Can't remember if have previously posted this. If so, accept my apologies. It's not new, but it scarcely matters, as it happens in slightly modified form, every year.
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At break, no doubt as an antidote to the stress of the nativity play, the staffroom is full of sentiment. Five or six teachers are watching the computer slideshow another teacher has e-mailed.
A reinterpretation of 'The Seven Wonders of the World,' it consists of 'to hear, to see, to feel, to taste' (but never bile at the back of the throat) , 'to laugh' (though never ironically), finishes with 'to learn' and 'to teach' and is copiously illustrated with pictures - a smiley baby reaching up to its mother's face, a labrador puppy sharing an ice cream with a little girl, ("I'm sure that's a health and safety issue," someone murmurs), lovers leaping through poppy-filled meadows. "It's really humbling," says one of the Year 1 teachers.
Feeling like a mad axe murderer let loose among a room full of tiny lambs, I lurch over to the coffee machine, to see if a jolt of caffeine will remove the feeling that I am having a near death experience, only to recoil at the sound of Mary, the deputy head, making running repairs to her latest bandwagon.
"Graves need to be tended," she's saying to the head. "I'm funny about things like that." Sickened, I turn away, and come face to face with a prayer bluetacked to the whiteboard. It's designed for 'all those involved in education'. "Make us more apt to teach but yet more apt to learn....with humble and thankful hearts," it says.
Just when I think I've entered a parallel universe made entirely from saccharine, with no way of escape, I hear the welcome, acerbic voice of Sally, the teaching assistant, coming up the stairs from one of the reception classrooms: "If another child sneezes on my hand, I'm going to go mad," she says, and immediately the atmosphere reverts to normal.
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11 comments:
Having spent what seems like the last two months covered in trail snails of snot - not my own - I can sympathise with her. And it sounds like your co-teachers need a week or two spent teaching in Tower Hamlets...
The Christmas season is a very strange one but people do revert back to normal come about January - hey that's only another month to go then. You may wish to consider hibernation until then. Best of Luck.
My God - what kind of sick people do you work with? It sounds like I imagine hell will be.
Mya x
Potty Mummy: Sad to say, several of them have worked in very tough schools indeed - and they're still lovely and sunny with radiant optimism.
Gwen: Pass me the morphia and enough dried leaves for a nest.
Mya: I tell you this - even if the world were going to hell in a handcart, you can guarantee that they'd be out there, stencilling flowers and hearts on the wheels.
It puts me in mind of some of those email chain letters well-meaning good people send. Things like "Send a smile to someone today" - or "Make someone's day with an angel"!
Now I'm ordinarily the most long-suffering of women, but somehow they always render me homicidal too. So I know what you're going through.
All I can say is, stick it out - the family Christmas is right ahead, and is bound to bring out the worst in everyone!
Sorry if this one comes up twice too. It would be enough to send you right over the top I think, if it did!
But something is happening to your comment box that is preventing my ever seeming to have sent...
If this is the attitude and outlook of teachers BEHIND CLOSED DOORS Heaven - or something - help the children!
It's a wonder you're not chewing the carpet....
I love it when you're on such feisty form, OM. If you don't mind me saying so, I think it brings out the best in your writing. Thank you for exposing all that is nauseating in such saccharine world views. Sorry you have to endure such nonsense.
Our kids only need to cough and they get sent home for a fortnight. Don't you think schools are going a bit soft these days?
Crystal xx
IB: I think there's definitely a need for some new chain letters - taking your examples as starting points, how about, 'Make someone's day with an axe murder,' ? - I think it could be of real therapeutic use in many staffrooms.
IB: I am so sorry. And there I was, believing that my dispensing with the word verification, I'd solved your problems. I'll be underneath the computer on those slidy wheel things, ferreting about in its innards with a screwdriver into the small hours to rectify the problem.
Debio: If I were chewing the carpet, it would be in the hope of finding enough residual traces of cocaine to keep me going until lunch time. Thank God I only do it part time.
M@L: Really useful to hear this, so thank you.
CJ: There's a mass migration to Lovely land, and it's starting in a staffroom near you.
The deputy head is called Mary? You are living in ever-decreasing circles, I fear.
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