock. I lay awake most of the night. When I did finally go to sleep, I had a nightmare about trying to teach my first class. It was the generic ‘Teaching with No Clothes On’ dream, but it wasn’t just my class who were laughing and banging their desks and pointing at me. I looked out of the fish bowl, and every pupil, teacher, Senior Manager and parent was doing the same. I tried to put my clothes on, but I couldn’t move. I tried to speak; my mouth formed an O, but did not make a sound. A bubble of air drifted upwards as I slid down the glass.

  On the first day of term, we had INSET. Our names were on a board at the entrance of the gym, as if we were attending a wedding feast. VP was directing traffic effortlessly. She was terrifying. Rumour had it she worked at the school every day from dawn to dusk, Monday to Saturday, and on Sunday she unwound by going paintballing.

  ‘HELLO, SIR!’ she barked.