School Days

Sophia Waugh

If I cry, I do it on my own. And I don’t do it that often.

I can cry at a book (the death of George Osborne on the field of Waterloo gets me every time, for wretched Amelia rather than on his own account) or a play (‘We few, we lucky few, we band of brothers…’).

But cry at work? If there are any rules for survival in teaching, they would be to learn the children’s names as quickly as possible, and not to show any weakness. Crying is alas as weak as you can be.

I have shed tears at work, but mostly, like the Everly Brothers, I do my crying in the rain. The bully at my last school reduced me to tears once – in front of her, to my shame. She won that round; I won the next. But no child has ever made me cry. I’ve felt tears well up on their behalf, but no insults or swearing, even physical threats, have ever brought a tear to my eye. Until now. It was such a small thing. I asked a child to take his coat off. The child refused, repeatedly, and pointlessly, until I asked him to leave the room. All well and good and part of the pointless argy-bargy that is the nitty-gritty of a teacher’s life.

I thought that was that but, behind my back, everything escalated. The child refused to go to the ‘Think about what you’ve done and come back a more reasonable person’ room. ‘Foul’ was called and parents were summoned. The child left the site in high dudgeon, then finally agreed he would go to the ‘Be a nice person’ room the next day.

Except he didn’t. Back he came and, as he left my classroom the next time, I said quietly to him, ‘We’re all right now, aren’t we, after yesterday?’ It turned out we weren’t. ‘What do you think, miss?’ He asked. ‘You can f**k right off.’ And again ‘F**k right off.’ And twice more for good measure: ‘F**k right off. F**k right off.’ And he turned on his heels.

And I cried. I stood in the corridor with tears rolling down my face.

Why was it so very different from the times I’ve been called ‘b*tch’ or ‘c*nt’? Both words are more aggressive. And yet, this time, this child finally got through my defences and left me weeping.

I do know why. This child had been handed to me from another class. I usually manage the unruly element well in tutor groups. I can talk to them; they tend to trust me and know I am on their side.

This boy was trouble lower down in the school, but has slowly and surely been improving. Instead of rushing off or lashing out, he now comes knocking on my door when he’s in a state, knowing that I will act as his buffer against whatever has gone on. His mother has, repeatedly, thanked me for my work with him.

And now? I felt personally betrayed; it was a pain as sharp as if my own child had turned on me. He was excluded for a day but, when I rang home, he refused to apologise and his mother laughed and said, ‘Oh dear. Well, I have had a word with him.’ The betrayal was doubled.

We shouldn’t allow ourselves to become emotionally involved with our pupils, but I am sure my success rate with just that type of child is because I do mind about them, I do want them to survive school and I do, however babyish and idealistic it might be, hope I can help them not just with sonnets but with emotional intelligence.

And now he’s back, and I will continue to do my best for him. But, even though he may never know it, he has lost himself my fighting edge, and I’m not sure he can get it back.

As for me – it’s probably a bit late for me to learn to be hard-hearted, but let’s hope it’s another 20 years before a child makes me cry.