HEAD LINES HAS MOVED

I will be posting the blog on a new site from now on. It has something to do with more blog tools and technical stuff. YOU CAN REACH THE NEW SITE HERE. It will still be accessible via my Face Book page, or you can sign up via WORDPRESS for email alerts. 

I am pleased that so many people are enjoying HEAD LINES. The blog now has over 1000 readers in 8 countries.  It is an exercise in catharsis for me but it is always a plus when my words strike home with someone else. Keep checking in daily, dear readers.

Keep The Faith,

The Head

Fathers' Day Part II

  An Open Letter to My Kids:

Dear Saucepans,

I have blinked and you are grown or nearly grown. I want to play Suck the Sock or kick the sponge ball down the corridor but you are off and out with your friends, to high school, to parties, or to your jobs. I don’t feel abandoned though; just glad that you are happy and confident and enjoying life.

Remember the Crocodile Game? As toddlers you would beg to play it every night when I came in from work. I would be the crocodile, on all-fours lurking on the floor. You would run back and forth between the front room chairs and sofa before the monster croc could catch you. If he did he would trap you, pinned to the floor, and pretend to bite your legs or belly as you screamed out for your siblings to save you. You would team up together to fight off the croc and pull the victim to safety.

Now that you are older, I hope you realise that the Crocodile Game had life lessons built into it. I know, I know, teachers can’t switch it off; but the lessons the game taught you were not about spelling or multiplication tables or where Qatar is on the map. The game taught you lessons about life, about your relationship with each other. They are lessons that will serve you well now and long after I am gone.

As toddlers you would hover on the edge of the front room chair, peering over to see where the monster was hiding. You would dare each other to go first, to make that run across the crocodile’s lair and to the safety of the sofa. Even as very young children you would judge the situation and calculate the risk. You would squeal half with excitement, half with fear as you dared the others, (and dared yourself) to cross over to refuge. The fear was a big part of the game. It was fun. I have always tried to teach you to make mild fear something to harness, to use for your own good.

And when one of you was captured by the beast, the others would swarm to attack the monster. Meanwhile another would pull the helpless victim to safety. The crocodile would in turn capture one of the rescuers and the cycle would start again.

That was many years ago. It seems like days ago to me but the calendar tells me it was, in fact, last century. But the rules of the Crocodile Game still apply and will continue to apply when you are 25, 35, 65 years old.

First, harness your fear. Do not be afraid to take calculated risks based on informed decisions. There will be times when you can make the run across the room to the safety of the sofa and times you should stay put and wait it out. Making that run is exhilarating. It is the times when we as humans feel most alive. To remain on the sofa for the entire game would be boring. If the Crocodile Game did not involve that element of fear, of taking a chance, you surely would not have begged to play each evening. It would have been too safe. It would have been dull. Life should be lived and tingle our senses. Only boring people get bored.

Secondly, you learned that when one of you is in trouble, the others need to lend their help. Individually, the monster can devour you. But collectively you are strong, strong enough to beat the crocodile. Keep aware of each other. Keep watch over each other. Love one another.

Third, fun is free. We never used a computer or an IPod when we played. We didn’t text our friends the results. We didn’t worry about what we wore or what handbag we had. It was just us, a family, playing together.

Thank you for the Fathers’ Day cards and pressies. The dart board to decide what we would do today was a good idea. I am a bit disappointed that all my daughters failed to even hit the board and instead knocked my Father’s Day cards to the ground, but sports never were a strong suit for my girls. I am also disappointed that on the one day of the year when I get to have the TV remote, my dart landed on ‘Hand over the Remote.’ Easy come, easy go;  que sera sera.

You all know that I don’t do soppy very well. Equally you know that you, along with your mother, are the most important people in my life. I would do anything for you and because of you. 

My work has kept me away longer than I would have liked down the years. God knows I missed my share of school open evenings. It wasn’t due to lack of interest. It was more to do with the fact I knew you were loved, nurtured, supported and that there were hundreds, thousands of other children who couldn’t say the same. I was out, somewhere in this city, wrestling their crocodiles.

Yes, there are monsters out there in the real world. I wish I could tell you there wasn’t but if I did, I would be lying to you. Life is tough and hard, but equally it is joyous and fun and full of laughter.  And the good news is: the joyous part is stronger.

I have no fatherly advice for you, dear saucepans. All you need to remember are the rules of The Crocodile Game:

• Be happy. Laugh as much as you can. Have fun.
• Love one another.
• Make your choices wisely. Take calculated risks. 
• Be tolerant.There are people in the world who need help and you can help them.

That was the home that raised you.

You are warriors. Together you can beat the monsters. I promise.

Love Forever,

Dad

Fathers' Day Part I

In London, no more than a two minute walk from where my family and I live, there is a pub called the Prince of Wales. Locally it is known as Charlie’s. It is situated on the street that marks the boundary between the London boroughs of Westminster and Camden.

There is also a Camden New Jersey. It is a gateway to another world for my family. My father was born and raised there. My sister died there.

Dad stood up in that pub nearly 14 years ago as we were celebrating the christening of our youngest child and spoke to the assembled group which consisted of dozens of our Cockney friends, relatives and neighbours.

His words that day caught me on the hop.

My father raised a toast and thanked everyone, not for coming along, or for the christening gifts and cards for his newest grandchild. He thanked the group for accepting me, his son. He thanked them for embracing me into their community, for making me one of them. He thanked them for caring for me and loving me. Dad went on to say it was a great comfort to him and to my mother that I was surrounded by such good people, considering the width of the Atlantic Ocean lay between us.

A decade after he made that toast, my father began to suffer a series of strokes and Alzheimer’s took hold of him. He began to lose what Grace Paley called 'that brainy light.' I made that trans-Atlantic journey to visit him twice since. The first time was to say goodbye. He sat in his wheelchair outside the airport as I unloaded the luggage. I remember turning to look at him from a distance as I walked into the Departure Area; certain it was the last time I would see him alive.  But his decline has proved to be not just cruel but lingering.

I crossed the sea a second time, to find him even weaker, more confused. This time, too frail to make the trip to the airport, even with a wheelchair, I spent the few minutes before leaving sitting on the edge of his great reclining chair, telling him that he had been a good father and recalling the stories from my youth that proved my hypothesis. This time certain it was our last conversation in this world. He said nothing. I told my sister the next time I returned; it would be to bury him.

Today, dad, I reciprocate that toast you made in Charlie’s Pub. It is not only Father’s Day this weekend but also my parents’ 56^th Wedding Anniversary. These two celebrations resonate strongly in my thoughts a I write.

John Irving said ‘We don’t lose someone all at once, we lose them slowly, over time, piece by little piece’. The final years of dad’s life are in marked contrast to the preceding 7 decades. I have witnessed his sense of social responsibility: his kindness, his creativity, his sensitivity. Likewise I have witnessed his ability to be the most frustratingly obstinate man. Stubborn, bull headed, competitive to his own detriment. As his health declined I found it impossible to watch, the strongest man I had known in my lifetime, the man who taught me to be a man, was child-like, frightened. I was glad for the width of the Atlantic Ocean between us.

My memories of my father are forever forged in those senses of my youth; in the younger, invincible man I remember. The one who emerged from the gates at the local chemical refinery, towel rolled like a fat sausage in his hands; smelling of Old Spice cologne.  The smell of pancakes and eggs cooking on a camp stove. Of cold beer after a clambake. Of gasoline and the grass clippings thrown out by the lawnmower.  Of peanuts at the ball park.

He is forever the what-seemed eternal car ride down route 295 on a hot summer night after we had watched the Phillies lose again. Windows down, the humid winds of corn fields swirling through the car. The Radio would be on some god forsaken AM country music station, a mixture of static and Johnny Cash in our ears. We said little if we said anything at all. It was enough just to enjoy the ride together.

Ask me what I have learned from my dad and I would say a love and deep respect for sport, a love and deep respect for learning; a love and deep respect for making society better. Attributes I pass on everyday not just to my own children but also to the children I work with. And hopefully those children and my own children will take these notions on and pass them on the next generation. For this is the way of the world. This is what it means to live forever.

In my office at work I have a sign that recalls a West African proverb 

“If we succeed it is because 

we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.”

I ask for three minutes of your time, dear readers, to listen to a piece of music. It is a Beatles song recorded by Johnny Cash not long before his death. It is not the strong Cash voice of his earlier work that comes through. Gone is the defiant stubbornness of A Boy Named Sue, the steadfastness of I Walk The Line. Instead what remains is a voice that is physically fragile but with the depth and resonance of a lifetime of experiences, of hard mistakes, of triumphs and tragedies.

This recording will always remind me of dad. That ride down 295 south after the Phillies game. Johnny Cash meets The Beatles and the music of my youth giving way to my adult life in England. The new life my parents afforded me through constantly striving to provide opportunities. A life that succeeds because my family and  I stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

I will phone dad today and wish him a Happy 54^th anniversary and the same for Father’s Day. He will recognise my voice and will answer in short phrases or single words when prompted and pushed. I will ask him if he is watching the baseball on the TV and if he rates the Philadelphia Eagles chances next season. He might know what year it is, equally he might not.

My father’s weakness illuminates my own weakness. Perhaps in his demise, I sense my own inevitable demise. I do not harbour the emotional strength to visit him in America again and watch him in decline. I prefer to be warm in my memories of him as that stronger and younger figure.

It is a cop-out, I know. It is my only means of coping, I tell myself. I remain stubborn in that position, the same stubbornness that infuriated me when my father displayed it.

I turn to Grace Paley's short story once again and read aloud the final, haunting words:

Of course her son never came home again...

My father took the oxygen tubes out of his nostrils and said, "Jokes, Jokes again."     

"No, Pa, it could really happen that way, it's a funny world nowadays."

"No," he said, "Truth first, She will slide back. A person must have character, She does not."

..."How long will it be?" he asked. "Tragedy! You too. When will you look it in the face?"

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Old Yeller Solution

As a preamble to today’s blog, I refer dear and regular readers to last month’s offering entitled The Bird Catcher. Subscribers to Head Lines will also, by now, recognise the attention I pay to messages presented via everyday objects I encounter in my daily existence. Some might call them omens. A hero of mine would have said:

I would like to think my innate desire to make connections from the mundane wells from something deep in my genes, percolating from the fractional amount of ancestral Native American blood that runs through my body. I frequently refer, in these moments (half in jest but with an undercurrent of seriousness) to ‘my people.’ Despite the bloodline being diluted down the generations, I view myself as a genetic throw-back to my family’s indigenous American roots. The spirituality of the Native Americans certainly applies to the aforementioned connections I make with objects I encounter during my daily routine.

Likewise I try to write from a perspective of honesty; perhaps more honesty than I display in the real world.

Armed with this context, I present today’s experience. Like last month’s blog, it takes provenance from the ornithological. As is my practice I present it honestly but will leave you, dear readers to form your own connections and conclusions.

This morning a parent brought an injured bird to my office. (I have mentioned before that our building is frequently mistaken for a medical centre but now it seems this extends to veterinary services). The parent, through some logic unknown to me, thought that I would know what to do with an injured bird that had obviously been attacked by a cat. It was suffering. My mind immediately created the synapse with the Birdcatcher incident. Once again, the Head Teacher is the natural authority on animal care.

All or none of the following may/may not be true. You will want to read the options and select which story you, dear readers, choose to believe. A bit like flicking between 24 hour news channels, if you will.

Option 1: The Care Bears Solution

I took the bird to the school’s nursery to show the 3 and 4 year olds. They displayed great curiosity and discussion bustled in the air as they tried to determine how best to help the bird. The teacher asked that the bird be removed as its distressed state was upsetting the children. I returned later to inform the children that the bird had been rushed via animal ambulance to the veterinary hospital and would be released back into the wild as soon as its recovery was complete.

Option 2: The Ostrich Solution

Senior teachers at the school met and used their combined 22 years of university education to come up with the recommendation: release it under the bushes behind the school car park. Therefore other birds will hear it, adopt it, and feed it until it returned to full strength.

Option 3: The Old Yeller Solution

I took pity on the bird and the likelihood it was in great pain. Therefore I carried it to a secluded corner of the school car park, pausing a moment to acknowledge the sanctity of its life and the ethical question that faced me.  I put the creature out of its misery with a stamp of my size 11 Doc Martens. (Remember dear readers equally at home on the football pitch, budget meeting or euthanizing small animals). I then returned to the office and informed senior staff that I had successfully carried out The Ostrich Solution. Afterwards I went to the Nursery to confirm The Care Bears Solution had been successful.

Sleep well dear readers, safe with thoughts of ostriches or Care Bears dancing in your heads to the sound of birdsong. 

Keep the Faith,

The Head

Government-Sponsored Pineapple

Back and blogging a day earlier than expected after the government inspectors decided that (by a whisker and IMHO very harshly) that our school will need another four months before being released from special measures. I write in anger at the decision, with a need for catharsis and not for entertainment tonight. Indulge me, dear readers, if you will.

In 2001, the Labour government introduced a programme in which every young child in Britain would be supplied a piece of fruit at morning break. The aim was to promote healthy eating and was a welcome change to the Margaret Thatcher regime who had taken away a similar long-standing arrangement for school milk two decades before. It earned her a nickname still held dear by those of us on the political left.

The fruit scheme offered only the most basic of variety. One day it would be apples, the next day oranges, then bananas, carrots and tomatoes. Simple but at least a gesture and the children got one of their five-a-day.
After a few weeks, the children began to notice the pattern. They would eagerly search out which fruit was being delivered to the classroom and pass comment on whether tomorrow it might be strawberries, watermelon or even mango. Disappointment would reign as the carrots would be unveiled.

A seven year old (we’ll call him Louie) decided that decisive action was needed. During a letter writing project he elected to compose a message to Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the day. In his best penmanship, Louie wrote:

Carrot Day came and went followed by Tomato Day, Apple Day, Orange Day and Banana Day. The same next week. And the week after. Autumn turned to winter and the oranges became hard to peel whilst wearing mittens. But the fruit arrived each morning and the children would clamber over each other to see if Louie’s pineapple wish had been granted.

I remember the day clearly early in 2002 when I noticed the box being delivered to the school looked different than usual. My heart leapt as I entertained for a brief moment that perhaps Louie’s wish had been granted. The box contained cucumbers. Disappointment yes but the break in the pattern suggested that perhaps, one day pineapple would be delivered.

A few weeks after we received a handwritten letter.

To receive a handwritten letter from the Prime Minister was highly unusual and a great honour. Louie proudly displayed his letter which helped off-set the disappointment of the third Cucumber Day that month. It was better than pineapple.

Ten years have passed. The left wing government of the day has been replaced by a right wing one. Louie is 17 years old by now and I hope he still treasures the letter. I expect it to show up on Antiques Road Show someday: a 50 year old Louie being asked, “Do you have it insured?” Louie looking over the top of his glasses, aching to ask; ‘How much is it worth?’

I am a decade older as well. I am now Head Teacher at a very different school with very different needs. I walked in on Tuesday morning and glanced over at the fruit delivery to the most wondrous sight. There, majestically poised on top of the fruit delivery box sat a tray of pineapple. Resisting the urge to hire a private investigator to track down Louie and have the tray delivered in person, I took a photo. It seems wishes do come true but sometimes we have to wait. And wait. And wait.

That same morning the government’s inspectors called to say they would be spending the next two days visiting my school and judging whether it should be removed from its failing category.

I was wholly optimistic that their judgements would match that of the local government. I began to dream of a great day of celebration. I dared to let myself imagine that the end of our long journey was nearing its end.
Dear readers, it was not to be. By the width of a whisper, I was unable to deliver that Great Day to our school community. I argued, fought, even lost my temper in an effort to convince the inspectors. They remained unmoved. And so they will return again in the Autumn, when mittens are once again peeling oranges on the playground. That will prove to be our Great Day.

I hold fast to that thought. The pineapple confirms it somehow. It is an omen. Louie waited 10 years and still never got to taste the sweetness. I will wait four months.

I will cut through the course, hard exterior of an autumnal pineapple and expose its ripe interior; the colour of sunshine. I will savour the sweetness, all the better for having waited for a taste. I will taste the sharpness which will remind me of the disappointment I feel this day.

Tonight, Louie, wherever you are, know that wishes come true.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Phoenix

You will forgive the brevity of today’s blog, dear readers. Today we received the phone call that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate will be visiting my school for two days from tomorrow. They will pass judgement or whether we are OUT of the failing category or are to spend another 4 months consolidating our position. My task ahead is to present our case and argue my opinion. It could go either way.

A quick note: to highlight the fact that my wife constantly berates me for not extinguishing my cigarettes properly. I don’t put them out properly by the way.  But that story is for another blog, another day.

Tonight she won’t be able to tell as a large hotel 100 meters from our front door has been ablaze since 11am this morning. As a result the local roads are closed and I was forced to abandon the car and walk home tonight. The experience was interesting in that roads which are usually roaring with 6 lanes of traffic were closed and formed long promenades.  

Tonight the air, the neighbourhood, our flat, smells of smoke. The view is a hazy cloud outside our windows as the fire is brought under control. But it still against the law for me to walk across the street and light a fag in the coffee shop. Go figure.

There will be no blog tomorrow as I go into stage mother mode and try to convince the inspectorate that my child can sing. Not to mix metaphors, but I am treating the fire as an omen: a bonfire burning away this school's difficult history. I am peering through the opaque haze outside our window. I am expecting to see The Phoenix rising above the smoldering hotel. I will ride it into East London in the morning. 

See you back here on Friday.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Beaver

Allow me to start with an apology. I am certain someone, somewhere, will end up at this blog because they googled today’s title in anticipation of something a bit more...sordid. TRY THIS, if you have arrived here by mistake.

Right. Rest of us ready to go? Good.

Ghandi knew it. Mandela knew it. Even Hitler knew it. I know it too: symbols are a simple but powerful means of uniting people.

Before I even arrive at a new school, a new challenge, I choose a symbol to unite the pupils, parents and staff. I always choose an animal. People like animals (maybe too much sometimes) and we have a natural bond with them. 

On varying levels we tend to transpose human characteristics onto creatures of the wild. Ants are team-players, foxes are cunning, tigers are stealthy, squirrels are....uh... squirrelly.

One can easily test the above theory. Think of your favourite animal. Now think of three adjectives that describe that animal.

Please. Do it now. I’ll wait here.

Finished? Now apply those three adjectives to your own self and (chances are) they are words that describe you. Scary huh?  (It is for me because I like whales).

My current school unites around a stuffed beaver. (Apologies again to anyone who googled ‘stuffed beaver’ expecting something more...niche).  A few weeks before my first day at the school I bought 10 cuddly beavers at Ikea. A beaver seemed a good choice because they are busy, hard working and industrious to the point they can change the course of mighty rivers. I knew even then the task ahead of us.

On that first day I took the beaver with me everywhere I went on the school campus. Dozens of the children, who otherwise would have passed by silently, mentally weighing up the new Head Teacher, stopped to find out why I had the furry toy under my arm. Many struck up conversations with the beaver. Some shook hands with him. Some wanted to hold him.

Immediately the beaver was the talk of the school. I brought him to my first assembly; the inaugural time I had the entire school community together in one room. I introduced the beaver and asked the children to send him their brainwaves. I planted the seed that their new mammalian friend could read their minds. I told the audience that the beaver lived in my office and they could drop by anytime to talk to him or, if they wanted, just send him their brainwaves.

It worked. I knew it would. At the school previous to this one we had a shark. The school before that: a frog. Before that: a fish. It always worked.

Children began to turn up at the office not just to send some brainwaves but to request the beaver came along to their classroom for the afternoon. (He would only go if the class promised to work their very hardest). They would request he accompany them on educational visits. They would want him in their school photos.

With the trust of the school community won, the beaver’s next task was to improve the children’s academic ability. He began to show up in our weekly newsletter, inviting the children to undertake a specific piece of additional homework. By this time, the children would have done anything to please him.

I couldn't have anticipated the impact the beaver would have on the teaching staff. A few months after I started at the school, I went to the staff Christmas party at a local restaurant. I was stunned to see the beaver out on the dance floor, being passed around colleagues as they revelled. It caused me to laugh but a teaching assistant said to me, “You don’t realise what he means to us.”

The other 9 Swedish beavers (apologies again...) I purchased at Ikea are stored away in a cupboard in my office. I have to rotate them to avoid wear and tear. However, like Father Christmas’ helpers I always keep up the pretence that there is only one beaver. The One. The one the children are interacting with at that very moment.

This inanimate object, a £4.99 toy, has become a living entity at our school. In their minds (children AND staff) he is real.  A secret, dear readers: he is not. 

What is real is the effect the beaver has on them. 

Keep the Faith,

The Head