Under Old Management

There was excitement. There was busyness. There was a buzz. There was nervousness. There was still a week before the children arrived. There seemed to be plenty of time for fixing up classrooms; labelling; making a splash. ‘The pupils shall arrive into an aura of caring professionalism’ was the unspoken mantra that all the teachers were working towards.

Calum, the ancient Grade IV teacher, arrived early. He sat in his car, slurping on a coffee, listening to the radio and contemplating the beginning of yet another school year. He had seen many. He sighed when he thought that some of his ex-students were now in their fifties. They would have been parents themselves and some, he shook his head, would be grandparents. He pursed his lips and puffed out his cheeks at this last thought. But, children were children. That was their strength and their challenge. All were unique but all shared the faults and foibles of youth. All needed to find their way in the world. As Calum contemplated this, he muttered,

“Way to state the bleeding obvious, Smithie.”

Calum Smith, known behind his back by colleagues, parents and children alike, as Calamity Smith, had somehow come through 50 or so years in the classroom relatively unscathed. But he had discovered over the last few years that he was having difficulty keeping his cynicism to himself. He prided himself on being innovative and always accepting of new initiatives but lately, well lately, he thought that the ‘world was too much with him, late and soon.’ He found himself biting his lip more often than not, trying to control any blustery blurtings. This was difficult.  But he knew that the meetings which he was about to attend would be full of joyous energy and wonderful ideas. He, he reflected, had once had a ‘wonderful idea’. It was back in 1978 when he was teaching in London. He remembered he had brought it up at a staff meeting. It had been greeted with warmth and appreciation. He remembered that some of his colleagues were keen to help in developing it; that they arrived with an enthusiastic clipboard, a poised pencil, an expectant enlightenment. As Calum walked across from his car to the front of the school, for the life of him, Calum could not remember what his ‘wonderful idea’ had been all those years ago.

“Ho hum,” he sighed as the beep on the front door signalled that his fob had worked.

The library buzzed with expectation as the Boss stood up and joyously welcomed everybody back. Hers was a cliché ridden speech but, however hackneyed, Calum didn’t care, he had always liked Anne Botting, Head Teacher Extraordinaire. But she could not wait to introduce Dr. Josephine Dunberry, the new ‘Head of Administrative Affairs’*.  Dr. Dunberry stood to her right beaming from ear to ear. Calum immediately warmed to her because her blouse was untucked and she had done nothing about the obvious coffee spillage on its front. She looked like she was in her early forties and as she spoke it became obvious that she jargoned word salads with ease, confused her audience with fuzzy phraseology, bamboozled with bombastic bafflegab.

“But what?” Calum thought, “Is Administrative Affairs?” It was soon to be revealed.

Administrative Affairs was all about streamlining, efficiency and making teacher’s lives easier. Calum sat up at that. He had heard a great deal over the years about making teachers’ lives easier.  He thought back to the time when the secretary used to hand him his schedule for parent/teacher interviews. That had been years ago, then suddenly he had become responsible for organising his own. Such thoughts came to him in an early morning dream as his mind wandered away from the buzz saw tones of Dr. Dunberry. At that moment there was a sudden flourish as the door to the library swung open and a dishevelled 50- something male arrived. It was Larry Letford, the Rural Studies teacher, renowned for his lateness. Calum had known ‘Letdown’ Letford for years. His piece de resistance back in the day had been when he had spread mushroom manure about the grounds at the moment when the school was supposed to be putting its best foot forward in the shape of an Open House. The school was all dressed up with no place to go but smelt like a sewage plant after a night on the curry. Prospective parents were being encouraged to spend a fortune educating their most valuable possessions. The smell had lingered for days, the image of well-heeled clients being toured around the school by eager Grade VII students while holding their noses, would still be keeping senior management awake at night. ‘Letdown’ waddled with agricultural gait along the aisle and sat down next to Calum, his weathered right hand accompanied with a toothy grin extended in a quiet recognition of welcome. ‘Calamity’ liked ‘Letdown’, they had much in common. A handout was being passed around.

Apparently the new Department of Administrative Affairs was going to take the school to a new level. The staff were going to ascend to the dizzy heights of subtle and subdued work practices. Calum had been to a ‘new level’ before and he hadn’t much liked it there. He was frightened of heights. New levels smacked of wind-blown plateaus. They were a boggy moor, bleak, mist-shrouded, squelchy, grasping peat which sucked and slurped and clung to boots, sapped energy. New levels eventually spat one out at the other end, shocked and exhausted. Calum was always happiest when he left the new level and returned to the old one. Calum had once been described as having low expectations which he regularly met. But there was a radar under which he always seemed to pass. And, of course, as a result of these idiosyncracies, Calum’s affairs had been impossible to administrate. There was a satisfied chuckle and grin to his right. ‘Letdown’ was scribbling something on a piece of paper. He passed it to Calum.

“How about ‘Doneitall’ Dunberry?” He grinned at his own brilliance. Calum couldn’t suppress his own smile, but he did want to give Josephine Dunberry a chance after all she was new to the school.

‘New to the school’ meant keenness, wanting to make a splash, diving in at the deep end. All of that meant for Calum the forming of a committee, numerous emails which required an answer, meetings which always, inevitably decided one thing only. And that one thing was to meet again in a month. Sure enough, the day after this initial staff meeting a message came to them in the form of an email.

Hi All,

 I’m really excited to be heading up this new department. It was wonderful to meet you all yesterday. It’s great to be a part of a strong and vibrant staff in a school with a wonderful balance between innovation and tradition.

“OK,” mouthed Calum silently as he read this. He would have preferred a ‘Good Morning’ rather than a ‘Hi’. He wouldn’t have described meeting himself and Letdown as being ‘exciting and wonderful’, maybe ‘shocking and awful’. As for ‘strong and vibrant’, Calum found his compost heap to be strong and vibrant. But the next email left him stunned and shocked.

“It is with great pleasure that I announce Larry Letford as my assistant. He has demonstrated over the years…….”

But Calum could read no further. He was gobsmacked. But after he had closed the gab that gaped, he had a rueful epiphany.

So now with ‘Letdown’ being part of the new department, Calum suddenly realised something. There came an extra skip in the Calum step, a ghastly grin on the Smith face. All was back in balance again, all was right with the world because yet again Calum saw that the new Department of Administrative Affairs would strut and dance its way through the first month or so of the school year. It would be a storm to be weathered but soon its ship would have sailed. It would, in short, be very worthy of a mixed metaphor or two. By early November, Dunberry and her department would have fallen under the spell of Letdown. And the staff, those who had proved themselves over the years, would cease to think of its existence. Occasionally it would remind the school that it was there by spreading its manure about the place with gay abandon. And noses would be held and faces would be screwed up and shoulders would droop, but soon enough it would be gone, a dead parrot. And all would be right with the world again and teachers would teach and the school would be much too busy to think about administrative affairs ever again. It would be a fossil to be found in a ditch in long years to come, long deceased; a head scratcher for archaeologists.

And there, Dear Friends, we must leave teachers in their classrooms, on their hind legs, teaching like they have always taught, furthering the development of their pupils with a smile and an equilateral triangle; a grin and a scientific principle; a nuance in a novel; a fizzing philosophy of kindness to all. In short a learning experience which works and moves children forward, certainly with occasional tweaks here and there, but without earth shattering eruptions of new ideas and worthy ideals many of which are already hiding in plain sight.

Dear Reader, I like the following Latin quote which I think would be a good motto for teachers. What do you think? Answers on a post card to !@##4!. Just kidding. Enjoy your weekend.

‘Do ut des’ = ‘I give in order that you may give’.

Thanks for reading.

*In the 1980s a sitcom called “Yes, Minister” invented “The Department of Administrative Affairs”.