Chapter 20
20
With a quarter of an hour of the fifty-minute lesson already gone, I gave the kids instructions and, under Joel’s watchful eye, the group gathered in front of me. I took them through a series of drama warm-ups with the intention of at least wearing some of them out physically, if not mentally.
For Year 9, the drama lesson should have focus on melodrama, comedy and exaggeration. My lesson plan had been to focus on these elements but I knew, jumping straight into this work, I was on a hiding to nothing and, instead, did the sort of stuff I’d used previously with much younger children.
Some of these kids were so unfit: mums or dads driving them to school; their breakfast, if any, a Mars bar and a bottle of pop consumed in the car while plugged into iPhones and iPads. Most of the St Mede’s playing fields had been sold off decades ago, and persuading the pupils into the regulation games kit and onto what bit of grass was left was, according to Petra, a constant battle.
So in the time I had left, I introduced name games and team-building games and kept the fitness required to a minimum. I think we were all surprised when the bell for the end of the session sounded and we’d made some progress. This was not going to be easy, but at least the kids thought I was somebody famous and I’d managed to survive a lesson with the worst class in the school.
My knee was beginning to give me gyp, but I gathered my things and made my way to the staffroom for coffee.
‘Have you survived?’ Petra asked, eyebrow raised as I fell into a chair and she passed me a mug of coffee and a Twix.
‘Just about.’ I decided to be honest. ‘I wouldn’t have, if I’d not had some help from one of the older kids.’
‘Oh?’
‘Joel Sinclair?’
‘Ah.’
‘What do you mean: Ah ?’ I raised my own eyebrow in her direction. ‘He soon gave that Year 9 lot short shrift.’
‘Well, he would.’
‘Would he?’
‘He’s an exceptionally bright boy…’
‘And has the potential to be a superb dancer, from the little I saw.’
‘Hmm.’ Petra’s eyes narrowed.
‘Hmm, what? What?’
‘He’s a gang member.’
‘Gang member?’ I laughed. ‘Aren’t all kids in gangs? I know I used to be. What were we called…? The Beddingfield Barbies? Yes, that was it.’
‘Presumably when you were at junior school?’ Petra asked. ‘And you had secret codes and knitted badges and were best friends forever, deliberately leaving out the kids who nobody liked and who were always chosen last for rounders?’
‘Something like that.’ I laughed again. ‘I suppose we were a bit mean to the ones who didn’t pass muster.’
‘Yes, well, this is a bit more serious. Joel’s already been up in front of the youth court for possession with intent to supply. His dad’s in prison for the same sort of stuff and his mates, seemingly, are big into OC. Our worry is that they’re now grooming Joel.’
‘OC?’
‘Organised crime. Where’ve you been , Robyn?’ Petra frowned. ‘I went over all this with you yesterday in Safeguarding.’
‘Well, I didn’t think it would actually be happening here, in Beddingfield. Little Micklethwaite,’ I corrected myself. ‘I assumed it was just precautionary stuff.’
‘As I say, where’ve you been? We have to be police and social workers as well as teachers and constantly on our guard in all schools, but particularly ones like St Mede’s.’
‘Ones like St Mede’s?’ I stared at Petra. ‘And I’ve encouraged Sorrel to come here? With all her problems?’
‘Far better than the pupil referral unit in town, which, from what I hear, is a hotbed of trouble.’
All too soon, break was over and I joined the streams of kids making their way to their next lesson. I was down for a double lesson of English with Year 7 and, while the curriculum I was being expected to teach appeared dull, I’d done my homework and was well prepared.
Compared to the Year 9 drama class, these new-to-St-Mede’s-kids were pliable, still finding, not only their feet, but their way around the school.
‘You’re late,’ I barked at the bespectacled lad who was only just making his way into the classroom, determined I wasn’t standing for any nonsense from the get-go.
‘Sorry, miss, I got lost… and… and…’ He broke down in tears. ‘And…’ he sniffed, holding up a brand-new white trainer, which he’d just retrieved from his sports bag ‘…she’s shit in me shoe again.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ I stared at the kid, thinking if the English lesson had been focusing on alliteration, we’d have been off to a flying start.
‘Uggh!’
‘Gross, miss!’
‘Oh, pooh…!’
A chorus of distaste and revulsion spread round the room like wildfire. (Similes, then?)
‘Who did this?’ I asked, glaring at the rest of these eleven-year-olds. ‘And all of you, stop that noise right now.’ Amazingly, they did, their eyes moving from me to the poor kid – Alfie, according to the curling name sticker on his blazer – snivelling in front of me.
Was he going to be a grass? The class held its collective breath.
‘Write down who did it?’ I suggested. ‘But first, go and put that trainer outside and we’ll deal with it later. And the rest of you, you have just five minutes to write down as many authors as you can think of.’
‘Come on, Alfie.’ Once he’d returned to the classroom, sans stinky trainer, I placed paper and pencil in front of him.
‘Little Shove Horn?’ I whispered, staring down at Alfie as he pushed the paper back towards me.
Alfie nodded, wiping his eyes.
‘It’s his baby sister, miss,’ the class chorused. ‘Siobhan. Little Siobhan. She’s really cute.’
Wanting to giggle, as well as thanking God I didn’t have to hunt out and bollock the perpetrator, I turned once more to the class. ‘OK, we have fronted adverbials on the menu today.’
‘Is that what’s for dinner, miss? I’m right hungry, me.’ A tall child who looked as if he really was in need of a good meal shouted out from the back.
‘Well, for a start, let’s not have any calling out. Jack, is it?’ I scrutinised his name written in childish lower case on his sticky label, which, after almost two weeks of wear, was looking pretty tatty. I turned to the class. ‘You’re at high school now, and you’ll have had St Mede’s behaviour policy explained to you? Yes? No?’
Several heads nodded at me in response, but it was clear some of the kids didn’t know what I was talking about.
‘C1,’ I reminded Jack and the rest of the class, ‘is a verbal warning issued if you shout out or waste the opportunity to learn as well as damage others’ opportunities .’ I’d learned this little homily off by heart the previous evening and could already spout it verbatim.
Blank faces all round.
‘Miss—’ a hand was raised ‘—d’you mean we’ll be in the doodah if we muck about?’
I wanted to laugh. At least he’d had the sense not to say in the shit . ‘Absolutely, young man,’ I said with a straight face. ‘So, let’s get on. Sit up, you can’t listen and learn slouched over your desks. So, no, we don’t eat fronted adverbials, however hungry we might be. We use them in our writing.’
‘I hate writing, miss,’ Jack shouted out, but at least had accompanied this with a raised hand.
Ignoring him, I went on, ‘You will have all been taught what a fronted adverbial is at your primary school. You’ll have needed to know them for your SPAG SATS exam, but let’s have a reminder. Anyone remember?’ I looked round hopefully but was met with a sea of blank stares, eyes dropping onto wooden desks as my own attempted to meet each one in turn.
‘No? OK, let’s break the phrase down. Fronted? Frontal?’
‘Full frontal, miss? That’s rude, my mum says.’ The tiny little girl on the front row sporting a perfect pair of blonde plaits looked most put out.
‘Just means in the front .’ I smiled. ‘Now, we all know what an adverb is, don’t we?’
We obviously didn’t.
‘OK, a verb?’
‘A doing word?’ A red-haired lad raised his hand.
‘Exactly. OK, I want a doing word from every one of you.’
‘Eat.’
‘Munch.’
‘Chew.’
‘Doesn’t have to be about eating,’ I remonstrated.
‘Breakfast.’
‘No, that’s not really…’
‘Dinner.’
‘Hungry…’
‘No!’
‘Pizza…’
‘Whoah, whoah.’ I put my own hands up to stop them. ‘You can’t pizza something…’
‘I have pizza every night for my tea.’
A hand shot up. ‘Miss, there’s a bug on my desk.’ The girl stood, scraping back her chair in dramatic horror. ‘I’ve got arachnophobia,’ she explained proudly.
‘I’ve got eczema,’ another said, holding up an arm with a rolled-back shirtsleeve and scratching dutifully at the red rash on his wrist.
‘OK, OK, what’s the bug doing ?’ I asked, in an attempt to get back to the lesson in hand.
‘Crawling, miss,’ the kid in front bellowed.
‘And how’s it crawling?’ I asked.
‘Quickly, miss.’
‘That’s an adverb. Great, let’s have more.’
‘Silently.’
‘Crazily.’
‘Sexily,’ a boy named Stefan called out, crossing his eyes in what I assumed he thought the throes of passion required.
Hoots of mirth all round.
‘So, bugs.’ Thinking on my feet, I decided to abandon bloody boring fronted adverbials, clapping out a rhythm as I spoke:
‘Bed bugs, red bugs, crawling on your head bugs.
Rat bugs, bat bugs, riding round in hat bugs.
Blue bugs, glue bugs, those that give you flu bugs.’
I turned to the whiteboard, writing as the kids gave me ideas:
‘Pink bugs, sink bugs, swimming in your ink bugs
Stew bugs, poo bugs…’
‘Really?’
‘Flush ’em down the loo bugs.’
We were on a roll and I was enjoying myself as much as they were. With five minutes of the lesson to go, the kids stood, clapping out the rhythm, clicking fingers, patting knees and moving to the beat while acting out the words.
I looked up at the open classroom door where Mason Donoghue, accompanied by two other adults, stood smiling, totally engrossed in the lesson. Mason put two thumbs up before moving away.
‘That were great, miss,’ Jack said. ‘Are you tekking us for English all the time?’
I had, it seemed, survived the first morning in my new job.
By the end of the school day, I felt I’d never been away from teaching. You’re not a probationary teacher, I constantly reminded myself, and, gaining confidence with each class, I went for it, keeping order as much as I could. In a Year 11 GCSE English class studying Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , I finally felt I’d found my feet. I decided we’d spend the last half-hour of the lesson changing one of the pertinent chapter’s narrative into script, letting the main characters act out the story.
I’d been surprised to see Joel Sinclair sitting at the back of the room – I hadn’t expected the alleged gang member to have any interest in studying the nineteenth-century English novel – but, giving no indication we’d met earlier in the day in very different circumstances, he joined in fully with the discussion, contributing sensible answers and taking the part of Captain Robert Walton with aplomb.
As the class made their way out, I called Joel back, wanting both to thank him for his intervention with the awful Year 9 drama group, and to find out where he’d learned to dance, but, with a wave of his hand, he was out of the classroom without a backward glance.
Thank God for Jess and her love of cooking: the thought of getting back to Mum’s place and having to start preparing something for Sorrel and myself to eat had been filling me with almost as much dread as taking Year 9 again. But Jess had come up trumps, messaging me to say she was more than happy to cook, and for Sorrel and me to go round there every evening she wasn’t working. We’d have a kitty, share the shopping and, in return, maybe I could do some babysitting of Lola?
Sorrel hadn’t hung around for a lift home and wasn’t answering her phone. I did the day’s marking, not wanting to take it home with me, and was just about to leave the classroom when Mason appeared in the doorway.
‘Knackered?’ he asked, grinning.
‘Something like that.’ I managed a weary smile.
‘I knew you’d be OK.’
‘You knew nothing of the sort.’ I sniffed. ‘You didn’t see my drama session with the notorious Year 9 class this morning.’ I glared up at him. ‘And I see you’ve put me down for every single Year 9 drama class next week?’
‘You’re the expert.’ He smiled winningly. ‘You’re the drama professional. And,’ he went on, ‘I did see what you were up to this morning. I came down to see if you were OK in the drama studio. You were totally engrossed, as were the kids. You’d got them moving, talking, doing what you wanted.’
‘I’d had some help.’
‘Oh?’
‘Joel Sinclair?’
‘Really?’ Mason frowned.
‘That was exactly Petra’s reaction when I told her.’
‘Let’s just say he’s not always as accommodating.’
‘He’s been nothing but accommodating with me today.’
‘Good, that’s good. Is there anything I can support you with? Anything you want to ask?’ I glanced up at Mason Donoghue, thinking, not for the first time, what a lovely face he had. If my head hadn’t been stuffed to the gills with Fabian, I knew I’d have fancied this man. ‘Look,’ he now said, ‘I don’t suppose you could get your dad in?’
‘In?’ I pulled a face. ‘In where?’
Mason indicated with his hands. ‘Here. Into school.’
‘My dad?’ I stared. ‘Jayden, you mean?’
‘Of course, I mean Jayden. Jayden Allen? It would be great if he could come and give us a talk about the history of black music. Of the roots of reggae.’
‘Great for whom?’ I smiled. ‘The kids? Or for you?’
‘For the kids, of course.’ He had the grace to look slightly abashed. ‘I think it would be brilliant for our students to learn how reggae music emerged in the sixties, from Jamaican ska and rocksteady, how it was influenced by social, political and cultural factors, including the Rastafarian movement.’
‘You seem to know quite a bit about it already.’ I smiled. ‘Just do an assembly and play some Bob Marley. Getting hold of my dad, never mind pinning him down to anything, is virtually impossible.’
So it was something of a surprise to see Jayden’s car pulled up on Mum’s drive. He was sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea and eating toast and Marmite.
‘Where’s Sorrel?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been worried about you all.’
‘Must be the first time you have,’ I said tartly, moving over to the kettle and then ditching that idea and reaching for the bottle of wine in the fridge instead. ‘Jesus, I needed that.’ I allowed the first mouthful of the cold, crisp liquid to do its job, following it with another before putting down my glass and turning back to my dad. ‘I reckon I could turn to drink,’ I said. ‘Seems all I have left in the world to rely on.’
‘You’re teaching, then?’ Jayden asked, acknowledging the text I’d sent earlier, while ignoring my self-pitying moaning. ‘You went with that head teacher’s offer?’
‘I didn’t really have a great deal of choice.’
‘So, where is she now?’
‘Sorrel? Your guess is as good as mine. She’s behaved herself the past couple of days. Frightened of being kicked out and put in the PRU, I guess. She’s not daft, you know, Jayden. The history teacher, particularly, was full of praise for her. I need you to sit down with her… Are you staying? Because if you are, you’re in the single bed in the box room… and try to get to the bottom of where she keeps going to. There was a bloke in a BMW – well, I assume it was a bloke – giving her a lift home the other night?—’
‘She’s fifteen , Robyn,’ Jayden snapped. ‘What’s a fifteen-year-old doing out at night with a man in a BMW? Why didn’t you stop her?’
‘Me? Why don’t you stop her? Why aren’t you here for her? And don’t start coming the heavy father at this late stage in the day.’ When Jayden didn’t say anything, but simply glared in my direction, I went on, ‘Is it any wonder Sorrel’s going off the rails with you for a father? And Mum believes she’s failed as a mother because Sorrel is running wild.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Too late to be sorry, Jayden.’
‘I’ve tried to support you girls, tried my best to work and send Lisa money…’
‘It was love and affection she wanted, not your money. You should have left her alone, Jayden; given Mum the chance to meet someone else. Heaven knows she’s gorgeous enough to have the pick of any man around.’
‘I’m not proud of my behaviour, Robyn. I didn’t want to… didn’t want to lose you three girls. You’re my daughters, my family…’
‘Oh, spare me the sentimentality,’ I snapped. ‘You know Mum had a dire childhood with those parents of hers.’
‘As did I, without parents,’ Jayden put in mulishly.
‘More reason for you to make an effort with your own family, then.’ I glared at him. ‘With Mum. And with us , Jayden.’
I held up the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in Jess’s direction as she came through the kitchen door. ‘Come on, we need to work out how we’re going to sort Sorrel out. Mum can’t come out of hospital to find her in more trouble – that would probably finish her off.’