For a few
years I worked as a Relief Teacher, Emergency teacher, Substitute or however
you might like to label the job. It was some years ago and I had two separate stints
at this kind of Employment when I was wanting to travel and work, or work and
work at something else at the same time. It sure wasn’t rated up there in the respect
charts. It was nothing like Jack Black in the School of Rock and it was nothing
like what you might think either. Most people would imagine the benefit of such
work is that you leave it all behind at the end of the day, you’re not bonded
to the place and there’s freedom in that. What happened was entirely different.
I saw the best and the worst of people and all that comes in between. I was
immersed in schools far and wide and it all started in the East End of London.
I was a
young looking 23 year old. I’m not a tall woman. I did not have street cred.
One of the teachers mistook me for a student and gave me a detention slip for
wearing casual clothes to school much to my distress. I was humiliated by this
and to compensate invested in a more expensive coat and button up shirt and pair of tailored pants, despite being as poor
as poor and renting an attic room cheap in Dalston Kingsley.
At this point I was young, starting out,
petrified and hopeful. It was a chance to dip my toes in the water or so I
thought. The truth of it is that you end up a little submerged and bobbing up
for air and then on some days there’s that sense of flight where your heart
soars and something happens that makes all of the difference. There was the
disasterous day when a Science teacher was “on leave” in a particularly challenging
East London School and he left me a Sexual
Education syllabus to teach. Even then, there was that one kid in the room,
an Indian boy, who sat quietly without taking up too much room while I wrangled
with all of the tom foolery and vying for attention and “class clowns.” I
recall it well being 23 years old or so, fresh out of University and in a whole
new country. I remember it because the little boy came to me at the end of the
session and said;
“Miss,
under the circumstances you did a god job. I’m sorry for my classmates
behaviour.”
I never
forgot that kid. I forgot the others pretty easily. To step outside of yourself
at such a young age and be the odd one out isn’t so easy to do. I saw him
reading in the library the next day alone. Though he didn’t know it yet, his
gentle way had made a horrible day better. I was pretty sure in his loneliness
then, he’d come to a brighter place in adulthood.
There was a
little boy in a school who suddeinly openened his mouth in the chaos of a
teacher away on stress leave who sounded like an angel and sang for us all and
there was the young girls who made me a card and asked if I might come back and
not need to leave forever. There was that shy boy or girl who could barely look up who had a
piece of paper filled with a deeper understanding than I thought possible and
there was the boy who made me choke back tears who ran around with his tounge
behind his lip trying to get attention as a so called “disabled” man and needed
to be sent out of the room. You had to take the good with the bad, the crunchy
with the smooth moments and then you had to remove the children who were actually
not being kind enough yet to belong until they were. There’s a lot of adults
that get to stay in the room even though in classrooms they would not have a
hope in hell of staying.
I did the
same kind of work some years later for a few years in Melbourne Victoria. What I experienced was
a good window into some of the most exclusive schools in Melbourne and some of
the schools that engaged children from the most “disadvantaged” backgrounds of our State. What
I realised is that fundamentally people are just people. Kindness is possible,
intermittent and variable. I took the position very seriously after realising
that one day in the life of any person can change the course of their history.
There were welcoming staff and horrible staff and it really had nothing to do
with which school was which to be honest.
There were
horrible parents and beautiful parents. There were parents and students who
bought me a present even for my efforts after only a few days or weeks. There
were times when I made mistakes and times when I did an excellent job. There
were parents who involved the Spanish Inquisition into the scenario, including
an Argentinian “actress” who thought it perfectly reasonable to infiltrate the
short stay with a unscheduled meeting with the emergency teacher to berate her
child for being too fat and …”could I add more exercise to the program for my
stay in the school” Suffice to say those sorts of parents are remembered for
all of the wrong reasons.
An
Emergency? Some days it was. There were cases where I was filling in for a
teacher who had died or lost a loved one and the children knew about that.
Those were challenging days. Knowing what to write in a card wasn’t up to me. It
was up to the children and they knew all the best things to say and I learnt so
much from their little hearts. Sometimes a picture doesn’t say a million words
sometimes words say a million words, it all depends.
I worked in
a school with a sign teacher and deaf student and began to feel my face alive
with hers and his. It was wonderful, the lyrical flow of body to interpret
stories and meaning and love. I worked with some integration Aides who knew as
much as any teacher did and realised the incredible value of these underated
and vastly underpaid heroes. Heroes not because they are “do gooders” but just because
they were finding pathways to understanding people that would ultimately
benefit the world in the long term because
people with “disabilities” are usually not actually as disabled as some of the
people who don’t get given this label.
Some of the more lonely children found me on yard duty. Most schools gave you more than a regular teacher got but i didn't actually mind because there were often very interesting children who didn't seem to have friends which I found so puzzling. They would walk the yard with me talking about rockets and science and dreams. They had their own class clown inside but hadn't found the spaces in between others to show up yet. I can recall being doubled over laughing at their funny ways and curious take on life. Some of the most beautiful and funny and smart children where fringe dwellers or "nerds" of the most glorious and intriguing potential. I hope we can make way for each other more and more or we just might miss out too much. I'm glad I didn't miss out on every day.
