Fish Pasta Bake and Lamb Curry Day

Daily, one can find the school lunch options scrawled on a white board inside the dining hall. Due to space shortages, the dining hall doubles as a makeshift classroom during the morning so frequently the menu has the remnants of the morning’s Maths lessons still lingering on the edges of the same board. Walking in at noon today my heart sunk. There under a 9 year old’s semi-erased explanation of the chunking method, the freshly scrawled menu read

LAMB CURRY

FISH PASTA BAKE

BEAN WRAPS

APPLE PIE WITH CUSTARD.

Before I go on, let me state for the record that I value children immensely as human beings. I wouldn’t be doing the job I do if I didn’t believe with all my soul that (despite being an aging crack head) Whitney Houston’s syrupy song The Greatest Love does have an element of truth; “I believe that children are the future, lead them well and let them lead the way.”  Children don’t hide behind masks, what you see is what you get.

But children don’t hide behind social niceties either.

When I saw the menu I knew we were in for a rough afternoon.

Take a deep breath in ANY primary school about half an hour after lunch and you will know what I mean. A first you might think that the sewer running under the playground is blocked. Maybe the local beef jerky factory has just had a delivery of raw materials. But no. It is a massive release of, let’s say, natural methane from children all across the school. It is especially evident in schools like ours which are basically 70% sealed windows. Windows let the light in, but are not especially efficient in creating fresh air currents. Add to that an unusually warm mid-May day and basically you have a green house.

For those of us concerned with global warming, forget mass cattle farming. The largest methane output on the planet between the hours of 1pm and 3pm must surely be your local primary school. Children sit cross-legged on the carpet, listening to the teacher explain the reasons for World War I and suddenly you notice it. A smell that equates only to rotten eggs stuffed inside a dead rat and dropped in a vat of World War standard mustard gas.

Couple this with bean wraps, curry and fish-bake day and you get the sense. Suddenly the problem becomes exponentially worse; exponentially worse in a way that would have a school-bus-full of Cambridge PhDs scribbling away on the dining hall board. Old Whitney never meant this when she sang “Show them all the beauty they possess inside.” Trust me- what was inside it escaping out, and it respects no social graces.

But sleep well readers. If children are indeed the future then in 20, 30, 40 years time they will gather together all the class carpets from all the primary schools across the world. The residual methane will burn for 1000 years and our energy crisis will be solved with the light of one match. Good news indeed. Queue up calmly and quietly for seconds on Fish Pasta Bake, boys and girls.  

Keep the Faith,

The Head

Songs of Praise Syndrome

“I wouldn’t want your job.” I frequently hear this not just from school staff but from parents, contractors in building meetings, policemen visiting the school, even the odd astronaut. It is a position shared by many it seems, except maybe West Ham’s departing manager Avram Grant.

The job description for Head Teacher’s should simply read:

1.      1)  To be the fixer, the problem solver

2.       2) See number 1

There are certainly days when it seems the problems of 490 pupils and their families, plus those of 86 staff land squarely on my shoulders. It is not uncommon for someone to hit me with an issue before I have made it from the car park to my office door. All want a solution. Check that. All want their solution. Frequently the problem can be solved quite easily, under their own steam and initiative. But enforcing our own solutions can involve conflict. People in public service, it seems, do not like conflict. In fact they will avoid it to the point of causing themselves personal stress.

Sunday evenings are difficult. I have found it increasingly easy down the years to forget about work on a Friday night. The weekends are mine and I have become skilled at devoting them to my family. However about tea time Sunday, the feeling starts to rise from the pit of my stomach:  Monday is coming. Monday means a full week of problems ahead. Problem that demand attention. Now. This is the time when Songs of Praise is on British telly. Self-doubt creeps and whispers near my ear. It calls me a charlatan, a fraud. ‘Who are you to lead these people, this community’?

Evidentially the feeling is not uncommon. A colleague once told me that the Sunday tea time lack of self-belief is shared by many. It is called Songs of Praise Syndrome. I tried googling the condition but I can’t validate the rumour. I would imagine Songs of Praise Syndrome would more likely be people who never set foot in church suddenly packing out St Greavsie ‘s and singing their hearts out because the BBC cameras are in town.

But I know the symptoms.

The condition is real.

So we all develop our coping mechanisms. We develop thick skins. Some drink. Some pound a treadmill in a gym.

When the problems flow I picture them as waves washing over me. The important ones will cling to me. The insignificant ones wash back into the sea; perhaps to form the next wave but more than likely to be drawn on the tide far off shore. Only then do I reach for the towel, or better still, at a natural pace let the wind and sun dry the droplets from my shoulders.

My long trusted coping mechanism is to stand at the door of our flat, just before putting the key in lock and taking the first footstep of being home. I say to myself sometimes silently, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in demanding tones, “Put it down, put it down, put it down.”

I also like to load the car’s music system with my favourite tunes and sing aloud, at the top of my lungs, on the journey home. Granted it draws funny looks from other drivers on the A13 and Victoria Embankment. But that’s THEIR problem. I tend not to listen to spiritual music though. It reminds me of Sunday evenings. 

Keep the Faith,

The Head 

The Changing Room

A job is something you do 9 to 5. A career is different. It permeates every cell of your being, every second of your existence: waking and sleeping.

Teachers have a hard time switching off. We cannot walk down a beach without looking for shells that might form a future classroom display. We can’t casually thumb through a magazine like the rest of humanity without carefully tearing out pages that illustrate sequence, or shades of colour or growth.

Today I got the opportunity to attend a meeting held at West Ham’s football ground. West Ham are my passion. I often describe following the club as my mistress. So needless to say, I was thrilled to attend the meeting in the hidden, carpeted bowels of the stadium; a part I get to tread rarely despite having spent most Saturdays in the stadium over the past 24 years.

At the end of the meeting, it was arranged that I would get the chance to visit the changing rooms and walk down the holiest of holies; the players’ tunnel that leads to the pitch.

Needless to say, the preceding meeting became more than insignificant to me as a result. I must have stood up to draw the proceedings to a close at least three times only to find someone had something else to say. When we eventually finished I bounced at the door, like a Labrador waiting to go to the park. As we moved down the corridor I pulled at random door handles and got a buzz at the simple act of finding a room full of electrical equipment. You have to be in love with your team to understand.

Once inside the changing room, I didn’t know where to look first. I pictured my heroes, preparing for battle. Our number 11 sat there, number 8 getting strapped over there. But my eye was drawn to a large motivational message painted on the wall. It appeared freshly painted, the message specifically chosen for the current crop of West Ham elite and thus reflecting their dismal season.

In large letters it read

WINNING

ITS WHAT WE ARE HERE FOR

I froze. The beach. The casual glance at a magazine. The teacher took over.

It was the same feeling I get when I look at a supermarket sign that says

APPLE’S 5 for £1.

Here in a place which to me equates to heaven on earth I was hit with the evil that is Inappropriate Use of the Apostrophe. This evil surrounds us daily, it can be seen everywhere, on any high street, formal letter, in any advertisement. No, the world doesn’t tilt on its axis as a result. No one dies ( at least I don’t think so). But just like my wasted time on the beach I had to stop enjoying the moment and think, “Actually it should read IT’S WHAT WE ARE HERE FOR.” There was no point remaining another minute.

A few hours later, I find the mistake somewhat comforting. West Ham have had a terrible season. This weekend I will endure a 12 hour journey to some god-forsaken corner of Northern England to watch my club play in what is likely to be our final away game before relegation. We are perennial under-achievers. Even our theme song rings with the promise of disappointment; Fortune’s always hiding, I’ve looked everywhere. Inappropriate Use of the Apostrophe seems somewhat appropriate for my West Ham. We can’t even get the motivational slogans right. 

First of All...

First of all, many thanks to a professional photographer friend of mine who runs her own blog and inspired me to do the same. I use the term friend in the social networking sense; I haven’t seen her face to face since high school. However, and despite the distance of the Atlantic Ocean between us (me in London, her in our native New Jersey), she has known me for 44 years; when I sat next to her in Mrs Lemke’s First Grade classroom. I remember wanting desperately to be the fastest reader in the class but she was easily quicker. She would have safely accounted for Dick and Jane’s missing red balloon before I had even managed to rouse Tag the dog from the porch.

HEAD LINES. OK, not the most original but it seems a reasonable description of what this blog could evolve into, if only in that our careers define us as people. I am the Head Teacher (principal) of a large primary (elementary) school in London. My current posting is my fourth headship in our capital’s schools. I am drawn to dysfunctional schools; learning communities that are broken and need fixing. Schools that are waiting for a fat Yank riding in on a white horse like Hoss in Bonanza. And when the job is done, the townsfolk gather to watch the wannabe cowboy ride to the edge of town and on into the sunset; to the next place in need of saving.

My other is life is as a husband and father of five children. We live in a cramped flat in the heart of London’s Theatreland. My wife is a local girl; a modern cockney.

To readers, this blog will aim to reflect the daily frustrations, humour and hopefully warmth that permeate a life in service to others.

To me, it will hopefully be a cathartic exercise in stress relief. 

Keep The Faith,

The Head