*
The day was largely a blur, due in part to the nasty cold I had contracted running out of my previous employment a week before, with a couple of cardboard boxes filled with scrap paper in my arms and only slippers on my feet. I therefore blame the ephedrine if I came across as excessively dreamy and dreamily ecstatic on the day. I was, after all, in the staff room of a School, one that had Community and Comprehensive in the name.
Togetherness and totality. My knees buckled. This was it! Back in my home country my mother was just one of many to think nothing could top the quality of education over here. She would call me whenever her Home Movie Channel would depict some scene of Edenic bliss containing ribboned hats, knee-high socks, grey shorts, ties and strict public-school masters in dark robes. I would always comment upon the ties.
“You may gripe all you like,” she would say, “but that’s where the world’s elites are forged. That’s where you’d be now if you hadn’t been so unlucky to be born in this midden of a nation that we are.”
To which my father would reply, “We’re no less intelligent than they are. If our son doesn’t leave this place and doesn’t somehow make it over there it’s because he’s a lazy dunce, not because he didn’t wear a straw hat in school.”
**
You can see why, walking into CSCCS, to which initials I had inured myself from the application form, I exhibited the addled flight of the moth that thinks it has made it to the moon, unaware its wings are charring away against the lamp of some lighthouse.
The insidious immigrant intruder had arrived.
One of my first observations at Crouchford was that, ties notwithstanding, the shorts were missing. And I could hear no bell. Possibly because I had arrived at breaktime. This was state clearly in the timetable Clara from HR handed me while I was gaping like an idiot at the artwork on the walls signed with names and year groups.
“Sorry, sir,” I heard someone say, brushing against my shoulder.
A tall young man, possibly my age, in an impeccable white shirt and grey tie. Immediately, I spotted the thin tie knot – could it have been a simple oriental or just a misshapen Prince Albert? It was inconceivable to me that a teacher in the world’s most revered education system would favour simplicity when it came to the apex mark of sartorial class. I thought it must be illusion, petulance on my part, to entertain such thoughts.
Others followed. A certain four-in-hand, a couple of Half Windsors. No Prince Alberts. I could not be wrong for I had spent two whole nights learning about the knots, how to tie them, how to make them look trim or plump, how they suited or not different types of tie. Suddenly, revelation broke through reverie. What was I doing?
These were the teachers. I watched the procession of head-to-toe formality pour through the windowed door, queuing before the hot water dispenser with the casualness of the top-notch professionals savouring an interlude from continued excellence.
Some of them smiled my way. I believe Clara from HR offered me instant coffee. I wanted to belong there, but I didn’t dare dream then. I knew somehow this was just put-on for me, a folly. And somewhere, in the real world, real teachers drink real coffee, all don Full Windsor knots and would never waste a second’s worth glance on an imposter like myself. But I smiled back. So did the other interviewees. They asked us if we were applying for TA. In the fluster of the moment, I had forgotten what the acronym meant. I drank their coffee, smiled some more. I was not going to make it.
They say September weather is deceptively the best. It might have been on that day, but I have little recollection of the colour of the sky or whether there was a gale or not. And yet I know it couldn’t have been sunnier when I entered the large, balmy meeting room, my palms cold with sweat, and all my worries melted away.
The students’ panel. A somewhat neat row of innocent, hungry minds of all races and ages, swinging on grown-up chairs. And I could tell they were not perfect. And that made them perfect. And what a perfect idea to have the students have a say in who was going to support their learning… and to choose, on top of everything, such a racially-diverse and inclusive panel. Inconceivable where I had come from.
“You just talk to them,” said one of the senior interviewers and they all looked senior to me.
So I did.
***
Here was I, from a grey, stern-wooden, unwelcoming country, finally allowed to be the teacher – nay, too much – the modest helping hand that I had never had myself. I was allowed to open up to children in a way my significant adults hadn’t opened up to me.
“Hi,” I said.
They didn’t reply. One was picking his nose. Another was leaning on one arm, chewing the side of the table. I rejoiced at the undoubtable reminder of inclusiveness that their ties were – one simple knot and the rest clip-ons. Learning is a curve. I had downloaded books on teaching. I had read about this when not reading about knots. Nights of fresh knowledge dissolved into a liquifying sensation in my knees and other joins.
Quickly, I said the first thing that I could think of. “So what do you like doing?”
I believe one of them said football, a girl was into horse-grooming.
“I like to pour drinks,” a sunny girl said. She could not have been older than 12. “My mum works in a pub and I help her out in the evening.”
“You do?” I said.
“Yes sir. We’ve got stouts, porters, lagers, bitter, brown ale, IPA, cider, wine we do two for…”
“That’s quite enough, Kaitlyn,” one of the observing interviewers said. “We know where your mum works.”
“And she says I’m a top pour too. Sorry, sir.”
The outpour of innocence.
The honesty of free minds.
The looks between the senior interviewers. There seemed to be light discomfiture on one side and silent reproach on the other. I told you so.
“Kaitlyn,” one of them said, “can you go find Olivia? I believe she said she needed some help in Food Tech.”
Kaitlyn’s angelic figure gained an additional hue of brightness. No trace of a grudge for her dismissal.
“Food tech!” she exulted. In one leap she was by the door. “We’re doing chicken pies today!”
In her absence, a cold silence descended upon the room. I looked at the boys and they looked back. The depth of wordless connection was outstanding. I noticed the demure, symbolic gesture of rolling a bogey and flicking it at the interviewing panel. It carried the weight of a simple demand – just be human.
These children did not need a teacher, a teaching assistant, or an educator. They needed a friend.
My friend who had flicked a bogey was now licking the edge of the table, eyes staring at a wall behind me. A few empty chairs away the interviewing panel were taking notes. I could smell their strokes of advanced pedagogy coalescing into a voluminous diatribe about my inability to engage the children.
I struggled to remember what the topic of the conversation had been before Kaitlyn’s removal.
“So you like football,” I said, remembering the synthetic pitches I’d seen at the back of the car park. “I remember when I was in school, all we had was two rusty goal posts and a cracked concrete floor. Whoever fell could say goodbye to their knees… and don’t get me started about sliding tackles.”
“Hey, where did you go to school?”
Now this was the question. Would I tell them about my home country? There was always a time for honesty and bonding, but I could not be sure that this was it. And the question remained about what would happen if they sought to know more and the conversation rippled into my childhood, into children tied up and caned and swimming lessons in a deserted pool adorned with rat corpses. I felt talking about ties would be a gentler, albeit duller topic.
“Abroad,” I said. “Quite far.”
“Were you always a teacher or did you have other jobs?”
I had noticed the tall, quiet boy sat at the end of the table. His eloquence set him further apart and higher than his peers. He didn’t make eye contact, and turned his head even further away from me after asking his question. His superb accent suggested Caribbean heritage.
And that, I’m afraid, concluded my grounds for celebrations. The character of his question was like a punch in my chest.
“Yes,” I said. “You are right. So right. I think it is important for teachers to do other jobs before becoming teachers. Otherwise, how can they prepare you for real life, right? Right?”
In regards to my own past, I must have made something or the other up on the spot, but the shock of the question – for I was convinced I couldn’t tell the truth – got me into a light-headed, dreamy frenzy from which I recovered a few minutes later, as I was being asked the same question by the adult panel.
****
I endeavoured to recall how and what I had listed in my CV to make myself look desirable for the role.
“Marketing,” I said to Deputy Head Ms Wallis after a long break.
That had been the call centre work. I had converted selling sandwiches to teachers in a primary school as ‘learning support’, but had pushed it back in time far enough for it not to warrant a direct reference. My ex-employer, friend and nearly cell mate Paul had offered to help with a reference from a fake email account if need be. It was after all, only a formal check.
To my relief, Ms Gupta smiled and said she was impressed that I had worked with primary school children.
Ms Wallis lay the folders aside and said, “Secondary school can be different.”
Muted smiles.
“Look,” she said, “what do you do if a student comes up to your face and says that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
An insultingly cliché question, no doubt a trap, called for no different an answer.
“I’d ask them what made them say that. I would reason with the students and get to the bottom of the real question.” I opened my eyes wide, extended my arms. “It may be that they’re unhappy. They had a bad day. Or they’re reasoning well, but don’t have sufficient data.” I stood up and pointed directly at the panel. “There’s always an answer in waiting if you can ask enough whys.”
I was prepared to proceed to neckties as a barrier. They had no further questions.
Two year 8 students were brought in to take me on a tour of the multimillion new school building that Ms Wallis stressed was the apex of education in our community.
I beheld the wonderful pair. The elegance of informed innocence. It would have seemed unthinkable, in my own school days, that teachers would trust their students with such a degree of responsibility. But I was glad they did here.
This school was different. I had decided it must be one of the greatest schools in This, The World’s Greatest Country. This was Crouchford South – CCS.
“This is Geography, this is History, this is English,” the boy rattled out as we walked briskly past each department.
The girl spoke restrainedly, pausing after each sentence to battle the discomfort caused by her dental braces. “This is Music. This is Maths. This is where they found the dead teacher.”
“Pardon?” I said.
“In this room, yeah,” the boy said. “Heart attack or something.”
Endearing and applaudable, I thought, how children’s imagination can exacerbate the mundane. I wondered what had really happened that would make two unripe minds think a teacher could really die in a classroom.
I intended to raise this with my interviewers as soon as I was back from the tour, but when the time came, found myself in the presence of daunting greatness.
*****
Mr Anthony Evans, PhD, Headteacher – I had read his name on the school gate sign – was shaking my hand. He asked me what I thought of the multimillion new school building that was the apex of the community. The imposter that I was, I melted with abashment at his unduly warm welcome. Two corridors and three electric doors later, I understood that for Mr Evans this was a duly sprightly farewell.
“And thank you for coming today,” he said. “One of us will ring up all candidates later today with feedback.”
We were standing by the turnstiles, sliding doors held open by someone from reception. The morning’s hopeful breeze was now a freezing gale trying to breathe me back into the lungs of hell, into a world of jobless despair, broken dreams and a defeated return to a country of losers. The two children who had given me the tour were standing by Mr Evans, a tragic chorus to his stare of adieu.
I had to do something, say something. I had forgotten the dead teacher.
“Sir,” I said, switching focus between his tie and the boy’s, “I forgot to say…
I noticed Mr Evans had the fullest, smoothest, most symmetrical Windsor I had ever seen outside of a tie-tying video. So there was some sort of hierarchy. My hand clasped robotically at my own sweaty Windsor. Stood before a titan of education, I was at once overdressed and denuded.
I said, “I think ties are… you know…”
I paused, causing Mr Evans to frown slightly. He turned to look at the two children and then beamed back at me.
“You’re right, sir,” he said. “Absolutely right.”
He pivoted again to the student and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“Reggie-Lee,” the boy helped him.
“That’s right, Regie-Lee.” Mr Evans said. “Sort out your tie, please.”
Regie-Lee pulled and jiggled at his clip-on accessory until it fell back into its original position.
Mr Evans shook my hand again. “We like to keep things inclusive and informal when we can,” he said, “part of our proudly comprehensive ethos – but looking smart is important. Well spotted.”
******
I had not had lunch yet when the phone rang. I felt sick. I asked Ms Gupta to repeat the message a few times in case I had missed a negative somewhere in her impeccable phrasing.
I had not.
I was going to be a TA, a Teaching Assistant at Crouchford South Community Comprehensive School. A position suited to someone interested in building a career in teaching, I remembered the wording of the advert.
Interested in building a career in teaching. As if… if only…
She had already said, “Welcome to CSCCS,” and hung up when I mumbled, phone pressed hot against my ear, “Ties are a barrier…”, and dropped the phone to the floor, where it lay awhile, hammered by tears of untrammelled gratitude.
The Half-Teacher's staff room 