The Classroom Diaries - Chapter 6

When he would look back on the day's events he would wonder why he spent so much time worrying about what he'd just done. There was something much more important to worry about.

His desk lay scattered as Armstrong strode, loins all girded, in for another day. The classroom windows ran along the back of his desk and they faced west, meaning he always felt he was facing Mecca. The classroom was lit up yellow by the blinking echoes of fluorescent tubes, strangely welcoming on this bright, cold April day.  Apart from the usual exploded pens, discarded worksheets and half eaten rubbers there were a few extras for him this morning. A treasure trove! A crap treasure trove. What looked like two carved soap figures embracing lay next to a half stuffed pencil sharpener and a stick of Juicy Fruit. ‘Ahh juicy fruit.’ He stuck the gum in his mouth, top drawered the pencil sharpener (sod em I spend enough on pens I never get back) and smoothed the shavings off the green soap figures. Finding the least hardened lump of white-tac (blu-tac was not allowed as the walls were white. ‘Why can’t we use blu-tac?’ he remembered asking. ‘Are you going to pay for the walls?’ came the curt suited reply) he fastened the loving couple to his monitor. Probably confiscated from some kid playing with them anyway. My monitor’s now the lost and found.

The day passed fairly normally. Two suspected heart attacks and a mad dash to the toilets before something touched cloth. He was being melodramatic. (Get a grip.) The low winter sun was gently warming his back. He was admiring the staples again when Lucy sidled in almost silently,

‘Boo!’

‘Jesus! Oh fuck sorry, damn, Lucy hello!’

‘Sorry sir, can I ask you something?’

‘Yes, pet?’ Maybe he shouldn’t call her that.

‘I’m having trouble with the essay, um controlled assessment. I just don’t know where to start.’

‘Well that can be the hardest part. Have you written a plan?’ It wasn’t like old fashioned coursework. Nowadays kids had to write essays under ‘controlled conditions’ in class. He could almost hear the clocks strike thirteen.

‘I thought you could help me with that,’ she flushed.

She sat down and they got started. Her immaculate, butterfly clipped A5 notebook contained pages and pages of painstaking (for whom he didn’t know) poems he studiously ignored as she ‘accidently’ opened the wrong page. After the fifth time she got the message. Twenty minutes later they had a semblance of an essay plan.

‘How’s that then?’ He hoped this would lead to an ending.

‘Oh thank you, Sir. What would that get?’

‘Couldn’t tell you, pet. You’d need to write it out in full.’

‘Can I start now?’

Damn.

So began the afternoon. Lucy sat two desks back and did her best impression of someone concentrating and finding it difficult. He prayed that no questions were forthcoming. He wouldn’t strictly be allowed to answer them anyway. None of this was strictly ok. She was remarkably quiet. Armstrong made his excuses after about half an hour and made his way to the staffroom. He could breathe as he left. Every time he was alone in a room with a kid, no matter the gender, his eyes would tire from watching the door. He should tell them all to sod off but where would that leave him?

The staffroom was empty. Most souls were beavering away in the yellow half light of the headache tubes. He wondered what would be happening in the pockets of the school. Should his ears be burning? The SLT tables and the TA chairs would be wobbling under an arse making a point that most listening would be too befuddled or scared to disagree with. And so the pressure built. Pound by pound. Initiative by initiative. Decimal point by point. Some of the younger staff smiled as it built – happy in the knowledge that this pressure would release after an inspection. That they were ‘real teachers’ now. Armstrong laughed shortly to himself. Inspections meant two things – ‘You’re shit so do this’ or ‘You’re good so do this to improve and maintain.’ He composed the title of his memoirs on a scrap of discarded photocopy – ‘Memoirs of a Guy-cher.’ Nah. ‘The Diary of Anne Frankenstein’. That didn’t even make sense. ‘My life in the classroom - because I don’t have one outside of it.’ He’d better go back in and see Lucy. If she died or something it would be 0.7% off his A*-C figures.

She was still sat there as if she hadn’t moved. Her pink tongue was thoughtfully clamped between her teeth and poked out of her mouth childishly. How the hell can a kid like this from leafy Hampshire be expected to wrangle with the racism of 1930’s depression ravaged Alabama? Ah well, in his wisdom the Secretary of Education had seen fit to remove all ‘Non-British Literary Heritage’ texts from next year’s curriculum. ‘But sir didn’t you spend a lesson telling us that Scout’s ancestors were British?’ From the mouths of babes...

‘How you getting on, Luce?’

‘Lucy.’

‘Sorry, how you getting on, Lucy?’

‘It’s almost done, Sir. Can you read it?’

‘Well, not really supposed to...’ She looked horrified. Boys were easy, they would shrug their shoulders, walk out and transfer their anguish to the nearest tin can or small head. Girls were different. This one in particular. She would spend the rest of the evening agonising over whether it was good enough, add a few more scars to the ladder he presumed was forming on her arm and the rest of the week's education would go disappear in an almighty huff aimed at him and everyone around her.

‘I’ll just give it a scan.’

It wasn’t bad. He told her where she could improve it and to clarify some areas. She leaned in and seemed to breathe with him at times. Odd child. In a wonderful teenage non-sequiter she asked him for some chewing gum. Puzzled, he replied he didn’t have any. She smiled.

When she had gone he went back to the staples. Their little broken backs made tiny dents in his wall displays. As he turned, a reflection caught his eye and there, laying all alone on the detritus of his desk, was a stick of gum. (Thought I had that this morning?) He tidied it away with the pencil sharpener in the top drawer, re-fixed the soap couple so they faced out of the classroom, towards Mecca, and gathered his things to leave.