The Four

A quick calculation with a blunt pencil on the border of the evening newspaper reveals that I have worked with approximately 5800 children thus far in my career. Four of them are burned in my heart for eternity. They are burned into my heart, not my brain, not my soul- my heart.

Schools should be inclusive places. Many will pin up a banner near the entrance saying ALL ARE WELCOME. Everyone should be welcome. We probably all agree that schools should embrace children from all races, all religions, all creeds. Those who are different are also welcome. One passes down the corridor of any school and sees the child with glasses, with braces, with cochlear implants. All seems normal.

But then we have the child with Downs, with Cerebral Palsy, with Angelman Syndrome. Now some schools balk. The inclusion banner that spans the main entrance is suddenly rolled up, stored in a cupboard. Those schools will still tell you that ALL ARE WELCOME. What they mean is that they welcome everyone who fits the mould; the narrow brand of an education that allows them to churn out 30 or 60 or 90 identical protégés each year. Children that read and write beyond national standards; children that play a musical instrument, read the new Harry Potter book on the same evening it is released and are stressed that their homework won’t be finished before their yoga lesson begins.

Pass down the corridor of these schools and one won’t see the Angelman child. Access has been denied, usually through that old Health and Safety chestnut: What if there was a fire, how would we be able to keep him safe? It is for his own good, this school is not best suited to his needs. The other school, down the road, he would be happier there. What they mean is that the child will never achieve the national expectations in reading and writing, no matter how hard any teacher tries and therefore could cost the school 2,3 even 4% off its overall exam results.

Inclusion applies to everyone. Every one. It means all are welcome, regardless of need. And if the school can’t meet the child’s needs because of the physical space, then the physical space needs to be transformed.

Ten years ago I was starting my second headship in a high flying but dysfunctional school. The school was top 5 in the exam league tables but was seriously outdated in its practice. Seriously outdated. My brief was to eradicate its deeply rooted and antiquated ethos and drag the school (kick and screaming if necessary) into the new Millennium.  

The school had a 300 year old history and was housed in a building considered to be of huge importance to English Heritage as it was the oldest purpose-built school in London. Charles Dickens had rented rooms there to read his stories aloud to Victorian devotees. The place oozed history.

Two grated, wrought iron staircases framed the building to the east and west. The ground floor was base to for the younger children. At the age of 7, classes moved upstairs to mingle with the high oaken eaves and beams.  

Soon after arrival, I admitted a child who used a wheelchair for mobility. Questions were asked, first in stuffy, secret conversations but later more overtly; how would this child be able to access the school once she reached 7 years old? The question masked what was in my opinion, their real concern; how will this child pass her exams and keep the school in the elite?

As the girl approached the age when the class would graduate to the upper floor, the same people began to ask how she would negotiate the great, historic staircase. It did present a puzzle. Adapting the staircase with a chair lift was not an option. English Heritage would not permit such a staircase to be modified. Only an American would consider desecrating a set of steps ascended by Dickens, by Queen Elizabeth (yes Her Majesty had visited the school and yes the open grates had been temporarily carpeted so that no commoner could gaze up the royal skirt).

The conundrum taught me a lesson I still apply to my work today; inclusion can always happen, there is always a way to make it work. I took the decision to move the class to the ground floor, to allow the 7 year old girl continued access. The Queen and Dickens staircase remained, but so did the child at the school.

But I know, even in my commitment to accommodating all-comers, that there are limitations. 

My rule of thumb is simple. Education is a human right, but one person’s rights end where the next person’s rights begin.

To illustrate: I have a right to smoke the 25 Benson& Hedges cigarettes that I enjoy daily. I can smoke any time, any place in my home. However, if I were to light a fag in a lift, in an elevator, my right to smoke would infringe on my fellow passenger’s right to clear air. Therein my rights end and the rights of next person’s begin.

 

Inclusion also means being open to children with severe behavioural issues. These needs can be the most trying for schools. Such children will not only demand a disproportionate amount of the teacher’s time but also the school’s resources and energy. A different curriculum frequently needs to be generated; extra meetings before and after school with parents to make certain common messages and strategies apply at home and school. For the most part, it works. It takes patience, perseverance, tolerance, but it mostly works.

But alas, dear readers, I would be deceiving you if I claimed there were no causalities. There are some children, despite our best intentions, despite months of trying various strategies, different approaches; we simply cannot reach. Children who are so damaged, so distressed for whatever reason that they cannot function in a mainstream school.

It is in this cold realisation that the Head Teacher faces the hardest decision. When a child is not responding, not engaging in the slightest, when the child is causing damage to his peers, the very adults that are committing to helping him, the questions surface: Is including this child excluding others from their education? Are the rights of this child to a mainstream education crossing over and preventing others from exercising their right to an education?

During my previous 14 years as a Head, I have, on occasion, been forced to ask myself these questions. In the past I have answered yes only three times. Last week marked the fourth. Permanently excluding a child from a school built on inclusion is surrender. It a white flag hoisted over the ramparts declaring, for the good of the many, I surrender this one child. It is defeat and defeat sits uneasy on the heart.

So the four children I have surrendered down the years are burned into my heart. They were and will always remain The Un-reachables. They are the four I had to leave in the blazing building in order to save the other 5796. I cannot remember all the names of the 5796. But I know the names of The Four and even now I scrawl them on the margin of the evening newspaper with a blunt pencil.   

The Plate of Biscuits

It has been said that ‘those who can do, those who can’t teach.’

Equally it could be true that those who can run schools do, those who can’t, inspect them.’

My school is deemed to be failing by the government. Not just this government but the government before it as well.  Yes, our failure strides two political administrations. I arrived here 20 months ago and was handed a one sentence instruction manual. It read MAKE THIS SCHOOL SUCCESSFUL.

Make no mistake: the school was ailing. I use the past tense as things have mightily improved over the past year and a half, to the point where I would put our school up against any other in our area judged to be satisfactory. But my word does not account for much. As a result, every week at least one local government inspector visits and places our provision under his metaphoric microscope. Today marked the periodic milestone when 2 local inspectors descend on my glass office. They spend the next 8 hours pinning teachers, pupils, lunch ladies, the school mascot and myself to those glass panes as if on a king-size prepared slide. They turn their microscopes to 400x, scratch their chins and mumble, ‘Hmmmm.’

 I know both inspectors fairly well and they have visited the school regularly over the past 18 months. Every inspector has a nickname. Today we were to be visited by Bobby Dazzler (an aging amateur dramatist with a velvet baritone voice and the perfect diction of the thespian lovies that crowd the bars of Shaftesbury Avenue after final curtain) and The Cauliflower (picture your Sunday School teacher with Margaret Thatcher’s blown-back hair style). In the spirit of hospitality I prepared for their arrival by buying two packs of chocolate biscuits from the local Tesco Metro.

This would be a good point to confess that I have no catering or homemaking skills. If you want something made to look inviting or appealing, I am not your man. My idea of a posh spread is eating peanut butter, straight from the jar and off of a pencil whilst bent over the sink.

Armed with two packets of luxury chocolate biscuits (none of your Happy Shopper rubbish, I was out to make an impression) I got out the best school plate. It was the one that the lunch ladies usually save in the back for when someone very important like The Queen visits the school. Ok, The Queen never visits but if she did, we get the same plate out of the cupboard. It is a pristine, dishwasher safe institutional green number that has never been in contact with baked beans or Friday’s fish and chips.

Bringing it to my office, the lunch ladies held it out at arm’s length in front of them; much like the crown is carried into Westminster Abbey during a coronation. They walked slowly, solemnly, eyes fixed straight ahead. The teachers stopped their lessons as the procession passed. Pupils pressed their noses against the glass of the door, anxious to catch just a single glimpse of the famous PLATE. “See, I told you it wasn’t just an urban myth, it does exist,” teachers whispered to their charges. “Remember this moment. This is history; you will tell your grandchildren you saw it with your own eyes.”

OK, so I made that bit up, but you get the idea.

My job, on days such as these, involves presenting the school in an uneasy balance to the inspectorate. An honest evaluation of our strengths and weaknesses is required. But make no mistake; I will also make certain they see the place in the most favourable light possible. Like the pushiest of all stage mothers, I will spit in my hand and smooth down the forelocks of my child, my school; regardless of its dubious talents.

I opened the biscuits and started to lay them out on the plate. Half were thick, round and chunky, covered in a disproportionate amount of milk chocolate. The reminder were elongated and elegant; almost Continental. Assembling the selection on the plate, I envisaged a great pyramid of confectionary, like that most likely served up at the recent Royal Wedding. The reality staring at me back from the prized platen was more wagon wheel. It looked rough and uneven. I convinced myself that the finger-like European offerings were unbalanced to the eye. This was quickly addressed by scoffing one.

Turning the bottom chunky chocolate layer at dainty 20 degree angles to each other, my eye caught sight that one of the biscuits had been malformed, its chocolate coating stripped away at the edge. I considered devouring it as well, as such anomalies cannot be allowed to exist, but this would have upset the delicate pattern (well delicate in my mind’s eye) that had been arranged.

I am not ashamed to say, dear readers, the moment called for cool collective thinking. This I summoned innately. Glancing about to ensure I was not being watched, I quickly substituted the freakish cookie to the bottom of the pyramid. I thought I heard the sudden sucking of air from a class of 7 year olds down the corridor as they whined in a single, sing-songy voice “Oooooo, I’m tell-ing.”

The day dragged as both Bobby Dazzler and The Cauliflower scratched the veneer of the school to find the blemishes beneath. It was one of those days when the ticking of the clock forms an eternal soundtrack. It was one of those days when the sun is a great dog, not wishing to be on a leash, and therefore sits as it is stubbornly towed across the sky.

One by one the inspectors ate the biscuits. One by one, the cosmetic layers I had plastered over the school’s persistent cracks were stripped away. My eye constantly was drawn to the plate of chucky chocs and elongated fingers.  The hidden oddity, devoid of sweet coating remained a secret known only to me.

One by one, the inspectorate uncovered the weaknesses of the school I had intentionally or unintentionally failed to mention. They prepared their microscope slides, scratched their chins and said, “It’s getting better but it is not there yet.” The stage mother in me smoothed her child’s hair again with a saliva-sodden palm and pushed him back in the spotlight pleading, “But you haven’t heard him sing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow yet!”

Around 5pm, the lamp on the microscope was switched off and the inspectors departed having spent their final hour with me pointing out that my child still couldn’t sing. Bobby Dazzler crooned in his rich baritone “It’s getting better but it is not there yet.” I watched them disappear through the front gates and slipped the secret biscuit from under the remaining pyramid as if playing a one man game of Jenga. In my mind I thumbed the one sentence instruction manual for failing schools. But the MAKE THIS SCHOOL SUCCESSFUL text had a chocolate fingerprint on it.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Rose Bush

For the first time, I am actually writing this blog from my school office. It is very late in the afternoon and the children have all departed. Several of the staff are still pottering about, putting the finishing touches to the day’s work. I still have an evening meeting to attend at a neighbouring school so I am consoling myself that my day is at least 75% finished.

My current school stands at the end of a crowded side street in the poorest area of London. You will be hard pressed to find to find three neighbouring buildings that pre-date World War II. The Blitz left this neighbourhood, and the next one to the south, and the next one, all the way down to the London docks: completely obliterated. It was the days before smart bombs and the WWII vintage explosives fell indiscriminately, destroying one side of the street but not the other; the neighbour’s house but not your own. Rows of Victorian houses; two rooms downstairs, two rooms up, suddenly halt and yield to a vast empty space. These are the places where one can deduce a Nazi bomb fell 70 years ago. 

The bomb sites remained for decades. When the debris was finally cleared for the great social housing projects of the 1960s and 70s, strings of cramped, poorly constructed houses sprung up between here and the River Thames two miles away. The housing was meant to have been temporary, a quick fix solution. Yet they continue to provide shelter for immigrant London; despite the rotting window frames and crumbling brickwork. The sound of Cockney English within replaced down the years by Bengali, Urdu, Bosnian, Lithuanian, Pashto.

The school itself resembles a medical centre. In fact I have nicknamed it The Dentists’ Office. It is not uncommon for local folk, new to the neighbourhood to turn up at our door requesting to register with the doctor. The few remaining older souls remember this site as the local coal yard and talk of the stream that ran through what is now our Sports Hall.

Drug abuse is rife. Each morning I walk the alleyways around the site, the rat-runs that serve as the children’s path to school; collecting discarded syringes in a big medical box. Side-stepping dog mess, beer cans, abandoned mattresses and cigarette ends.

My office is a glass box; horrendous for privacy but it affords me a great view of the main gates and acts as a deterrent for any colleagues wishing to sneak off early. The gates are a frontier. They are our border with the rest of the world. Inside them are order and ambition, safety and the promise of a better life through education. Outside, education means little. Outside the individual is judged by who has the most tint on their car windows, who has the most bling, whose trousers ride the lowest.

I tell the children and parents that the city streets stop at the school gates. Inside the gates our rules apply. Our aim is to create a refuge, a haven. We try to bring order to the lives of children who in some cases have swapped the killing fields of Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan for a pseudo-gangsta culture of the East End.

On the whole, it works from Monday to Friday. The gates electronically close once the children are in and the school day begins with its familiar timetabling, dependable meals on the table, reliable adults to nurture young minds. These children thrive on the regimentation.

But the weekends are different. With the site abandoned, the gates are breached. Faceless intruders storm this castle, climbing onto the roof, kicking in windows, destroying playground equipment. Like the jungle reclaiming ancient ruins, the nightmarish Blitz reappears to stake its claim to this plot.

I am one who looks for messages in everyday things. I look for the poetry that the world tries to communicate to us. Outside my office window, my entire left field of vision is filled with a giant rose bush. Its thorns stab at my window, tapping out warnings.  Yet, atop each gnarled branch grows a large and fragrant flower, its deep red colours in contrast to the gates’ industrial green.  If I hold my head at certain angle I can view the entire world through the leaves and buds. I can imagine that my jungle is reclaiming the streets outside the gates.

Keep the Faith,

The Head 

The Apocalypse

According to some apocalyptic doom-monger in America, the world ends tonight at 11pm GMT.

So not to compound any impending tragedy, I am currently eating the last doughnut in the box of raspberry-filled my wife bought yesterday. It would be unforgiveable to leave this earth with doughnuts still in the house. In fact, I would consider it to be an affront to God.

You’ll forgive me, beloved readers, if I sound rather flippant. But we, as a society, have been here many times, even in my lifetime. It is getting near the point where I am considering ditching the day job and selling Apocalypse insurance. *cue late night advert with soft piano music and montage of 2.4 nuclear family in slow motion...VOICEOVER: You would do anything for them. But what have you done to protect yourself, your loved ones and property against the end of the world?* The sun rises another day and I’m quids in. The world ends and who is around to collect? Win/win.

  I remember talk of the year 1984 being skipped in the calendar in order not to tempt our fate toward that of George Orwell’s hellish vision.  Who can forget the Millennium Bug and those who spent midnight at the cusp of a new century, watching for airplanes dropping from the sky? Only a fortnight ago an estimated 20% of Rome emptied the city as a major earthquake had been forecasted. A quick internet search will show the pattern stretches back nearly 700 years. Every generation, it seems, sees itself as the epitome of degradation and therefore fully deserving of God’s ultimate wrath.

Our youngest daughter has been genuinely spooked by the talk of today being the human race’s last. She is a rookie to this Armageddon stuff. It hasn’t stopped me looking out the window every 20 minutes, scanning the London skyline, claiming to have spotted a comet heading straight at planet earth.

I am a firm believer that fear is a tool the powerful use to make us malleable. Karl Marx called religion ‘the opiate of the people.’ In modern society, I think fear of some undefined attack on our person or property has replaced our fear of God. Those in charge tell us there is a Boogeyman under the bed and if we empower them, they will keep us safe. It is nothing more than the same trick travelling hustlers and snake oil salesmen would use against indigenous peoples; armed with knowledge of a pending solar eclipse they would demand concessions from the tribes in return for returning the Sun to the sky.

Londoners, on the whole, don’t let fear dictate their actions. The older generation lived through the Blitz. My generation lived through the IRA bombings. Even the younger one remember the 7/7 bombings. I don’t wish to belittle any of these. They are all tragedies. However, I clearly remember the day after 7/7 and people queued, as any normal day, waiting for the bus to come.

There have been many emails, FaceBook pages etc. circulating today asking what will be the song you listen to at the end of the world, what will be your final meal? This presents an interesting question in that I feel we all should live our lives as if today was our last one on Earth. For me, it means spending time with my family; living, loving, singing, dancing, laughing and just being. One of my favourite novelist, John Irving, wrote of not being afraid to die, but of being afraid of not living. It is a bit of mantra of mine.

So if it is our final day on earth, I feel privileged to have shared the ride with you, my beloved friends. But please, turn off the computer now and go hug the loved ones in your immediate vicinity. Talk to them. Laugh with them. Be with them. Live.

And the next time the media perpetuate the message that madmen are hell-bent on stealing your property, your way of life, of causing you physical harm in the name of politics or religion; resist the message. 

Remember instead that those people on the other side of the world, who speak differently, dress differently, worship an alien god, are more than likely not plotting to blow you up in your sleep. They too are looking to those they love; to talk to them, laugh with them. We are more alike than different.

If today’s blog does not appease your sense of dread, so be it. Who knows, maybe you are right? Stockpile your water and shotguns; board up the windows and huddle in a dark corner if it makes you feel better. If it is the end I choose to go out singing and laughing, as it would be the joys of life I want as the final thoughts that flash through my earthy mind. Even if we all live to see Sunday, the next forecast of the apocalypse is just around the corner. The Mayan calendar expires in December. 

Keep the Faith,

The Head

Cup Final Night

Friday night marks the chance to downshift and make the Kafkaesque change into my more important role as a father and husband.

On second thought, it is probably not that much of a metamorphosis. There is an instinctive part of my work that makes me model my relationship with my pupils as that of a father and his children. Certainly, I am keenly aware that I am the sole adult male figure in the life of many children. I don’t take that responsibility lightly but those thoughts are for another day, another blog.

It is the weekend and the weekend belongs to family.

Tonight, as I have done at least twice a week for the past 12 years, my only son and I will load up our 7-seater car with studded boots, rain proof jackets, water bottles, power snacks and head to North London. It is football night. On the way we will pick up other players and their fathers: ‘Big Al’, ‘One Eye Dave’ and ‘Princess Pete’. The car will rumble with the sound of banter and good-natured teasing. We will joke about Big Al’s wife’s cooking, One Eye’s age and Princess Pete’s inability to sit on both arse cheeks because he attended a posh school as a teenager. There may be a comment or two about my driving and certainly huge cheers when I finally manoeuvre the 7-seater into a parking space after three attempts.

Between us we have spent 6 hours a week, stretching far back into the last century,  watching our sons grow up together on the sporting field.

When the boys were younger, their boisterous chatter would fill the car. As they have become older the sounds have been replaced by the dads’ own banter and the boys have resulted to putting on their IPod earphones and staring silently out of the window. Males. We don’t have to say a word to bond, isn’t that right boys? Boys?

Tonight is the Cup Final. The Super Bowl of youth football. The boys have played several teams in a knock-out format to get to this point. It is as important to the dads as it is to our sons. Yet there is an added poignancy to the game as it will mark the penultimate time we will make this journey together. The boys are on the eve of leaving school and entering the world of work or college. Soon youth football will be no more. It will become a memory of their childhood, a lintel that underpins their sense of teamwork, fairness, work ethic in the wider world.

So tonight I find myself with a range of emotions; excitement, nostalgia, dread, thankfulness. Since his 5^th birthday I have been able to instil a love and deep respect of sport in my son. I will be thinking of the first time I taught him to kick a ball. I will recall consoling him after bitter defeat; of dancing across the pitch with him after epic victories.

It will be a rite of passage. I will pass my son onto society, having done what I can to help build his character. I shall sit at home on Friday night hereafter, waiting for the day years from now when my son, God willing, has a son of his own. And as soon as that future grandchild can walk, I will teach him to kick a ball.  

Good luck tonight boys. Enjoy the match. I will.

Keep the Faith

The Head

The Yellow Shirt

The radio station I listen to on the way to work ran one of those quirky stories at the end of the news today. I have been hearing the same story making the rounds over the past few days.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-315480/Filthy-Brits-wear-dirty-clothes-work.html

I brushed the cigarette ash from the front of my shirt and thought about what we wear to work. Teachers are not particularly well respected for their dress sense. Ask any young person. I can still remember the flood cuffs on the bottom of my geometry teacher’s trousers even though I remember little of the Pythagoras’ Theorem. I can remember my history teacher’s sports shoes; two decades out of date in 1980, but now thirty years later, strangely back in vogue.

Most schools have a dress code for staff; even if the dress code is WEAR WHATEVER THE HELL YOU LIKE. I have worked in schools where I wouldn’t dream of rolling up in the morning without a tie around my neck. Turn up with the same tie at another school and the staff gossip train would immediately conclude that the Head is interviewing for a new job.

And then there is the personal dress code. My current school is a messy gig; snot and spittle, blood and urine are plentiful. Therefore many staff opt for jeans. But I know of one colleague who comes in everyday dressed like Joan Collins in Dynasty.

My own personal taste is for shirt and tie, black trousers with a school jacket to show corporate solidarity. In the warmer months, a short-sleeved version takes over, but never short sleeves with a tie. Never. It reminds me of Michael Douglas’ character in the film Falling Down .

http://happyinhooverville.squarespace.com/storage/20070302fallingdown.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1276010387297

I heard it said that some women dress for men, some dress for women. I dress for the tasks of the day. My default setting on school clothes, I listed earlier. If inspectors are due in, I brush down one of the 4 suits I own. It is like an unofficial uniform.

I dread those days three times a year when we all ‘dress down’ at work for charity. Pupils don’t have to wear school uniform and teachers wear their ‘weekend clothes.’ Everyone suddenly looks alien and strangely, older. I can spend hours the evening before flicking through my wardrobe trying to find something that says FUN...BUT NOT TOO MUCH FUN.

Today, as was warm, I opted for my favourite short-sleeved yellow Ralph Laurent shirt. MY favourite. To everyone else it seems to generate one of two reactions: either a ‘Oh, don’t you look....bright... today’ OR ‘For God’s sake pass the sunglasses, my corneas are burning.’

When I do wear ties I like to choose one that has a story behind it: where I purchased it, a novelty character on it, maybe even one that plays a song when you press a switch. I pretend it amuses the children. The reality is it makes a good last minute assembly prop if needed.

Recently I have developed a habit of wearing socks that match my shirt so today, I sported a similarly jaundiced pair. I am a father of five so I have one of the most extensive collections of Fathers Day socks in the country. People buy me novelty socks, I even recently received a pair with Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge’s picture on each side. But I have BIG ankles. Kate’s face looked like she had been turned to plastic and held under a magnifying glass on a Spanish beach when I finally stretched them up to my calves.

The one thing that remains constant in my work attire, whether winter or summer, school jacket or suit, is my trusted choice in footwear; Dr Marten’s Air Wair black shoes. I live in them. They are sturdy, black and equally at home on the playground football pitch or budget meeting. They are industrial, honest and hard wearing. Plus they prove the premise that a man’s shoes say alot about him!

Summer is short here in London so I like giving my favourite yellow RL shirt an airing whenever possible. However, to test the theory that even if it is clean, others form an instant judgement of what we are wearing, I put a photo of myself up on Facebook wearing the not-so-little yellow number. From the comments, it seems I looked like a melon, The Sun, custard, a sunflower, a canary, Little Miss Sunshine...everything it seems but the cheery soul with a sense of humour I think the shirt portrays. 

But then I looked down, perhaps the coffee spilled down the front was taking away from the look. Never mind, this is Britain. And as the article says; only the Spanish and Americans have a more laxed view of clothes hygiene. 

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Bird Catcher

Generally, people don’t aspire to be teachers. It is a career that most of us drift into, much like banking I imagine. Or perhaps career begging.

A teaching career frequently evolves at the sound of that metaphoric alarm bell that suddenly rings in one’s head during the third year of undergraduate school blaring, “Make your mind up time!”  My own experience was that I entered university fully intent on a career in political science. But that was 1980 and the beginning of the Reagan administration. This fundamental shift in the American psyche, which saw a blurring of the lines of Christianity and right wing politics, corresponded with my own epiphanic embrace of the political left. An immediate re-think was required.

Being a show-off, a theatrical career seemed attractive but the fact that I can’t remember much of 1982 attests to the fact that the mandatory party scene was not, perhaps, the right grounding for making a living.  Well that and the fact that my acting skills are probably only slightly better than those of Keanu Reeves. Yes, I was THAT bad.

So when the alarm bell rang and I realised I was closer to undergraduate school graduation than high school graduation, I decided that I would enter the teaching profession. Teaching, I thought, would allow me to use all my talents and skills whilst quenching my need to appease my liberal social conscience. I threw myself into the career whole-hog and to this day, have not regretted the decision.

After 11 years as a class teacher I secured my first posting as Head Teacher of a small school in North West London. Suddenly all my skills, half talents and ability to blag became not only desirable but a basic necessity of the job. Instantly I had to become an expert in the intricacies of infant toilet bowls, leaking roofs, jammed photocopiers and negotiating bulk-buy deals with school book salespersons.

A great attraction of the job, aside from the social improvement factor, is the fact that one never knows, each morning, what the day has in store. It is never boring. Stressful, maddening, frustrating, euphoric; but never boring.

Today is a good example. I arrived at 7.20am and within 90 seconds I was dealing with a leaking toilet in the Nursery. I should add that I somehow can fix things at work but the skill does not transfer itself to my own house.

By 10am, a nervous group of staff rushed towards me as I returned from monitoring Maths books in the upper school. A bird had flown in through an open window and was trapped in the staffroom.  The staffroom is the sacred heart of a school. A refuge. It is holy ground that is seldom without at least a few souls in attendance paying their devotion to the great gods that maintain all schools; coffee, cigarettes and sugary food.

But with a wild animal on the loose in London, the staffroom door was firmly closed, almost barricaded to stop the best from entering the rest of the building. The staff looked at me in expectation. They seemed to know that catching stray birds in the staffroom is a role that is traditionally covered in Head Teacher training. I pulled my job description from the file cabinet and pencilled in “BIRD CATCHER.” Turning the door handle slowly I glanced back with a forbidding expression that silently read, “I might not make it back.”

Once inside I slammed the door behind me, for by this time I was bordering on joining in the hysteria. For some reason Tippi Hendren raced through my mind. I expected one of the two dozen or so vicious, dive bombing crows that live atop the school’s dome. There in the corner perched on a copy of 1000 Art Ideas for Teachers it stared me down; a four inch European Sparrow.

Chuckling to myself I grabbed a wastepaper bin and a tea towel and began to chase the tiny bird around the staffroom. Everytime I got close enough to throw the towel over the bird, it would flutter away with a tweet and a look of distain. The pattern repeated itself as it flew to the coffee mugs by the sink, back to the magazines, under the resource tray and back to the coffee mugs.

Summoning my skills, I tried to reason with the bird, explaining that I meant it no harm but simply wished to direct it towards the window and its rightful place in God’s great kingdom. This lasted about 20 minutes and I began to entertain the idea of maximising my resources and going home to get our cat who would have relished the chase and ultimate capture. 20 more minutes passed; then an hour. With one last flap of my arms the sparrow bolted for the tea spoon drawer and disappeared down the back and underneath the sink unit. I had it trapped.

Knowing it had to be behind the plinth, I waited. That’s right little birdy, I am on a stake out and sooner or later you will have to come out for food, or water or whatever birds need. (The basic needs of bird beyond food and water are not a skill that has presented itself as imperative thus far in my career).

Twenty more minutes passed. By now the school caretaker had joined me along with some of the heartier school staff including the Choir Leader and Receptionist. Four public servants armed with buckets, tea towels, even a metre stick to catch the sparrow when it finally emerged. But there was other work waiting and our patience was growing thin. Well, mine was. An executive decision was needed.

The caretaker re-entered the room with his tool box and began to dismantle the sink unit. It soon became obvious this is not a task that had been undertaken in the school building’s 17 year history. Another 30 minutes passed. Almost casually, no, mockingly; the sparrow poked its head from under the plinth and flew straight into the magazine rack. It paused for a minute and for one last time stared at me like Edgar Allan Poe’s raven and flew out the window.

The steadfast staff all exchanged pats on the back as if celebrating a goal in the Cup Final. But the euphoria didn’t last, we certainly didn’t have time to enjoy our new found bird-catching skills. A voice was calling from the main office. The photocopier was jammed again and the Nursery toilet was leaking.