Throwaway Remarks

I was, Dear Friends, a teacher for 43 years. I still marvel at the elusiveness which allowed me to get away with it for so long. But, Dear Reader, I was lucky that I received some good advice early on and even luckier that the arrogance of youth did not bar me from taking it onboard. The advice was very basic. 

Rule 1: Do no harm.

So, most of the time I was conscious and careful about what I said because I remembered  from my own childhood that throwaway phrase from a teacher which had either raised me up or put me down. But, of course, I failed. Not all of the time, but sometimes I left work and if I felt I had blundered I did give myself a mental kicking. I am grinding my teeth now and cringing at my folly as I remember Maurice Bellion.

My first teaching post was at Cranford Community School in the London Borough of Hounslow. It was in 1976. Strangely I was employed as a Latin teacher but I was allocated a homeroom class in Sheila Jeffries typing room. I was given strict instructions that none of the early teens were to touch the typewriters. This was impossible because all I could see when I sat at the desk was the occasional haircut nudging its way above the machines. Monitoring the touching of them would have required a large police presence. I quietly gave up on Ms, Jeffries’  finger waving. I was never going to storm into action like a rampant Basil Fawlty at the slightest clack from behind the typing pool . It was my job to establish the presence of the students and somehow entertain them until the meat of the day began. So I would religiously call their names and get requisite grunts in between clackety-clacks. Then they and I would go our separate ways.

“Louise, Peter, Saddhu, Rory, George, Penny, Agiapal, Christine, Bellion” and so on’

Same routine every day, brief encounters which left us with little knowledge of each other.

After a few weeks of calling the names, one day I thought I heard quiet sobbing from behind a typewriter at the back of the room. I investigated and found  Bellion Maurice in floods of tears so welcomed the chance to revisit my ‘ whole child’ training. Accordingly I pulled up a chair, assumed a solicitous posture.  I placed my hands in my lap, mustered the falsest of smiles, a grin like poison coming to supper I suspect. I proceeded to produce the empathy with which I had been recently trained, dragged to the forefront the smattering of counselling skills that I had, brought from the depths the opening phraseology that we had been taught.

“So what seems to be the trouble, Bellion?”

 I mustered the concerned furrowed brow which I had learned was the prerequisite of a trained counsellor. Now I was prepared to hear about a breakfast argument with parents or sibling, a disparaging remark made about his lunch/acne/haircut in the playground at school. I was going to lance the cankerous boil that was causing his quivering lip and tear streaked cheeks. I was to become his comfort, his new cheery beginning. 30 years hence I would have had such an impact that Bellion would remember the teacher who had started him on the road to success. I was he who was destined to make a difference in his life.

But instead of that, Bellion, renewed his sobs at my first question. I tried others but all failed. I decided that the best thing for him was some privacy, some quiet time in the corner of the classroom. So I returned to the front of the class to allow him to pull himself together in hopes that I could get to the bottom of things later. I reached for my pencil and tried to complete the morning’s administrivia. My head was down and I was suddenly tapped on the wrist. Louise was a worldly wise girl with unfortunate tendencies of burgeoning cynicism towards the world at large. Her accent, of course, was London.

“Yes, what is it Louise?”

“You know what ‘is problem is, don’t ya?”

Hopes of enlightenment.

“No, what is it?”

“Well, you call me Louise, and everybody else by their first name, don’t ya?”

“Of course I do. I call all of my students by their first name.”

Louise shook her head.

“You call Maurice, Bellion. You call him by his last name.”

I sat back. I had thought that ‘Bellion’ was an unusual first name and now I knew that it wasn’t. I called Maurice over and apologised for my mistake. We were not issued with boxes of Kleenex or therapy dogs back then.

My car was a battered old Morris 1300. Every morning I would drive the 15 minutes or so to work through some reasonably heavy traffic. There was a newspaper shop on the way. Every morning , being a creature of habit, I pulled in and bought my daily paper there. About a month or so after Maurice’s tears I felt that I had done a pretty good job of formulating a better relationship with the lad. I was patting myself on the back as I thought about this and as I pulled up at the newsagent.  Quick word with the proprietor, speedy glance at the headlines and I was back in my car. As I reversed back to pull into traffic, I heard a slight crunch behind but there was no car there so I thought no more of it.

Quick cup of coffee and early morning banter in the staffroom and I was off to my homeroom. Calling the roll was completed but I noted the absence of Maurice Bellion. But, 10 minutes after the beginning, he stumbled into class flustered and annoyed.

“Why are you late, Maurice?”

Smattering of trained righteous indignation from the teacher. Hands on hips from the child, anger unquenched.

“You know why I’m late.”

“No, I don’t”.

“You drive a green Morris 1300 don’t you.”

“Yes, how do you know that?”

“Cos you ran over my bike this morning.”

Sure enough the front wheel of Maurice Bellion’s bike was crumpled and crushed. He told me that I had reversed over it at the newsagents.  More humble pie from this teacher.

 Maurice Bellion would only be about 8 years younger than me. I hope that he has had a successful and happy life and that his memories of school are not coloured by these two incidents.

So I have mulled over the moral of this story. Obviously I had broken  my ‘Rule 1” in spectacular fashion. I guess that it should be something along the lines as ‘Get to know your children quickly”, another obvious failing of mine at the time.  I suppose that a good rule should be the following:-

Rule 3: If teachers are on their teacher-ish high horse too frequently, then they should dismount.

I can think of numerous other pieces of  homespun nonsense that is never going to find itself in a teacher’s manual but this blog is already too long. You, who have born with it to the end, must now realise that certain teachers are long winded, they drag things out, they lengthen where they should shorten, their message is lost in their meanderings.  Hopefully, Dear Friends, I have not preyed too, too long on your indulgence.  Davidson will now shut up!!

Thanks for reading, Friends.