Primary School Confidential (12 page)

NOT MY MONKEYS

You know that old Polish proverb, ‘Not my monkey, not my circus'? Well, that's the opposite of what you're faced with if you choose a career in primary school teaching. Suddenly you are the ringmaster of the most crazy circus of all.

A disturbing number of people think teachers have it easy, what with the short hours and the long holidays, but the reality is that teachers slog away for hours behind the scenes, require the patience of ten saints, must have a working knowledge of psychology and a mind as sharp as a bear trap.

My first realisation that teaching was no skip through the park came when I had a kindergarten class full of children who, at the beginning of the year, were all unable to do any of the following:

• Tie their shoes.

• Use scissors.

• Stand in a line.

• Open a lunchbox.

• Work a zip.

• Write their names without it being backwards.

• Remain awake after lunchtime.

But, geezers, they were adorable. Even when the nit infestation hit.

Still, it was very taxing, and being a rookie teacher, I had plenty to learn that was not covered in any of my university lectures.

Let me take you through one scenario that I survived.

As Easter drew close, I had decided to do a fun craft activity and follow it up with a little Easter egg hunt, which would then turn into a little maths lesson about counting. Seems straightforward enough, right?

I ran off the stencil, which was the template of an Easter basket, and I wrote each child's name on his or her basket (thereby saving us at least an hour). The kids were then instructed to colour in the basket, which took forever, and then cut them out. It was then I discovered that not one child in the class was capable of using a pair of scissors.

So I sat at my desk while the kids lined up with their baskets, and I cut out like a motherfucker. When I'd finished cutting, I had to fold along the dotted lines, and then use my stapler to fix the resulting basket into place. I had to do this thirty-one times.

Thirty-one times.

I was at my wits' end. What educational purpose did any of this serve, apart from me having a small breakdown?

My lesson plan was thrown out the window as the baskets took shape. After I had made thirty-one baskets, we wandered outside to find a large, stray dog of mixed breed scoffing down the tiny Easter eggs, foil and all.

Cue mass hysteria. The dog fled and I surveyed the carnage. A couple of eggs had been spared, but not enough for everyone.
I threw my hands in the air and took the crying mob back inside, where I told them that they could have free play for the rest of the day. ‘Free play' is code for ‘Do whatever the fuck you want'. Which means destroy the classroom. But I didn't care. I was over it.

Classroom management is not an easy thing to get your head around. If you expect the unexpected at every turn, you will be better equipped to survive the school day. Like, if one of the kids in your classroom turns green, stands up and announces that they don't feel particularly well, then empties the contents of their stomach and bowels simultaneously, you can pretty much assume that you are on the beginning of a gastro highway that will, in a very short time, wipe our your entire class, and end with you succumbing to it yourself.

Classroom management is about trying to make your class aware that you are waiting for their attention by standing at the front with your arms crossed, saying nothing but just waiting and waiting and waiting until one kid realises that you are pulling the old ‘I will just wait until you notice that I am waiting for you all to shut up' move and starts letting his fellow pupils know that there might be a hell of an explosion if they don't acknowledge that I am playing the waiting game.

Classroom management means being aware of the worst-case scenario for every part of your day. What if the slide projector doesn't work? What if the mums who promised to come and do reading groups don't show up? What if the strange mark on that kid's arm is actually a ringworm?

Classroom management is about using another tried and true method of gaining the class's attention: CLAP. CLAP.
CLAP-CLAP-CLAP. Do it now, as you read this book, and if there is a primary school kid within hearing distance, I bet you will hear them clap it back to you. It is ingrained in them from the age of six.

There are some teachers who are experienced guns at classroom management, who could tell you what they were planning on teaching a month out, to the minute, and which outcomes they will be focusing on from the syllabus. These are the teachers who, when you turn up to their classrooms, have the students all doing small group work in hushed tones while she or he wanders around, all nice and in control.

You see, the thing is, if kids sniff out a weakness, they will exploit it until the teacher has to flee the classroom in tears. But teachers, being humans (yes, really), are all different, and we have different ideas of what we think is acceptable behaviour.

You have to hand it to those teachers who run their classroom like the circus. Their room looks like a craft cupboard has exploded. Their desks are littered with empty coffee cups. The kids might be sitting on the floor finger-knitting while listening to Mozart. These teachers are usually dressed from head to toe in floaty garments bought at Tree of Life. They have a high tolerance for noise and chaos. One of my kid's teachers actually carried a turtle in her pocket. These teachers are golden.

I once worked with a teacher whose passion was art, and together he and his class would create amazing artworks. He would then go into his classroom every weekend to spend time mounting the kids' artworks onto carefully cut card, before laminating them and putting them up on display, so the kids would get a thrill when they came in on Monday morning.

And then there was the teacher who taught dance. She would spend hours and hours choreographing routines and teaching them to the kids in her group. She also made their costumes herself and spent her own time and money making sure that her dance group got to perform at several concerts, thus giving them a sense of pride, accomplishment and confidence.

What do Sheryl Crow, Billy Crystal and J.K. Rowling have in common? They all started out as primary school teachers.

Before Gene Simmons put together a little musical group called KISS, he taught sixth grade at a New York public school, before he was fired (allegedly for a bit of freestyling with the curriculum, replacing the works of Shakespeare with the more popular option of Spider-Man comics).

If you attended Litchfield Prep in Connecticut back in the day, your maths teacher might have been Art Garfunkel.

And Mr Sumner, a teacher from Cramlington, England, is quoted as saying, ‘One of the most important jobs in the planet is to teach children. Our entire future depends on children being educated.'

Wise words indeed . . . STING!

Famous or not, primary school teachers play one of the most important roles in modern society, and we neither respect them nor pay them enough.

According to a 2014 OECD survey, the best place to be a primary school teacher in terms of salary and workload is the tiny country of Luxembourg, where the average starting salary of a qualified primary teacher comes in at US$52,000 compared to Australia's US$34,664.

Interestingly, Luxembourg also has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, and consumes more alcohol per head than any other European country. So the place is full of smart, well-paid, slightly pissed people. Go Luxembourg!

And speaking of wages and conditions, this brings me to a subject that a lot of parents find irritating, but I for one fully support: the teachers strike.

As a kid, I loved a teachers strike. Mum would cross herself as she went out to work, leaving my brother, sister and me to build forts out of the couch cushions and feast on the cooking chocolate that she used to hide on the top of the fridge.

These days, when a strike is called, I hear other parents crack the shits, complaining that teachers are selfish, and it takes every fibre of my being not to unleash a tirade of shame on those whingers. For teachers, a strike usually represents a desperate last-ditch effort to win some miniscule change to wages or conditions.

The other thing that must be considered is the amount of extra time our teachers must spend trying to keep up with technology. When I was a chalkie, we literally relied on chalk and a blackboard to deliver our lessons. Four classrooms shared a fancy little gadget called an overhead projector. These days, it's all smartboards, personal tablets, apps and anything else that is shiny. These are invariably full of razzle-dazzle, but first you need to learn how to work the darn things. So you need to go to workshops, many of which eat into your weekends and your evenings. But for the dedicated teacher, it is all a part of the job.

The great Maya Angelou once said, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget
how you made them feel,' and this is certainly true of a great teacher. I remember beaming when getting a merit certificate, watching my teacher as she clapped me onto that stage. These poignant memories stick with you, and those feelings never really ever go away. You think about it. Who was your favourite teacher? I'll bet you can still remember their name.

Oh, don't get me wrong! I also recall a time in Year 1 being ordered out into the corridor for ten minutes due to my incessant chatter. It was, at the time, the most shameful thing that had ever happened to me. I remember standing outside the classroom wailing, thinking about how I had let my teacher down, sure that Mum would find out and would forbid me watch
The Wonderful World of Disney
on Sunday night.

After a while, the teacher stuck her head out into the corridor to check on me. She was so horrified to see how distraught I was that she raced over and hugged me until my tears had dried. She told me not to worry, and that everything was fine. I had just talked too much, that's all.

She made me feel better. That is a big deal for a seven-year-old drama queen. I went back into the classroom, and she winked at me as I took my place on the floor. That wink has stayed with me to this very day. And I remembered it, remembered the impact it had on me, as I went on to take my place behind the teacher's desk and became the ringmaster of my own circus.