THE SCHOOLTEACHER

A story of what it is really like for a rookie-teacher, wet behind the ears, and floundering in a hostile an alien environment!

It is an army hut, divided into two classrooms. It is the lesson after the lunch-break, and the head of my department unlocks the door to let both sets of pupils into the building. He and I are not on friendly terms. We never have been. As I later discover, he despises me and considers me a wasted space as a teacher. Unfortunately I am inclined to agree with him, but think that I am condemned to this profession. He is a bully to his staff, which includes myself. I never stand up to his hectoring style. I am a doormat. The pupils know this and exploit my innate weakness beyond any limits of endurance.

As soon as they storm into the classroom, in which I am going to attempt to teach them French, they shout and scream like a demented mob. I can only stand and make the fatal mistake of shouting back, thinking that will curb the noise and settle them down. It does not. My lesson (typically like all the rest!) is an abject failure. I cannot teach any of the material that the head of department and myself have agreed I should impart to the said mob before the bell rings at the end of the lesson.

However, as usually happens, the disruption from my classroom becomes so intrusive, that he has to enter, whereupon order is of course restored, because he is one of them, unlike myself. I am an outsider who has been transplanted in their midst. Of course it is embarrassing for me, and a huge joke for the class. I am diminished by the experience which is repeated again and again. This lesson is a microcosm of my time at the school, which stretches to just over eleven years.

Not only is the classroom a battleground for me, but the staffroom is a foreign country where I meet strangers, with whom I have nothing in common, and who make it clear that I do not belong and never will. A few take pity, but it is not acceptable for a man to be pitied in that atmosphere. You are supposed to be made of steel and if you are not, then you must be one of those effeminate males who deserve to be ridiculed and persecuted. All the time I am afraid of being accused of being in that company, even though I cannot help but behave in such a manner.

At the back of my mind is the threat of dismissal because of my condition, which the government have deemed as inappropriate within the teaching profession. I also do not acknowledge what I am to myself. The strain of hiding my true identity in the hostile environment takes its toll. The consequent breakdown is the signal which points to the absolute necessity to let go of the need to punish myself in pursuing a teaching career.

Eventually I am forced to admit I cannot go back to the school for a single day. I must rest. It is over. There will be no more lessons in that army hut, where the mob takes control of everything I want to do to help others, and where the chaos is restored by the intervention of the head of department who in that moment undermines my fractured personality, which has been gradually torn to shreds during my attendance at the school.

POSTSCRIPT

This is in fact a true account of the final act of my time as a teacher. After my second year in Germany, I was unfortunately appointed to a post in a secondary school on the Welsh borders. I was ill-prepared for the experience. I overstayed my “welcome” in that place by a good number of years, and as a consequence suffered my first breakdown, which it was initially thought to be caused by my inability to cope with the situation at the school. However, once I had been offered early retirement which I accepted with open hands and left the school for good, I was able to start on the road to recovery, which lasted almost twenty years, to a point where I could be free to be myself and no longer allow others to dictate my life. I look back at my career in education, and know that I chose the wrong profession, from which the only good which ensued and which arrives “at my door” every month is my monthly pension.

I used to have recurring nightmares about the first day of a school term. It was always the same scenario, where I was supposed to be prepared like the rest of the staff, despite the fact I am in an environment which is completely alien to me. I have never been to this place before and yet there is always a familiarity about it which terrorizes me. I am supposed to have all my lesson plans ready, and I don’t even know which classes I will be taking nor where the classrooms are situated. Everyone seems to know what they are doing, and are too busy to tell me anything. I usually wake up in a sweat.

Fortunately I now can sleep soundly without these shocking images of a distorted hell, which was my daily life for too long when I was a teacher.