Читать книгу Testing 3, 2, 1 - Michael Lawrence - Страница 4
ОглавлениеSCHOOL DAYS
My experience of school as a student rather than a teacher was typical, I suspect, for the era. Primary school was a mixture of government and Catholic schools as my family moved house three or four times, though never leaving Melbourne’s western suburbs. Our first moves were due to my father changing jobs and we relocated again after he passed away. In those days the western suburbs of Sunshine, North Altona and Albion were on the fringes of the ‘country’, and open fields were just a short walk away on the other side of Kororoit Creek.
Despite this ‘country’ feel (I was nearly going to say ‘pastoral’, but that would have been overdoing it: to my knowledge there were no poems written about Kororoit Creek), Melbourne’s west was very much like an old car in the city’s backyard. It had seen better days, such as before the Massey Ferguson (previously Sunshine Harvester) tractor factory shut down, but no-one was really prepared to fix it up, and many doubted it was worth fixing.
Schools were unforgiving places in the late sixties and seventies. Our sixth-grade classroom at Our Lady’s adjoined the principal’s (a nun’s) office, giving our class’s lessons a soundtrack of leather straps hitting hands (I hope that was all they were hitting!); a none too subtle reminder of why it was best to toe the line. This particular school had not a blade of grass anywhere on the asphalt playground, most of which was taken up by an imposing church the size of a small football ground itself (or so it seemed to this ten-year-old) and the height of a ten-storey building, casting a shadow over the schoolyard until at least midday. The terrifying boom of Father Murphy’s voice truly sounded like it was coming from the depths of the hell he auctioned to the lowest bidder.
Secondary school was a Catholic boys’ college, St John’s Braybrook. Entry exams made it easy to identify those not suited to academic study and we were all placed in six or seven streamed classes with close to forty boys in each. I’d managed to scrape into the second from the top of these (St Luke), although any sense of accomplishment was lost on me, perhaps as I felt I’d had no say in the matter.
An avid reader since mid primary school, I devoured Jules Verne among others and was starting to take an interest in the music press, music becoming something of an outlet for my inner world particularly since my father’s death.
My grade prep teacher had made me write with my right hand instead of the left I instinctively grabbed the pencil with, meaning my handwriting was never particularly ‘neat’. Much to the amusement of classmates, my year 8 teacher described it as ‘like spiders climbing on the blackboard’.
Classes were conducted with strict formality. Some teachers still addressed students by their surnames, and students got into the habit of calling every teacher ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’.
One teacher, rumoured to have been of German descent (to us at the time this as good as said ‘Gestapo’, and he certainly had a big, booming voice and accent so no-one ever dared ask him if it was true) and a large, completely bald man, had a habit of grasping students on the neck with a firmness that drew tears from terrified thirteen-year-olds. I’ve never forgotten sitting in this class and turning around to note that every face I saw had tears on it. As a young boy, the eldest of three brothers just recovering from the death of their father, my experience of secondary school was not the relief from the pressures of home that I might have hoped for. While I was anything but a ‘bad’ child, like most teenagers I would occasionally forget a small element of my homework and find myself in the firing line of pedantic teachers.
There were no subject choices to be made, although the top two of the streamed classes did not participate in any of the practical, or ‘trade’, subjects as we referred to them. So I missed out on woodwork and metalwork. Discipline was strict. Students who did not have their towel to dry themselves in the showers after sport (many were shy about doing so in front of the sports teacher who stood at the shower entrance observing the entire process very, very closely) were required to run extra laps of the sports oval, ironically making a shower even more necessary. I distinctly remember thinking that if I ever became a teacher I would do all I could to put a stop to these archaic practices. This is the earliest recollection I have of ever actually considering education as a career path, though the significance of the idea stemming from a belief that it could be done better rather than from a positive influence is not lost on me.
As was common in Catholic schools of the time, many of the teachers were religious brothers, and I can recall the entire class staying back after not taking our RE (religious education) studies seriously enough. Copying biblical passages word for word put an end to this poor behaviour (seemingly), and a Sunday detention (I’ll never forget riding my bike to school in full uniform on Sunday—seemed to have forgotten about the Sabbath there) ensured the class—yes, the whole class—showed more respect for the science teacher whose real name escapes me. He was known to all as ‘Weed’, probably taken from the Flower Pot Men children’s show. An opportunity to push back at the system saw an equally brutal response: that class probably ended a teacher’s career.
Rather than having any number of subject options (I don’t think I selected a subject until year 11) our class streams seemed to set a student’s future in slow-drying cement: you were more likely to drown than change streams.
The first teacher to really have a positive influence on me was a year 11 legal studies teacher, Mr Brewster (I think his first name was Wayne). He used to bring legal studies to life by telling complicated, often humorous stories to illustrate his points, and his black denim trousers and shirt differentiated him from the formal business outfits of the other teachers. On the examination (exams made up 100 percent of many subject grades for the Higher School Certificate, forerunner of the VCE), the defendants in the court included Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, who had stolen from a certain Robert Dylan. Seeing as myself and my best mate had been removed from legal studies for a week for talking music constantly (Dean had argued that Kiss were better than Led Zeppelin, a greater crime than any mentioned by Mr Brewster all year) when we should have been concentrating on the class, this was a very deliberate move on the teacher’s part to get our attention and let us know that he was aware of our outside interests.
Placing our music idols in the exam paper (another villain he included was a certain Warren Bruiser, who had viciously assaulted one Jean Simmons, a lady of the night) ensured our eternal respect and framed legal studies in a manner that a couple of teenagers more interested in the sounds coming from the radio could relate to. This was the first time I can recall a teacher trying to bring together the world that I lived in and the world I inhabited at school.
The humour of Brewster and a senior English teacher (a Miss or Mrs Doolan) who encouraged me to write some music reviews for the school newspaper (I believe one of Cold Chisel’s Swingshift album was the first) really brought education to me, placing it squarely where I thought I could see a space for both of us (for some reason copying the Bible passages had failed to connect). It was probably around this time that I decided to pursue a career in education, with a very loud soundtrack.
At this point music was everything, and most of everything else, too. Apart from being a musician, teaching stood out as a real job, although the fact I didn’t know anyone who had actually attended university (I certainly didn’t know the schoolteachers) left me believing it was not a serious option. Universities were for professors and such, and I certainly didn’t know any of them. I doubt there were any in Sunshine.
My end-of-year HSC grades led to an offer from Deakin University to study education in Geelong. Thanks to the Whitlam Government of nearly a decade prior, the only real costs I had to worry about were those of living away from home and commuting the hour or so it took to drive each day. The decision was made to defer for twelve months and work full-time with the goal being to create a fund to cover the costs associated with uni as my mother certainly was in no position to contribute on this front. For years Mum had told my brother and I that our secondary-school fees were paid for by our father’s life insurance payout, though I later found that this was not true, which explained why she had to work full-time during those years.
I eventually got to uni and for my first teaching rounds I was assigned a Catholic primary school in Werribee, ironically in one of the same classrooms I had built a few years before during my brief stint in the building trade. I should have mentioned that my first plan had been to become a woodwork teacher and get there via the building trade, but that’s another story. It was an unusual feeling to look at the walls and see the very nails I had driven in to hold the plasterboard in place. This was only an ‘observation’ round, so I did not actually teach the class at this stage.
Later teaching rounds included Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove primaries, where I was living at that point (second year of university). Ocean Grove involved working with well-known local teacher-cum-musician Trevor Bishop. Trevor was 33, with long blond hair and a moustache, and was known around Geelong as one of the town’s favourite musicians. From the Queens Head Hotel to New Year’s Eve at Thirteenth Beach or for a private party, Trevor Bishop and the Lost Cruisers guaranteed a great night of fun and dancing. He would ‘rock up’ (as he put it) at 9am to the school music room where a line of excited students awaited. Trevor would wipe aside his wet hair and comment that the waves that morning had been ‘hot as’, while the students chatted about the size and brand of board attached to his car roof. Once they were all in the room and playing away on their instruments, Trevor would describe how the staff at the Queens Head told the band that last night’s show had been bigger than any of the Melbourne bands they had play there this year. ‘It was hot as’, he added, using the adjective with which he’d describe everything from waves to students’ work.
This couldn’t have been further from my own experience of primary school, and Trevor was a huge influence on me as a music teacher. His laid-back attitude made him a hit with the students and I was in my element combining my musical passions with education in a manner I hadn’t previously been sure was possible. This was also an early experience of the teacher working with the students rather than using countless rules to gain compliance. Trevor was an integral part of their community, and parents also had immense respect for him. These were the days before standardised curricula and Trevor was able to teach music that the students loved and enjoyed playing.
Another teaching round took me to Spotswood, at that time a very working-class suburb—property prices have risen significantly there of late. The students in grades 3 and 4 presented a complex set of challenges. One student found himself in trouble for breaking into the school (this was not a case of a student who couldn’t get enough of school, but a burglary).
Around this time I found myself covered in itching skin blemishes, which I later discovered were scabies, which I had never heard of apart from the punk rock musician with the moniker ‘Rat Scabies’. Neither his music nor the condition was pleasant. The prescribed medications were ineffective and in desperation I removed the pests by spraying myself with Aerogard from head to toe.
University flew by in a haze of classrooms, smoky bars where I was either serving drinks in my part-time job or playing music up on stage and various shared houses and couches (not shared) as I found somewhere to stay, in some cases only to move out when the holiday season arrived and rents skyrocketed.
Each year, of the 120 or so of us who had commenced the education course at Deakin, ten or twenty disappeared, for various reasons deciding that teaching just wasn’t for them. One of my best friends in the Education Faculty would never teach after he failed his final teaching round following a personality conflict with the presiding teacher. He was so dejected he signed up for the police force almost immediately.
After graduation the entire cohort awaited their dispatch to the boondocks, as was the case at the time. I was able to avoid sunny Swan Hill by securing myself a posting as maternity leave replacement at my old secondary school in Braybrook, with a class of thirty-six year 7 boys. Apart from having to break up the occasional fistfight in the classroom (not surprising as they were virtually sitting on top on each other), the most unorthodox of my duties involved working with a colleague who ran a ‘sly grog shop’, selling the alcohol in the school’s science department from his desk ($18 for a two-litre bottle!).
Other teachers warned me, ‘Wait ’til you see the staff meetings!’ They had good reason. The principal, an aged brother, disallowed any questions during the meeting and read from prepared sheets the entire time. He was not to be seen around the school and staff needed to make appointments should they wish to speak with him.
The following year I took a teaching position at Charitz College. I was teaching music, drama, English and humanities, and was head of the Drama Department (not a particularly large faculty, it comprised myself and one or two other teachers).
Charitz College was a school of about 500 boys from upper primary to year 10 (it would later expand to include years 11 and 12) perched on a hill overlooking two Corios, the Geelong suburb and the bay. We could boast that we looked down on Geelong Grammar School, however we were also on the road to Anakie, in this case (fortunately) nothing more menacing than a small country town.
Drama was a relatively new area for me and I quickly discovered that improvised theatre, packaged as ‘theatre sports’, struck a chord with students (the fact that it was a popular television show at the time helped) and had enough variety to cover most of the skills we wanted to develop. The classes were fun, energetic and full of laughter as students worked on commercials for nuclear-powered cars or told a story which had to include random words called out as they went along. We would also have an ‘Accent Day’, when each student (myself included) was required to speak with a foreign accent for the duration of the lesson, causing considerable merriment when someone would visit the class to borrow a book or pass on a message. The Geelong Rock Eisteddfod was popular at the time and we competed with an all-male cast doing a comedy disco/heavy metal spoof which was the most popular act with audiences over the nights it ran. The all-male cast was quite a challenge, but the students’ enthusiasm quelled any doubts I had and we pieced together a comedic dance routine akin to those in films such as Flying High.
My love of travel allowed me to run a geography unit on the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu—which I had recently visited. This made a welcome change from studying the Kalahari Desert Bushmen, who had been in the textbook since I was a student in year 8. Cannibalism, volcanoes, pirates, isolated tribes and rare wildlife made Vanuatu an exciting topic in a pre-internet time when such places were truly exotic and little known.
The staff at Charitz were a close-knit, socially obstreperous bunch who were more sport-orientated than academic at that stage. Among them were at least three VFL footballers (and a future AFL coach) as well as a number of semi-professional soccer and basketball coaches. That professional sportsmen such as Brad Johnson (Western Bulldogs, AFL), Josip Skoko and the Didulica brothers Johnny and Joey (Australian soccer players) came from a school such as Charitz was no surprise.
Teaching at Charitz was remarkably uncomplicated. The students were tough, but also honest and open if you gave something of yourself. With an ethnic profile similar to that of Melbourne’s western suburbs, the school had a high percentage of European migrants from working-class backgrounds. This was as basic as Catholic schools got and we were aware that these were students who would not get another opportunity outside of the even more rundown local government schools. There were a couple of other Catholic secondary colleges on the opposite side of town, but their fees and facilities put them into an entirely different category to us, something we wore with pride. In contrast to my previous school this one was in the charge of a short, bespectacled, balding principal, Brother Smith, who was friendly and open. When I knocked on his door to ask about obtaining leave to travel overseas during the Christmas break after my first year there, he told me to close the door behind me and take a seat. Fearing a lecture about losing valuable teaching time at the end of the year, I sat down and buckled myself in for the worst.
I was surprised to be given a list of all the things and places I should do and see while travelling and, on leaving an hour later, the question of how many days I needed to be aboard the crowded pre-Christmas aeroplanes leaving the country was met with, ‘Whatever you need, this is something truly special.’
Such concern for my own benefit left me feeling so indebted to this wonderful man that I rarely missed a day of teaching in the next few years. His leadership style was brave, transparent and very much about his staff. Staff meetings involved debate on major questions, and any vote on a decision was implemented thoroughly as we all had ownership of the decision. Some staff meetings went beyond 6pm as teachers got involved in issues that they genuinely felt committed to. This created an incredibly vibrant atmosphere which no doubt influenced the growth in student numbers, and expansion to include years 11 and 12, at this point.
Br. Smith attended all union meetings and I saw him vote to go on strike (‘Anything that improves the wages and conditions of my staff is a good thing,’ he announced) before heading back to his office to put together a skeleton staff to cover the staff out on strike.
Knowing my inexperience as leader of the Drama Department, Br. Smith asked if I had any ideas to redress this and I suggested setting aside a day where I would visit other similar schools to talk with their drama teachers and see their programs and facilities. He immediately made this happen at least once a year for the next few years, and it provided some of the most valuable professional development I’ve ever experienced.
Br. Smith was replaced by another Brother, whom I shall call Berry (because, like Caesar, his staff did not come to praise him). We were sad to lose Tony Smith, but confident that under his superintendence the school had grown immensely in every way and was now in a strong position with plans for further growth in the form of a new library building.
The august Berry—a man well into his 60s possessed of a speaking voice that suggested not a plum but an entire plum tree in his mouth—quickly made it clear he could not accept his predecessor’s participatory leadership style, and matters went downhill from there. His immediate goal appeared to be to put as many staff, students and parents offside as possible. He displayed an innate talent for doing just this. The situation was extraordinary, but everyone, even the long-serving vice-principal (who always reminded me of a wartime military general and was respectfully treated accordingly) was powerless to do anything.
Staff meetings quickly became chores that people avoided or got away from as soon as possible and our once bubbly, enthusiastic morale was replaced by a black humour reminiscent of Hogan’s Heroes as Berry appeared incapable of building a relationship with anyone. Individuals and various groups met him in attempts to turn the situation around, only to return more bewildered than before. ‘He says he is aware of what is happening but doesn’t think it has anything to do with him,’ they reported to those who still held out hope.
Student numbers plummeted over the next few years with a wealth of good schools nearby. It didn’t help that nearly all our students were bussed in. Poor schools (that was us now) can hold student numbers if there’s a dearth of alternatives, but Charitz didn’t have that luxury. Some of the senior staff left for greener pastures.
Berry continually refused to acknowledge that the principal had anything to do with morale, coming down hard on the matter of student uniforms. One of his responses to the challenge of the school’s decline was to ask staff for written reflections on ‘why Korea is important to giving us a vision of education’.
‘Listen to upbeat and zingy music on the way to school if you want to improve your morale,’ he told us with complete sincerity. We wondered if we were in some kind of reality show where our reactions to bizarre requests were being filmed. How were we supposed to react to Berry roller-skating around the schoolground wearing a cap with a propeller on it?
A triennial performance review in which staff vented their frustration at the loss of a great school was met with Berry’s reappointment for a further three-year term, by which point most teaching staff had accepted that the only possible explanation could be that the school’s closure was imminent. We were in free fall, with no safety net in sight.
Berry was replaced after his second three-year term. But student numbers had halved and some of the best staff were gone. There had also been redundancies due to declining enrolments. Morale was at rock bottom. The incredibly sociable staff still gathered out of hours, but their functions had the feel of wakes, full of dark humour and cynical commentary. The new principal was able to improve some things, but closure was announced just weeks after a fresh intake of more than 100 year 7 boys joined us.
The demise of Charitz was the most tragic experience I’ve witnessed at a school, yet my early years there were also career-shaping as I saw just what a powerful thing a religious-based school could be when it had selfless, courageous leadership and committed staff.
After spending more than a decade in Catholic secondary schools, it was time to find out what was happening in the rest of the education sector.
I was advised to approach one of the agencies that supplied emergency teachers to the region’s many schools. Initially I agreed to go ‘anywhere’ in the spirit of investigation. Schools were particularly enthusiastic when they found that I was male and taught music. Many would completely adjust their program for the day so that I could take six or more music classes, viewing it as an opportunity to make up for the lack of a permanent music specialist. The lack of male teachers in some schools could make of me a somewhat isolated figure among all the females in the staffroom at lunchtime. Many students could not repress their excitement at encountering an adult male: role models were often in short supply in this division.
I would bring my guitar and teach classes current pop songs (U2, Killing Heidi) or Beatles tunes, watching the students walk down the corridor still singing afterwards. For repeat classes I had worksheets for songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and Stairway to Heaven and we’d listen, discuss and complete the sheet, identifying the instruments, arrangements and so on. With younger classes we’d draw a guitar or colour an existing drawing after a short cross-curricular session discussing how and why it worked. Unlike the secondary students I’d spent the majority of my time with, these guys punctuated the sessions with enthusiastic calls of ‘Yeah’ and ‘Wow’ and at the finish of the lesson they’d exclaim: ‘That was the best!’
Emergency teaching is inconsistent, and you often had little idea where you would be the following week and how many days’ work you might have. The students were not always delighted to greet me. At one school in the Werribee area they were so uninterested, aggressive and ungrateful that I had to resist the urge to walk past the staffroom, go to my car and leave at recess! (I was later informed this was not an uncommon occurrence there.)
While umpiring a cricket match—an emergency teacher takes all subjects—at a school outside of Melton, a pupil of no more than nine or ten years of age threw his bat so far I nearly signalled ‘four’ before calling me every name imaginable after his stumps had been knocked over.
‘He always does that,’ a nearby fielder noted, and we continued the game as if it had never happened.
At another two-teacher school out the same way, I was impressed at the team attitude shown in running things smoothly. The senior students—in fact, grades 3, 4, 5 and 6 all shared the same room—would make the teacher a cup of tea and answer the phone in the adjoining office when it rang (there was no-one else to do it), writing down a message which they passed on to the teacher without distracting the entire group. If the weather was nice and the students had been doing well, the other teacher and myself sometimes decided to delay ringing the bell (it was actually a physical bell, not an electronic one) for ten minutes or so and extend lunchtime. This was a true ‘country school’, with not a house in sight in any direction and students who, despite their obvious isolation, were mature, independent and capable of accepting responsibility as they did at home every day of their lives.
Emergency teaching days quickly turned into weeks and terms. It was during a term replacement at Oberon South that I informed shocked colleagues that in more than a decade of secondary-school teaching I had never spent an entire day (8.30-3.30) in the classroom, something they had done more times than they could count. At a private school in the outer western suburbs, a student of perhaps eleven years of age informed me that the Christmas song we were learning—John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over)—was not appropriate as it included the word ‘Xmas’ rather than ‘Christmas’. This was a deliberate move by Lennon (and for the same reason as I had chosen it) to create a song that crossed boundaries in an inclusive manner, but clearly you can’t please everyone.
On discussing this later, the teacher in the classroom next door told me, ‘You can have my job if you want … I’m out of this place. If you think that’s bad, you should hear what the parents complain about!’
Flemington Primary School was described as a school where music was a key subject, with something like 40 percent of its students learning an instrument, and there being three orchestras—one each in the junior (grades prep 1/2), middle (3/4) and senior (5/6) schools. This was the most extensive music program I have ever encountered in a primary school and the offer to teach music there a couple of days a week was very tempting.
Situated right between the Housing Commission flats and million-dollar-plus inner-city townhouses, the school building was a century-old double-storey solid brick construction that housed nearly every class. And the 400 or so pupils were indeed music-mad. During my first couple of days there they devoured my usual primary-school musical repertoire and called for more.
Yard duty conversations with students were sometimes along the lines of ‘What’s your favourite country in the world? Of all the ones I’ve been to, I love France the most as the food is a class above anywhere else I’ve been.’
As Christmas approached, classes would often finish with students all sitting on the floor for a run-through of some of the songs we’d been learning. Students loved this though it could get a little claustrophobic as the younger classes wanted to be as close as possible to the guitar and the teacher. The sound of the third graders singing Merry Xmas (War Is Over) very nearly brought a tear to my eyes, particularly the chorus section sung by a children’s choir on the recording, when I noticed actual tears from a girl in the front row. She was being comforted by those around her and when I asked what the reason was she explained tearfully,
‘This song … (sob) just reminds me of my grandma … who died just … (inaudible) …,’ at which point half the room seemed to burst into tears, including myself at the sheer emotion the music had summoned. The class must have been quite a sight, all returning to their own room wiping tears from their eyes and comforting each other.
As a teacher, the satisfaction in sharing the moment young students understand how music can affect them—openly displaying those emotions and being mature enough not to be too self-conscious as they did so—was indescribable. While it usually took me nearly an hour and a half to drive to Flemington from my home in the southern Geelong suburb of Belmont, it was worth every minute.
A return to full-time teaching came about at Mandama, a school perched on a valley slope which made much of the play area uneven for the 500 or so students. Being little more than a stone’s throw from where I was living made it difficult to say no to this handy alternative to my long commute.
Not only was it close by, but the principal impressed me and continued to do so as the year progressed. He was genuinely interested in me as a teacher and a person, and spent time in every classroom implementing his own ‘money maths’ teaching method. What also became apparent was how he saw himself and the school’s teachers as part of a broader education system. Despite being on a one-year contract, I found myself doing professional development (PD) days in primary mathematics, child welfare, and merit and equity, among others.
‘This will be handy no matter what you do in the future,’ he assured me as I signed on for another day of training. It was refreshing to have someone who believed in you enough to feel you were worth developing and later in the year I was forced to turn down some of these PD activities as the workload in class was picking up pace.
The merit and equity system was something completely foreign to me at this stage and my colleagues’ professionalism at Mandama and Flemington primaries was testament to its effectiveness. In a nutshell, it meant that all interview panels for positions in the school had to include a merit-and-equity-trained teacher and should a candidate believe the selection process had treated them unfairly, they could appeal. Members of the selection panel were required to keep notes that adequately explained why one candidate had been preferred to another.
On arriving for the first day I was surprised to find a couple of dozen parents waiting for me. After initially wondering what I had done to upset so many, I soon saw that they only wished to welcome me and tell me how happy their son or daughter was to be in my classroom. Some of them even volunteered to assist in the classroom during the year. All of this was refreshingly new: in the secondary-school environment you can go the entire year without sighting some parents.
I had been given a wonderful class. We read stories, sang songs, played games and learnt about the wonders of the world. I revelled in this new environment and the students soaked up the music and enthusiasm I brought. Meetings and training sessions could extend many hours after class and the primary teacher attended all subject meetings. This included the science meeting, even though I was not teaching science that year. Remarkably, this was the first time I’d attended a science meeting at any school.
One sunny afternoon I was taking a sport class for a game of tee-ball, a game much like baseball but in which the ball is stationary on the top of a pole rather than thrown to the batter, removing the coordination issues some students face in hitting a moving target. Soft helmets were being worn by the batter and the backstop, although I’d twice found it necessary to ask the latter to retreat a few steps as his creeping forward to take the ball, which had rolled to the ground after the bat only grazed it, put him in danger of being hit.
As I stood in the centre of the triangle, the backstop crept forward again … The ring of the aluminium bat striking his head echoed across the valley, a sound I’ve never forgotten. He hit the ground before the echo had finished and I ran straight to him, scooping him up and carrying him directly to the medical office, about 50 metres away. My heart was beating so fast he seemed weightless as I carried his unconscious body into the building, my brain racing through all the possible injuries he might have sustained.
Upon my arrival at the office, the principal asked me to describe what had occurred and I ran through the sequence of events as best I could. He listened without interrupting, and assured me I had taken all necessary precautions. I returned to class, assured the students that all was going to be okay and, soon afterwards, dismissed them for the day.
The principal kept me informed via phone as the student made a full recovery despite missing a few school days. Only when I bumped into one of the school’s office staff some time later (when I was no longer at Mandama) did I discover that the student’s father had threatened the school with legal action and continued to vent his dissatisfaction for some time after the incident.
Shocked to hear this, I asked the office lady why I’d heard none of this and she replied, ‘Mark (the principal) didn’t want you to be worrying about what was going on behind the scenes …’
Once again, here was an excellent principal doing excellent work that I wasn’t even aware of. Had I known, my mind might have become preoccupied with the ‘what ifs’ and ‘whys’ of the entire episode and impacted on my teaching. I have seen cases where teachers have been accused of something and the principal laid the case out to the teacher in a manner that suggested ‘guilty until proven otherwise’, leading to a distraught teacher taking sick leave and doubtless struggling to teach to the usual standard. The loss of trust in such a case can have immeasurable consequences.
Portvale Secondary College (not its real name) was something else again. As working-class as you could get, the school of around 1000 students comprised almost entirely of portable classrooms was arranged as impressively as any maze I’d ever encountered. At the centre of the maze the staff offices—from which laptop computers were frequently stolen—lent the place the feel of a military bunker.
One imagined the secret order being issued in a breathless whisper: ‘You see if you can make it to T Block. I’ll cover you and call for reinforcements if we come under fire.’
This may have been a slight exaggeration, but the sensation was real. Coming from Mandama’s grade 3/4 class, where I would have had students in tears if I’d so much as raised my voice (I think it happened once in an entire year), I was really not prepared for this dramatic change of atmosphere.
On my first day I found that my seventeen-pupil year 9 English class was also occupied by ten adults. Being from a mainly private-school background where I’d never had more than one teacher’s aide in the classroom, I had to ask who these adults were and why they were in my class. I was quite shocked to find that these pupils warranted so many aides. Some had an aide assigned to them for the entire day, five days a week!
That wasn’t the last of the surprises. Another teacher ‘came clean’ with me when I mentioned the poor literacy level of the above-mentioned class, disclosing that the school applied a form of streaming that neither the students nor the parents (nor, indeed, some of the teachers) were aware of. On hearing this, my initial response was a feeling of guilt at being a part of the organisation keeping this secret from the students and their parents. Some in this class believed they were doing well academically—and some had been getting good results on the third graders’ work I gave them once I realised that was the standard they were at, including one (Simon) who spoke of a career in IT.
My year 9 English class was the lowest-achieving of fifteen or sixteen within the school. The very same material I had been using for my third and fourth graders the previous year was appropriate for the stronger students in this cohort. As the year progressed I became aware that they all had home lives that were television drama (often crime) scripts in themselves. Drugs, abuse, assault, under-age sexual ‘activity’ and neglect bordering on homelessness were all present in the room. So-called learning difficulties were the least of their problems.
Morning briefings at Portvale often felt like speeches at a wake as the rap sheet for the week was read out to waiting staff. Apart from the bad news about students and their families, there was always a list of staff comings and goings. One morning I was surprised to hear a positive report of a graduation night function. Well, up to a point …
‘We’re pleased to report that the year 12 graduation night proved to be a wonderful end to the year for our senior students, their families and staff, with dancing, good food and much revelry being reported by all at the community centre … before the fire.’
For the last month or two of the year I had to move Wednesday’s and Friday’s year 9 English class to the un-charred half of the classroom, a new low in my teaching career. Needless to say, students were not keen to sit at blackened desks and the message sent by a school administration which determined they would continue to use this room was not lost on them.
Getting back to the first term, I immediately dispensed with as much of the year 9 English curriculum as I could. The whole class being at primary-school level, I had been adjusting the difficulty of the work to suit, enabling some to answer comprehension questions and do better in spelling tests, leading to a sense of achievement.
But they were blind to the fact that this achievement was years below year 9.
A few weeks into term one I announced to them one morning: ‘This school does a thing where they divide all students up into different groups, based on how good they are at subjects like English.
‘There are some classes which have all of the students who are really good at English, some which have students of medium ability, and some with the rest of the English students.’
A hand shot up from the somewhat stunned class and Simon commented: ‘We’re not one of the really good classes, are we?’
‘No, we’re not,’ I replied as the room went even quieter—which was something of a rarity. But, as the importance of this sank in, so did the realisation that for once a teacher was being straight with them.
‘Are we one of the middle ones?’ he pleaded, with a blend of hope and sadness.
‘No, unfortunately we’re not one of those groups …
‘We are working at present on middle-primary-school work … but here’s the plan: this term it will be grade 3/4 work to make sure everyone has the basics. Term two will be grade 5 and 6 work; term three, years 7 and 8; and by term four we will be doing year 9 English.’
I was well aware this would not be an effective method to take them all from where they were to year 9, but by giving them a roadmap and telling them exactly where they were they could at least ask questions of themselves and take some control over their learning. General student behaviour throughout the school was something I found difficult to deal with. While being upfront with my year 9 class had a positive effect on some of them, it also imposed a responsibility on myself to achieve at least a measure of what I had promised. And academic achievement was something many of these students had absolutely no experience of.
Students continued to swear like drunken sailors and expected nothing more from the teachers than detentions and contempt. After-school detention class seemed to be a routine five nights a week for dozens of wayward academics, each with his own Honours degree in Street Life and each hoping to impress fellow club members with an attendance record that in any other circumstance would result in honorary life membership.
I was told the story of a teacher who had thrown a chair through a closed window before walking out of the school never to return. One colleague, Pete, seemed to have the Midas touch in this environment. He was cool and calm with the students, friendly and affable in the staffroom. It would be nearly ten years later when I read of his fate in the newspaper. He received a payout following a court case in which he detailed his breakdown after many years of teaching the school’s toughest classes, despite his pleas to be transferred, backed up with medical advice of his ill health. The court was told he would never work again.
Just as my self-increased load in year 9 English was beginning to bear fruit, the school and the state told me I also had to teach Picnic at Hanging Rock and the other set material for year 9, substantially increasing the pressure I was already placing on myself.
I found my hands shaking on the steering wheel as I drove to school. I was not relaxed when at home with my own young children. My thoughts turned to just walking out, like the teacher in the story I had been told. I saw a doctor; he referred me to a psychologist who gave me reading material designed to help me focus on being ‘in the present’ when not at school.
A position for a part-time music teacher at Belmont Primary was advertised. It was a small school which just a few years prior had faced closure and, after reinventing itself, had managed to reverse this decision. The student population was perhaps 200, many housed in portable classrooms outside of the main brick building. The mood there was positive—exactly what I needed—and I could remain at Portvale three days per week with my year 9s to whom I was committed, for reasons I could not logically explain. Portvale was destroying me, causing me to question everything I knew about teaching, even my capacity and will to keep doing it. Belmont could not have come at a better time.
It was blessed with an excellent principal, yet another Mark, who greeted every student and parent as they entered school in the morning. He knew the names of every staff member’s partners and children. He wanted to know who you were. The mood in the staffroom lifted when he entered. There was a genuine sense of everyone being part of a team. He also made a point of teaching every class in the school at least once a term, when the classroom teacher really needed a break for professional or personal reasons. In short, he made everyone feel that they were important and their opinion mattered.
It was refreshing to feel a part of a positive team again. In the long term it probably saved my career, and possibly a good deal of my sanity. The contrast between the two schools I spent my week at couldn’t have been greater. There was the usual lack of male teachers, meaning that some classes were excited to see me for that reason alone, but that also gave me a greater sense of purpose, knowing that for some of these young men and women you were one of the few male role models in their lives. And I took this role of introducing music as a healthy outlet and influence in their lives very seriously.
Mark asked me to organise a Christmas celebration Mass for the school students in the church across the road. When I realised that the date was not one of my Belmont workdays, he offered me an entire day’s pay for just a morning of work. After the Mass I held extra music classes in the afternoon rather than take the rest of the day off, simply to repay and in some way replicate the goodwill Mark had generated throughout the school. It was truly infectious. Everything in teaching is about goodwill. It is the things that a teacher, or principal, doesn’t have to do but does anyway, that make a real difference. Anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves or lacks the skills and dedication to make it happen.
The next decade and a half saw a return to the private-school system and I witnessed the accelerated tempo of the standardisation push, an experience shared by almost all schools in the country, and in many other countries. As a teacher who liked to tailor lessons to individual classes, watching schools focus everything on an ATAR score at the expense of all else, and of those students not in the market for a particular ATAR, posed a towering challenge, even at a time when I had little idea of the real consequences this change would usher in.
Judging a school, a teacher, a book, or a test on the basis of whether it’s sufficiently ‘rigorous’ is like judging an opera based on whether it contains enough notes that are really hard for the singers to hit.
— Alfie Kohn
