It's not just me of course; lots of currents wash you to this point. Good planning gives you nice periods of calm, although you cannot have this all the time. Same for good things happening to your charges outside of the classroom, things you can't control but which work in your favour, like kids not having being able to afford a can of Red Bull for breakfast or the sun shining on the playground.
Either way, this morning, things fell into place. I was so comfy teaching Period 1, playing the buffoon and enjoying myself in what must have been spot-on diction because everybody was working very hard and in good humour. At times i could afford to sit down and chat about work in a very leisurely manner. I notice that one girl has a very pink heart-shaped face; a couple of others are wearing so much make-up they look embalmed. Tom down the front has written nothing in his planning boxes but chats quietly to Chris who is working on his special needs mini-computer.
Period 2 turns up, some littler kids, and they too are very jolly. They look pleased to see me and come in and are keen to do the stuff after practically no persuasion. It's a task to do with constructing really interesting sentences in response to some 'Spy File' images, from a bunch I put up on the board and have them copy into their books.
They like the words and we ad lib about the meanings for half an hour, people talking about their own experience of the words. The words include SHADY, PARANOIA, CONFINED, ANONYMOUS, VERTIGO and the images are of helicopters seen between high buildings from the street below, of shadowy carparks under neon lights, of a blurred figure walking away down a corridor.
The kids are all listening respectfully to one another so I roll with it. The are some decent expositions. I'm not sure which word gets this girl talking but I remember it comes after a number of the kids in the class (i take a straw poll out of interest) tell me they have brothers or fathers in the military, which we come to because, i now notice, many of the words on the board have military connotations.
This girl tells me her brother went to Iraq and how he took his mobile phone with him. She tells me how he he was captured one day and how his phone was taken and how his captors used the phone to speak to the family and then they hung him.
I feel the room enter some sort of descent but then get a grip and find myself pursuing this helplessly, whether infact she just said just that. The rest of the class aren't sure either and from listening they move into a phase of careful listening as she retells the story and there's like a clench and i find i'm pinning myself against the whiteboard as somebody asks, 'But they didn't kill him right?'. To which she says, 'Yeah, they killed him.'
We pause: there is very little anybody can muster for at least five seconds before, unbelievably, somebody wants to trump this and some boy brings up fucking Joseph Fritzl. It is then that i draw a line and stagger on into the planned part of the lesson where there is some excellent work done.
I bring this up in the staffroom as soon as i can and the first advice from The Old Hands is: 'Doubt'. I don't want to doubt - why would anybody lie about this sort of thing? - but when i voice this concern somebody says to me plainly, 'They do it for the attention.'
What does this mean? This girl doesn't strike me as the grasping sort. Somebody tells me that she doesn't have much self-esteem.
What does this mean? That i am credulous, that i am gullible, that i am the sort of person who not only looks like they might be the sort of person to provide the forum for this sort of fantasy to be shared in the classroom and will gullibly take a caring interest in the child after the event? Are children really this nuts? Is this something to do with my fiction, my imagination? Is this actually nothing at all to do with me?
The teachers are right, because they back themselves against the kids all the time. Children are dangerous.
A woman I do not know from around the school nips into my room to find me from time to time to ask if I've joined a teaching union yet, clutching a raft of papers. When i say i haven't she gives me a look i find it hard to describe but which contains a certain amount of menace and some very grave concern. I know I am meant to read into this the darkest potentialities of the teaching nightmare, the allegations of kid-hitting and sexual abuse, of court cases and demolished reputations; but i at least partly refuse. I am naive. Because children are insane.
I think back. After the class I go over to the girl who told the story and sit down and say how shocked and sorry i am to have heard this news. I think this is the right thing to do. I say how it was a very difficult thing to have had to say in the class and she tells me a little about how difficult it has been but i am basically preambling into asking her if she wants me to get somebody to talk to her about this.
Some of her girlfriends have loitered and start eating crisps. One of them wants to tell me about something her dad did but she can't because he might go to jail. They seem happy enough talking about this. Something about this is awful. It is now that I pull the plug and brightly tell everybody to leave.
This is a trap. It is just attention seeking, if you are naive and interested there are significant dangers attached, of course. How could i be so dumb?
But what if her brother really died in Iraq? I do a little research at home.
There are a number of dead soldiers from the area, listed on the various sites you can find out this sort of information online. But i cannot find one which matches the grim specifics of the case in question. Or maybe one. I will check with the school properly tomorrow because it is very important.
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