Back To School
After two years, another life-changing move and several changes of heart, I returned to teach yesterday. When I departed my last position; an abominably businesslike establishment, I was at the point of retiring from the profession after only eight years’ experience. Bad management, severe culture-clashes and a disillusionment harking from the ethos of education being choked by money-making machines – made it seem like yet another new career was necessary.
It must be a sign of the times that careers – as opposed to jobs – are the scarcest notions since honest tabloids, as the scramble for a chance at settling in a professional position for a lengthy few years are now like gold dust. Especially as a foreigner. So, as “needs must” is the deciding factor in this case – in other words, as financial stability in the world’s sixth-most-expensive city dictates – another stint on the supply line beckoned.
After just a couple of hours, the signposted places I’d been a hundred times or more in eight years were already being visited encore. The satisfying feeling that most of them brought was highlighted by the beautiful late winter blue sky – the overexcitement of kids in “Book Day” costumes, the regular toilet requests in class and the daily sight of a child running, tripping - then frog-leaping helplessly onto the hard concrete before the delayed loud wail….Ah, that’s when I thought “I’m back”.
Of course, the last one didn’t bring a laugh. I did the usual checking of any major injuries, with the usual “none to report” and “be on your way carefully” to follow. Children’s comments, still, can be so priceless. At the end of an art lesson taken outside in the brilliant sunshine, what I did hear was as much a sign of the times as the job selection. Innocently trundling back to class, two grade one-grade two classmates (aged between six and seven years) said
Boy 1: Yeah, my mother gets drunk.
Boy 2: Yeah, my mother gets drunk. But she’s not embarrassing.
Another was a five-year-old trying to befriend me on my yard duty, taking my hand (which in this day and age is seen as a no-no) and telling me that he'd lost his time machine in some galaxy in space, but also the Hadron Collider and how it deals with large things, in contrast to protons and neutrons which are tiny. Not one to use the word “cute” very often, but this was mind-bogglingly cute.
What was easily the winning feeling of the day, was finding that a random school was normal, with happy children enjoying childhood. No stark Tony Blair-style bureaucratic politicians in charge or outlandish targets based on children who couldn’t speak English upon entering a Year 2 class. No hokey-cokey of parents at the classroom door at 3:30pm, with an equidistant line of irrelevant questions to ask.
While all of these hopefully-vanquished demons were absent, the one sobering thought was seeing one of the little boys taking earlier snacks than the rest of the class, because he had cancer. Not only did he have cancer, he was very direct in informing me. At this point I was lucky to have asked the student teacher what his ailment could be – before he nonchalantly told me. Such statements can shock from young mouths when one is an inexperienced educator. May he and his famiy grow and defeat it over time.
This brings me to the final reassuring point. Experience. I could point to cliches and adages in reference to my own hardships. “You have to hit the bottom to reach the top”. “Rise from ashes”, blah, blah, bleurgh. As I covered a class whose teacher was on a course, the class' student teacher reminded me of all those moments, flapping and panicking – trying to impress either my training teacher or higher authorities. When told I showed a lot of experience by a student teacher, I did feel as though it was years of happiness, grief, being undermined and determination which brought me back.
As a stubborn individual, the irony of having to take a break and call it a day for a few years speaks truth for the saying “never say never”. Having seen my own father suffer major illness from the tribulations of teaching, having seen colleagues, family and friends who show marked bitterness with powers that be – on the brink of their retirements, only speaks to me in a grounded, sensible manner with the words "Don’t let it happen to you". On that note, as long as a different venue to cover is offered to me regularly, it shall be a different adventure each day. Not the dredge of needing a crane to lift me from bed each day.