The Nurturing School
Not my circus, not my monkeys!
You may consider the following to be a fiction. There seems plenty of evidence that it must be. It must be false. It would be an obscenity to think that this ludicrous story was in any way a fact based account of any school.
When I arrived I realised that the management team were not exactly qualified or respected, but they had friends in very high places. The school numbers had been dwindling. That was no secret. Coming from a Pastoral Care background the HT was not in possession of a Secondary Teaching certificate but they were married to someone who was very good friends with someone who was extremely powerful. The new agenda across the city was “Nurturing and Inclusive”. These are lovely words. These are warm and fuzzy words. The school they had come from were glad to see the back of them.
My new room, his room, was above the boiler room. It was unbearably hot. Almost impossible to teach in. It held his ghost. I was warned about how badly he had been treated. “Watch out!”“You’re just like him” “The kids loved him””He saw right through the bullshit” “ “they chased him”. Foolishly I laughed these warnings off.
In areas of deprivation there are many barriers. In addition to these often insurmountable barriers the new team had decided to create an experiment where the little ones would be infantilised in “Nurture” classes. A “Nurture room”. An entire school year would be lost. They would not need to wander around in a big person’s school. They had lots of coloured pencils and coloured paper. Simplified and patronising. The teachers went to where the young people were. There were vague folders which the adults had created for each child, filled with fluffy ideas and PSE tasks which nobody could understand. They didn’t even need to write their own names. We did that for them. They didn’t have to be independent. Didn’t need to learn resilience. Didn’t have to face that important transition from Primary into Secondary. Didn’t need to be controlled. You might think this was a grand idea. The teacher I was replacing was in agreement with me on this. As far as he was concerned: it was grade A bullshit. The overwhelmingly inclusive and nurturing process meant that the teacher was giving up control of their subject, which meant giving up control of the classroom. Many of the small humans did not respond so well to this process either.
I’m teaching in one of these “nurture classes” and a very old man comes in. Interrupting my lesson. A tray of chocolate Easter eggs. “Take an egg!” “Have an egg!” He barks at them. Nobody wants one of his chocolate Easter eggs. I have to stop my lesson. “Take an egg!” He barks some more. Nobody takes an egg. Smart kids. If I want to use the computers with my students I need to request weeks in advance with Easter Egg man with dates and times and class numbers. I think he is senile. There’s something not right. You never get to take the students to the computer labs. There’s always some “reason” we cannot get in. “Them kids just wreck the keyboards” “They can’t use the room now!” “You didn’t request the room in time”. He is supposed to be a supply teacher but he thinks he is head of the Maths Dept. He is married to one of the Senior Management Team. SMT are happy enough to have computer labs blocked. “Nurturing”. SMT are not interested when young female teachers complain about him walking into their classes unannounced. “Nurturing”. The young female teachers feel uneasy around him. He gives them the creeps. SMT do not seem to mind that he is telling the Maths department what they will and won’t do. He left his wallet in his car. He gives his car keys to a young girl and sends her out to the car park to get his wallet. SMT don’t seem too bothered with that. I’m alarmed. Nobody questions it.
Mr Mouse, my line manager, follows all commands from his line manager - Easter Egg’s wife. She has a face like a twisted lemon wearing a little too much lipstick. She is wearing a floral shirt except the thing she thinks is a flower stem just looks like an erect penis to everyone else in the building.
Mr Mouse has bought some sweets to share with his Dept. Two senior boys are working in the Staff Base. We talk. I tell them to help themselves to a sweet each from the giant tin. Mr Mouse sees they have taken sweets and pursues them down the stairs. Chases them out onto the football pitches. Haranguing them. They don’t want to drop me in it: bless them. The PE dept forever more shall refer to this incident as “SweetieGate”. Lunchtime comes and Mr Mouse is playing around with the flap on the fire alarm switch. The fire alarm goes off. We all troop outside in the rain.
Mr Mouse has been told to get on my case. Same way they got on his case. I don’t follow orders and neither did he. He spoke his mind. He was common. Working class. He asked too many questions. I have too high an opinion of myself. My lessons seem random. Why did I talk about Trump when I was teaching Orwell… Are you kidding me?
The process is too common to simply be coincidence. The teacher is told they are failing or there have been “complaints”. Nothing they can go into at present. The teacher is told not to speak to anyone about it: no-one other than a union representative. Weeks can go by. Often times the manager will deliberately start this process at the beginning of a holiday so there are an excruciating number of days of worry and misery added to the process. They are doing a number on these teachers.
They did a number on him, the man I had replaced. He died of cancer two years later. A ghost. Over the next three years I watch another teacher, and another, being “taken out”. Good people. Kind people. The woman who put a plant on my desk on my first day is moved to another school after months of undermining and sniping and observed lessons. The religious fellow who is gentle and patient is made sick. After months of illness and absence they move him to another school. Later he will become a minister. Mr Mouse struggles himself. He never had control. He was bullied at school as a kid. Now they are setting to work on me. I think I’m tough. I’m in control. I’m holding out. It’s almost the end of term when the HT suddenly announces his early retirement. This is very very surprising news to everyone. What has happened? Why now?
When the new term begins, Easter Egg Man’s wife is Temporary Acting Head. The police are in the building. The police have set up a room in the school. The police are questioning every one of the SMT team. There is no sign of Easter Egg Man.
According to the cleaners (these are the most reliable source of information in any school) Easter Egg Man has been charged with offences against young girls: in this school and his previous school. Years of accusations swept under the rug by SMT. The acting HT remains in their position. Yes. I know. It has to be fiction, doesn’t it.
Easter Egg Man is struck from the Teaching Register and added to the Sex Offenders register. A senior female pupil tells me he was always creepy, always leering, did things which made girls feel uncomfortable. I have no reason not to believe her. The Mouse has run away. Easter Egg Man’s wife gets her own Headship “somewhere” and later hits the newspapers for another entirely different scandal: photographed by pupils as she flys off on a holiday in the middle of the school term. These fuckers are shameless. We give them power. We are as bad as they are. The “Nurture Rooms” return to being French and English classes once again. The experiment, this one at least, is over.
These are mediocre but most likely fictional people of course. Nobody could be so cynical or so stupid. No person working in education could get into positions of power where nobody challenges or questions them. Where decent human beings are crushed or become complicit in the cruelty. Where the worries and concerns of young female students are dismissed and their voices silenced. Such things could never happen.