threescore

A map appeared in the foyer at school today.

Beautiful. Clear plastic. Pastel colours. Modern. Classy. Expensive.

In a school. With teachers.

The Chaplain’s office is now home to the Chaplin, and we have no fire extinguishers, only extinguisers. We also have a maintaince block and a number of apostrophes which we may not have been able to afford.

Today I learnt that our woodwork technician’s daughter owns the only pair of male chinchillas he knows of which do not get along well. One of them is gay.

I also learnt that the the sister of the man who cleans my room had her baby last night.

I discovered from the science technicians that my department is on their borrowing black-list. For stealing a compass. Allegedly. However, they were able to lend me equipment I needed and point me in the direction of cheap sand in good quantities, as long as the PE department weren’t looking.

It’s like a soap opera some days at work! It’s all about who you listen to.

At 8:00 this morning I discovered the boy searching the internet for how to tie a cravat. In the space of one minute I learnt three important facts:

1) The word ‘cravat’ comes from ‘Croatian’, which as we all know is hrvatski in the original;

2) There is no official way to tie it;

3) When I am stressed out, it is better to tell me that you are going to Henley Regatta for the day with work, than to imagine withholding this information might help.

I asked “don’t we have a book called 85 ways to tie a tie ?”

He said he didn’t know where it was, but was fairly sure cravats weren’t in there.

True. I mentioned it to a colleague in the maths department, who asked “don’t you have a book called 85 ways to tie a tie ?”

I said yes, but I wasn’t sure cravats were in there.

“Ah yes,” she said, “it only includes ties”. A kindred mind.

I have a cousin getting married in Wales today, so ddedwydd briodas ddiwrnod to the happy couple and please don’t expect me to learn Welsh any time soon. I just don’t see the need in Ipswich.

Polish, maybe. My brother and his wife are already on the case. And I am considering other languages for when our baby is born, so I can meet with and talk to members of the international communities in our area. Fantastyczny.

So. Teaching and Learning. Or is it Learning and Teaching? Turns out the words are almost the same in Welsh anyway, I discovered on a training day this week. There begins an educational thesis. I learn at least as much at school as I teach these days. Is good learning self-taught? (That reminds me: I must get back to practising the saxophone). Do learners learn better when they help their peers? Does the government realise this? Does it matter?

I have three weeks of teaching, learning and playing lego before the school term endeth. I intend to learn as much as possible in that time. The pregnancy has taught me that most foods are almost orange in colour and therefore desirable. It has also taught me what it would feel like to have a large elastic band permanently around my middle. It has taught my husband to accommodate my fast-changing moods and needs, which has helped me to learn to trust more and has humbled me a lot.

All this before junior even makes an appearance. I feel I will be learning a lot more than I will be teaching in that arena too, somehow. At least in the early days.

Last year my tutor group came 6th in the sports day. There are six groups in the year.

Never mind, I thought, optimistically. There is only one way to go when you start at the bottom. We will do better next year. And this with a group which includes a number of keen footballers in local teams, an eaerly-morning swimmer, a skier who competes for the county and a shotokan karate 2nd dan who has been picked for England already.

I forgot.

In year 8 all the girls refuse to run in front of Boys. They bargain. They plead. And they know a pregnant form teacher does not want to fight this one. And boys forget their PE kits. At least they do in my form. One lad turned up in non-uniform today by mistake as his friend had told him to.

And the swimmer was on holiday.

And as it happens, the other five forms in the year take sport a lot more seriously than we do. While my form ate ice-creams and ignored the school’s bid to become ‘healthy eating’ the rest warmed up and cheered each other on. 

Which is a shame, because at the end of the afternoon we learnt that we had not improved on our position in the tables.

I won’t be at next year’s sports day, so I am not inclined to ‘do better’ any more. I may buy sweets for those who gallantly took part, however. I am convinced sport is bad for one’s health.

Dad went to the doctor and had a check up this week, and was told he won’t need to go back again for another three months. He is making great progress and has completed one course of pills entirely. They hadn’t asked him to fast to prepare for the latest cholesterol check, but it was only slightly above the previous one, which is a relief. Technically, he is not obese but could do with losing some more weight, so there is still the incentive to keep up the healthy lifestyle.

Mum has come out in a rash which may or may not be due to eating strawberries. It turns out you can get too much of a good thing - even if you picked several kilos yourself! I have to be careful not to visit her, even on her birthday, as the doctor had thought it was a virus and warned her to stay away from older people. I assumed this also meant pregnant people.

It’s a shame, as she is due to visit her uncle and parents at the weekend for a special 80th birthday, but she may still be able to go, even if she travels a day later.

I am not in great health, however. I had a panic attack at school and have been signed off for a week. Too many things coincided at school, all of which had added to my stress levels, meaning that I could not cope in a meeting and would not be able to teach. My husband looked after me very well and took the day off to sort out a good doctor for me and speak to the midwife. She saw me today and has referred me for counselling and a pregnancy massage. I am feeling emotionally strained and physically weakened, but much happier for a chance to recover before I go back. There are reports to write and lessons to plan, but the department are rallying round me and I feel looked after. I even read a verse in the Bible which helped me see the behavioural issues at school in perspective:

“Those who are wayward in spirit will gain understanding;
       those who complain will accept instruction.”

(Isaiah 29.24)

There is a lot on at the moment, but there is also a lot of good happening, and the children at school are learning, whether or not I feel I am at my best professionally.

I am pleased that dad is doing so well at the moment; even though my mind is not all it should be, he is able to speak truth and tell me what I need to hear. Thank God for families.

For Christmas I got a wonderful present - the promise of a flying lesson.

This has been put off indefinitely, along with ski-ing, rock-climbing, scuba diving, bungee-jumping and other exciting things which have hyphens if they might sound particularly fun.

So I am cruising around with cargo hold slightly apparent (we’re talking more spitfire than B52-G) and navigator AWOL, wondering if I’ve taken off or am supposed to be coming in to land. I feel I could do with some kind of flight record, before I lose my bearings completely.

Or it might be the joys of returning to school today in all its action-packed, ‘miss my tooth just came out’ and ‘don’t expect me to ever come to your lessons again, miss’ and ‘why is there a stain on the carpet?’ glory. That last question was given by the Head, who teaches in my room. The stain (a cleaning mistake) was made months ago. Months ago I remembered the story.

I think today I blamed it on the hoover in the cleaning cupboard leaning against a dripping tap, but I can’t remember if I did or if that was right. I did remember to give the cleaners warning that he had noticed however!

I had a dream that I was in today’s maths exam and that it was all going horribly wrong and I had 5 minutes left. Then the head of department reminded me that I was a teacher, not a pupil, which was a great relief. I don’t recall great reliefs in dreams before. It has kept me going all day.

‘Miss, can I go five minutes early? My limo is waiting outside’ is not what I usually hear on a sunny Friday afternoon. Not from a class of year 8s. Not while working on drama sketches about the effects of alcohol.

However, the same pink limo, playboy bunny motif and all was parked across the way of three school buses when we all decided to look out and check (it was all of us or none of us, and I needed to know).

The head was shortly seen chatting to the driver and pretending to be fine about the booking, as pupils filed past the scene on the way to their buses, cartoons and e-numbers.

Earlier in the day I had visited a pupil of ours on work experience at the school where my mum used to teach class one. The pupil was based in the reception class, so I was also able to talk with a few friendly folk who asked after mum and dad and were glad to see me. When I walked back to the car I became concerned that there were pupils of high school age kicking a football around near it. I needn’t have been worried. They all had their blazers on and shirts tucked in as they played, and had excellent ball control.

Is this what private-school parents buy in to? Ball control and correct uniform? Do they have children who need to leave early to change for their waiting limo?

I noted recently that I have had to change my sleeping patterns - dad says that he has been told not to catnap, although the beta-blockers have been stopping him sleeping again. At least having retired he is able to take it easy in the daytimes. Even if he misses a whole night’s sleep.

My brother and sister-in-law are learning about new sleeping patterns too, as their 18 day old son likes to sleep quietly in the daytime and pretend to cry and bang his arms about in the evening before a night of waking and attention-seeking. They think he is a bit of a drummer already.

You can go private for schooling and health. You can pay top end prices for lawyers, tutors, plane seats and hotels. But you cannot ignore a baby. Nature seems to have designed it that the power does not always lie where we think it does.

Today must have been a low-crime day in town. I know this because three uniformed police officers spent a couple of hours at school today, helping teachers with a situation involving an 11 year old girl and a cat. The cat appeared unaffected throughout its ordeal, despite being relieved of its right to sit in the local street during lessons this morning.

On the subject of catnaps, I have discovered the art of sleeping in pregnancy. A little like eating, mathematics and saxophone practice, this appears to do me more good when taken Little and Often. I am not doing Proper Meals any more and I don’t think I have had a Proper Sleep recently either. Is this preparation for November?

Our school fire alarm went off today, and it was a real fire.

It was also 4:00.

We joked in the staff room and had a look outside at the nice weather and wondered what the protocol was. Minutes later we were told it was for real and had to herd stray pupils off site, close windows, go out to the field and wait for the news.

The fire brigade came and went to the new block, where smoke had been issuing from an office. The noise was unrepentant.

A group of girls sat in a circle and practiced their violin piece. One of them asked if she would be allowed a new music text book and exercise book if hers got burnt.

Our Head, taking full authority, voiced instructions through a loud hailer at a distance usually requiring full-voiced authority. We, the cleaning staff, the teaching staff, the musicians, the detainees and those supposed to be finalising coursework would be allowed in to the main block when the fire brigade had ensured it was safe.

When the noise subsided, or unless we felt the need to leave sooner, we did. I didn’t have the stomach to sit and mark books in my room after all the fuss. Or maybe after a lovely few minutes out of doors. I packed up, walked back to my car, passing year 11 girls flirting with phone cameras and firemen in the second fire engine, and drove home.

This was not an emergency, although I hope valuable work and papers were not actually burnt. They were having trouble identifying the source of the fire; not electrical? (I suspect the sunlight may have hit the window and gone through a glass, as the angle was right at the time. Who knows?)

It felt a bit like that when dad had his heart attack. On so many levels we all had to keep going and get on as if there were no emergency. If you wallow, you stay muddy. If you pick yourself up, there is a hope of moving on somewhere.

I have been proud of how mum and dad have picked themselves up and decided to eat healthily, take exercise seriously and develop new things. This week dad had a golf lesson - a Christmas present from mum. He enjoyed it too.

Emergencies are often short-lived, very localised, and shocking. But then so are first driving lessons, thunder storms and giving birth. After the event we forget and move forwards.

I’ll be interested to see how many pupils take tomorrow off, thinking reports of a fire there means a closure. The younger you are, the more strange events appear to be emergencies.