The Tearoom Six
Kids are not to be trusted. Never forget that.
The reason I say this is because despite being quite a good girl at school, give me any job which included an element of trust and I would simply blow it. Especially given the presence of a buddy whipping me up.
Some key phrases seem to have had an almost chemical effect on me.
They were:
“Awww, go onnnn…”,
“C’mon Misssy, it’ll be a laugh”
And my all time button pusher,
“I dare ya”
In Primary Seven when I was 11 years old, each week a pair of girls would be on coffee duty for the teachers. Aside from flouting the laws governing equal opportunities in a cavalier fashion, (like, can boys not make a cup of tea?) it was a chance to get away from maths or somesuch bollocks 15 minutes early.
The deal was that two 11 year old pupils would make teas and coffees to order for all the school’s teachers, in the combination staff room/headmistress’s office. It was a quite a small school, so we’re really only talking about nine coffees… tops.
I could burble on about the teachers taking complete advantage of our child labour but really the week you were on “tea and coffee duty” was, in truth, a bloody great week.
At first, the casual vandalism was slight and unimaginative. One of us would maybe spit in the kettle or wipe a bogey in the jacket pocket of a less popular teacher, but pretty soon the whole thing got out of hand. Ahh, the addictive power of hysterical, wet-your-pants laughter.
Now, we never nicked anything, I want to make that much clear. Destruction and slow burning pranks were more our bag. Even when you were not on tea duty, you would wait to hear stories at playtime of the offences committed by your tea-making compatriots. We got away with it for months.
There was one particular teacher we didn’t like, Miss Mathers. Her nickname was “Muggy”, quite why I don’t know, but it suited her. She looked like a hippy with lank henna’d long hair, no bra, (complete with pendulous boobs like a Masai woman) a muslin collar-less shirt and floaty skirt. This outward appearance would lull you into a false sense of security. Outside she was a clean living version Janis Joplin; inside she was a dragon. She kept order in her class by simply screaming in the faces of kids to an extent that their hair would be blown back like in a cartoon.
Still she had never done anything to me, so why did I feel the need to fill her rubber mac pockets up with washing up liquid, when I eventually decided that spitting in them wasn’t going to be enough for me?
Bizarrely (OK predictably) , this was the prank that got us all caught and banned from the “privilege” of doing the teas. Which was sad really, because we’d had a good run.
As the six Primary 7 girls stood before the Headmistress, each not owning up nor ratting on one another (just like in Prisoner Cell Block H, we weren’t no “Laa-aagers”) we felt strangely cheated as the washing up liquid was one of the tamer things we did.
I almost felt like saying, “But we did much worse than that! C’mon! What about the pinhole in the student teacher’s condom that was in his jacket pocket? What about the prank phone calls from the Headmistresses desk? What about dead mouse smuggled in from home that we’ve put in the staff toilet cistern that you’ll only find out about in six months when you finally work out what that stench is??”
Never trust kids. Especially girls.
Gloating the night away!
A lot of you may hate me from this point forward. But I’m going to do it anyway
Woooooooooh Hoooooo! School’s Out for Summer! SIX WEEKS! Get In!
Don’t expect me to apologise. In fact I am going to justify why I and the other teachers and lecturers of this country are defiantly not going to apologise for our six weeks.*
1. Two degrees we need. Count ‘em! Two! Doctors and lawyers only need one and they get paid shitloads and people make TV shows about them that make what they do look cool. What do we get? “Grange Hill”? “Teachers”?
2. We are to blame for everything apparently.
“Oh I’ve got a shit life because the teachers at school didn’t like me!”.
Oh, dry your eyes! You were probably a horrible little shit. Your workmates probably hate you too.
“It’s the fault of the schools that our children have no respect anymore and rampage through the town at night with their pants on their heads and scare grannies!”
Thanks Daily Express, love your work.
3. The pay’s not magic, to be honest. I refer you to the two degrees again. Costly business that, getting two degrees. In Europe our French and German counterparts get nearly twice what we’re on. Education is valued over there.
No, really valued, not just by some muppet saying the word “Education” three times in a speech and calling it a policy. By actually valuing those that choose to do it for a living. With actual cash.
4. People are horrible about teachers. We’ve a lot of stick to put up with. First off, we get criticised for our career choice.
That “ Those who can’t do, teach” phrase. That’s absolutely horrible! Who the blazes came up with that? I want to drive to their house, with a dog turd in a paper bag, then set it on fire on their doorstep, ring the doorbell and run away.
Then sit in my car laughing at them when they come to the door and stamp the fire out with their slippered feet. Not that I’ve ever done that before, you understand.**
So anyone who knows the originator of that gem, let me know.
5. Every five minutes we have to completely change everything we do, because some vote-whore somewhere decides we must “change” because we’re shit.
Like the whole reading thing. Some smarty pants reads an article on the train to his dirty weekend away with his parliamentary diary secretary and decides that using phonics to each kids how to read was crap.*
“We must change it, it’s crap. Never mind the fact that children have been learning to read this way for decades. Never mind the fact that the teachers are in opposition (whinging bastards). I declare Phonics outdated as children now are completely different than children then. It’s a Darwinian thing. Well known scientific fact. Read it in “Razzle” on the train to my dirty weekend away with my horse-faced secretary ”
Ten years later kids can’t read properly.
“It’s the fault of the teachers. They are quite clearly crap!”
And then, quietly, “Let’s sneak phonics back in when nobody’s looking …shhhh! If anyone notices it we’ll blame it on the opposition…or even better, the teachers”
So six weeks of WELL EARNED time away from teaching your kids and making sure they can all do important stuff by the time they are spat out into the big bad world. Don’t begrudge us a wee bit of a rest. Those hols and sharing our working hours with the funniest, liveliest, most important people out there are the only perks we get!
Let the barrage begin in the comments box!
* Yes, yes, I know you all work hard too, but them’s the breaks!
** It wasn’t me that was a deliquent, it’s cos I had bad schooling.
*** They never got rid of phonics in Scotland. We can’t play football but, boy can we still read!
I was a teenage Pornmonger (wait til the Googlers see THAT one!)
In 1989 I lived in Cologne in Germany for a year. I was 18/19, and worked as an English Language teaching Assistant in a grammar school in the outskirts of the city. I had, when all is said and done, a pretty good year. I met lots of great people, did lots of great things and generally had a bit of a laugh at the expense of the, as it was then, West German government.
The fact that I had to show up for five and a half days and work at a grammar school, was only a minor inconvenience. The fact that most of my students were the same age as me caused a couple of problems. I may tell you about the more obvious one some other time…..
However, today I am reminded of one particular problem as I read a news item today on IMDB about a teacher who showed the film “Brokeback Mountain” to her high school students. The female teacher is being sued by the grandparents of some of the teenage kids, as the film contains scenes of homosexual lurve action. Here’s the link, if you’re interested in the details. it’s four or five stories down the page:
http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2007-05-14/#3
Well, been there, done that! I showed “My Beautiful Launderette” to my Year 8 class (18 year olds). Here’s a quick summary for those of you who don’t remember or maybe haven’t seen “My Beautiful Launderette”.
The film stars Daniel Day Lewis and Saeed Jaffrey and is set in Thatcher’s Britain. It concerns the dealings of an Indian ex-pat entrepreneur (Jaffrey) and his nephew (Gordon Warnecke) whom he places in charge of his latest business acquisition; the launderette. Behind the scenes Uncle is trying to marry off Nephew to other Cousin, unaware that Nephew is getting it on in the back room of the launderette with local skinhead sexy-pants, Daniel Day Lewis.
My reason for showing the film? Well it was, your Honour, entirely innocent. I had, in consultation with the head of English, decided to deliver a project on British culture in the political climate of the eighties. Up until that point we had looked at music, specifically the more intelligent lyrical efforts of “The The”, “The Waterboys” and “The Smiths”. We had watched some excellent TV programmes, like “Boys from the Blackstuff”, “Edge of Darkness” and before-it-got-shit Brookside (it used to be great, honest!). Basically it was a thinly veiled ruse to play music and watch telly and chat about them afterwards.
I decided to show Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears “Launderette” because it was about multicultural eighties Britain. Oh… and it was cracking, to boot.
The students loved it….until the English Head walked into the class just before the gay sex scene came on, cueing the longest five minutes of my life. After the scene got going he switched off the TV.
MisssyT, as I was then, was summoned to the Headmaster’s office the next day. Early. He was the only person that called me Fraulein T. Everyone else used my first name.
I was to have all video privileges suspended indefinitely. I would consult my Mentor (teacher in charge of me) on everything I gave out to the students. I was made to feel like a porn peddler. I tried to put it in context. He wasn’t interested.
The next week the students asked to see the end of the film. I told them that we couldn’t and I wasn’t allowed to show any more films. They were a bit fed up about it, but not enough to ask their headmaster for an explanation, or fight my corner. It was only school after all, and watching a video was better than doing real work. But if real work had to be done, they would get on with it.
I saw the film a few years ago on telly and was surprised at how tame that scene was. Perhaps I should be glad that it was 1989 and not 15 years later when I would’ve had “Queer as Folk”, “The L Word” or “Sex and the City” to choose from!.
Apparently the year I left, the headmaster had opted not to take on an English Assistant for the foreseeable future.
I must have hit a nerve…..
