Teaching: The short road to insanity?

The day starts with a police car arriving outside. A fight breaks out and a shoe and a bag fly across the room. Thirty fearless individuals then enter the room running around and screaming at each other. As chaos fills the room, I do not believe that the oldest person in here, apart from me, is only five years old.

It is still early in the day and I feel a headache coming on already. The children all want to sit on my lap, bringing me their favorite books and toys and showing me what they had drawn for Mrs Jones the night before. Everything is so small, especially the table, which are up to my knee and I am afraid to sit on the little chairs in case they break. I feel nostalgia hit me, remembering that classroom smell.

I suddenly hear a scream from inside the cloakroom, and a big crash; a dramatic entrance, as a tired and a harsh looking elderly lady walks in with a grumpy child walking in after her.
"We are going to be good today aren’t we Lee?"
"NO' screams the child"
"I said we're going to be good today aren't we Lee!"

Lee runs off as his teacher walks after him. This child, I had been warned about. Last year in nursery he wouldn't say a word; instead he would run around making animal noises, smacking other children and biting the teachers and even on one occasion, broke one of the teaching assistant’s fingers. Appalling as it is for teachers, they rarely get additional help in the classroom and instead they have to rely on occasional help of the parents. Mrs Jones tells me of how she sometimes goes home in tears.

During the day I learn that teaching can be eventful and the rehearsal of the Christmas Nativity play provides me with some amusement. The children sit on the make shift stage in the small gym, fighting, fidgeting and pulling faces. Mary enters whilst Joseph decides to sit in the 'wing' sucking his thumb. Finally he is pushed on stage, as Mary wets herself. Lee swings his Shepard’s sheep around like an Olympic hammer so that it hits one of the nursery children in the face. As the rest of the class sing their little hearts out to 'When a Child is Born', the victim of Lee's battering, is reduced to contribution is to hilariously harmonies with a relentless wail.

Lunchtime is 'fun', with one little boy stamping on another’s head after beating him with a toy lorry. I later learned that the policeman had arrived to speak to the headteacher, after being accused by a parent of allegedly hitting their child. In fact all he had done was tell the child to stand against the wall after the child kicked another.

Little Molly had just come back to school after two weeks of being away. During the lunch break we got chatting over a good book and a cool glass of orange juice. I notice that she is wearing a pretty bracelet around her tiny wrist.
"My daddy made it me"
"Well it's very pretty Molly"
She looks up at me with her big brown eyes as she wriggles around in her seat.
"He made it for me because he beat mummy up and I saw."

I feel so angry and helpless. Why does a child as young as five have to see such a thing? I am sickened, and then it dawns on me that in fact school for some children is a welcome escape from home. Knowing how to get attention at school, being told off by the teacher is better than being ignored at home. I notice one parent telling her child to stop hugging her because it's embarrassing, and I wonder how many other children are starved of affection from their own parents.

I see Lee run towards me and I smile asking if he's okay. He then runs off again, making some kind of animal noise. I think he was trying to be a chicken today. Mrs Jones tells me how he is on the 'at risk register' which means that his home life isn't exactly pleasant, another case of domestic violence.

The day approaches its end and having become quite attached to the children, I feel sad knowing that they would soon be going home. That afternoon, Lee kicks Mrs Jones and attempts to bite her. She demands an apology, but he refuses. As he fetches his coat, he stops and turns back to Mrs Jones.

'I love you.'

Dec 2004