Lazy Left-y loser teachers MUST die!

Saturday, 23^rd May 2020

Do you remember when you would find yourself in a stranger’s orifice at a swingers party, wearing a carnival mask and swishing around in baby oil on a sofa covered in clingfilm, listening to ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba and looking at the sad array of tuna and cucumber sandwiches cut into neat triangles and thinking, ‘Am I hungry or should I wait until I get home and have that leftover bulgur wheat salad?’

Ah, those were the days…

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I am going to weigh in to the debate about re-opening schools, and, for once, I know what I am talking about because a) I am a teacher, and b) I have just spent a week in my school.

Frankly, it was great to get out of the house and see some other people. I also had a great time, with the school functioning completely differently to normal: only 30 or so children, all activities based around curiosity, games, and being outdoors. It felt a bit more like a Steiner school than the usual overstuffed, overweight, overdry National Curriculum conveyor belt system which usually feels, for teachers and children, like a fairground ride meant for someone older that you’ve bluffed your way onto and then find, six seconds in, that it is all going way too fast and everything is just a blur so that when you finally get off, you feel dizzy and slightly sick.

The week in school didn’t start well. On the Monday morning, I was put into early years where there were about seven children, none of whom I knew. The school is only open to vulnerable children and children of keyworkers so there is a mix. ‘Is there anyone I should know about?’ I asked our Deputy Head. She mentions Aria, a girl whose little sister is in intensive care with bowel complications.

Aria will turn out to be my best buddy all week. She is about two foot high, has English as her second language but speaks it perfectly with an adorable accent, and has a giggle that is worth a million dollars. By the end of the week, she will be quite happy to call me ‘smelly pants, and ‘garbage bin’ just to see my faux-shocked face and I will encourage this because my faux-shocked face makes her giggle and her giggle makes my heart sing. She will come and find me on the playground all week to boss me about and we will maintain a social distance of about twelve inches (more on this later).

Anyway, in early years I am to read them a story to start the week which will be the theme for lots of their learning. It is called The Wild Woods and I have a quick flick through it before the children arrive. When I have the half dozen sat down, and after I have introduced myself and learnt their names, I show them the front cover and then open the book. The first double page is a picture of a grandad and his granddaughter walking across a stone bridge over a river to the woods. On the bridge in front of them is a red squirrel.

‘Look,’ I say, ‘the first pages have no words but what can you see?’

‘A girl,’ says one of them.

‘A river,’ says another.

‘A bridge,’ says a third.

‘And what’s this, on the bridge, I say, pointing at the red squirrel.

‘A chicken!’ shouts Billy.

Differentiated spot the difference activity for Billy

Billy is three parts mischief, one part charm, with a shaved head and a gap-toothed grin. He is one of the children who you take your eye off and he is gone. Down in early years, I spend a good part of the morning telling him to leave the hose alone and stop spraying water everywhere. All week, I will hear, ‘Put the stick down, Billy,’ shouted across the playground by the rest of the teaching staff.

When Aria is not demanding I build a house with her out of Duplo, or come into the playhouse to make a cup of tea, I instigate a game with Kyle, a boy with autism who, when school is full and running normally, finds it overwhelming and wears ear defenders to keep out the noise. He will scream when upset and is upset easily. Although he is in Year 3, he is with the younger ones where it is quieter.

Riding a tricycle around the small outdoor area, he tells me he is a taxi driver and we develop a game whereby I find him customers – a doll, a slice of pizza, a squishy pig – tell him where they want to go and how much he should charge them. He ‘drives’ off to take them to London or to see their family or to the beach and he comes back for another customer and to tell me how much money he has.

This turns out into an informal Maths lesson about adding and, not for the last time in the week, I think wouldn’t it be great if, as teachers, we could do this kind of thing more often, letting play develop and following children’s instincts and teaching them as opportunities arise (again, the Steiner school model).

During the morning, I race them on scooters, ‘paint’ the playhouse with a brush and a bucket of water, build houses, make up imaginary games and give the children the attention they deserve but often don’t get due to the pupil:staff ratio and the time demands of the National Curriculum. As just one example of the ridiculous demands, consider that as a way of fast-tracking children’s reading, our school decided to teach more early years children to read more than just individual letters. If OFSTED weren’t expected this may not have happened but all children start Reception when they are four years old. Many of them aren’t fully toilet trained but we want them to start reading. Many other countries make no formal attempts to teach the children to read until they are seven when the brain makes reading a much simpler task. If you are a parent who has sat with their young child and their school book patiently urging them to decode the same repeated words on each page and both of you feeling frustrated as your ambition slowly fades away then blame the government who, with each new National Curriculum, increase the expectations and push them down to the younger years.

At break times, I find myself unable to sit down with the other teaching staff and chat because I have more fun with the children. At one side of the playground there is a large horse chestnut tree and a year ago we had built a huge treehouse around it. It is a fantastic structure with three staircases, branches to swing on, a large undercover area and enough space for the average eight year old to run underneath it without braining themselves on the wooden supports on which is stands.

On the Monday, wanting to liven things up, I tell the children that it is my treehouse and they all have to get off. Their natural instincts to obey their teachers were in direct conflict with their sense of fair play. Fair play won.

‘Make us!’ they said and then mayhem ensued.

Soon, I had about 95% of all the children in the school playing the game whereby I tried to chase them off the treehouse and they determinedly snuck back on. The five other teaching staff supped their coffees and sat in the sun whilst I chased screaming children around and around.

Since lockdown, it has been the same group of children in school and they have not been forced to observe social distancing. They were expected to wash their hands regularly but that was about it. Watching them play, and then helping them in the classroom with their learning, it soon became obvious to me that asking children to keep apart from each other, and expecting teaching staff to teach at more than arm’s length, goes against all their, and my, instincts. And the younger the child, the more they seem to need the reassurance of each other’s touch.

So asking early years and Year 1 to return to school first is crazy. At my school, in early years, we have all the teachers and teaching assistants unable to return due to health reasons. All schools have to strip the classrooms of all soft toys and soft materials and equipment cannot be shared. This would basically mean bringing our cohort back to unfamiliar staff, to unfamiliar classrooms, and unfamiliar rules about how to interact. Then there would be the stress for the teachers on trying to maintain a fun and interactive learning environment whilst also asking them to not touch anything including each other.

During one break time, I was being forcibly put in ‘prison’ in the treehouse by about 18 children, pulling on my arms, pushing my back, tugging at my shirt, and chanting ‘Lock him up!’ It was like a cross between a Trump rally and a lynching. In the middle of this melee, one of the little people looked up at me quizzically, with a cheeky grin, and said, ‘What happened to social distancing?’

School kids social distancing with their lazy pig teacher (centre)

It was a good question. After being in lockdown for weeks and limiting my social contacts, I was now, via the children and their families, exposing myself to possible infection in a rather careless way. But the alternative – keeping my distance, warning them to get away from me, and barking angrily at them if they entered my safe bubble – was too miserable to enact. At least this felt normal (as long as normal involves playing a game where all teacher authority is lost and the kids are in charge of law and order and I think all readers of Lord of the Flies knows how that ends).

So ministers are right to raise the question of children’s mental health. I would say these kids in school right now are probably happier than the ones at home, as they are given the chance to socialise with their peers. But it is the practicalities that make it so difficult to bring them back.

In our school, keeping them a safe distance apart means only one sitting at a table meant for two. It means we can fit nine children in each classroom. It means we need three classrooms for a class of 27 or under but nearly all our classes have 30 children. It means, were we to bring them all back at on any single day, we would need 56 classrooms when we have 14.

The new guidance means children need all their own equipment and cannot share anything. It means deep cleaning the school every few days as different groups of children come into school. It means staggered drop off, pick up, break and lunch times to keep groups of children apart. It means they can only play and socialise with their restricted group of nine peers. If you’ve ever heard your children complain that school is like prison, well, now they’re right.

It can be done, of course, and no ‘hardline teaching unions’ (The Sun) of ‘the Left’ want children’s emotional or educational needs unmet. It’s just that, as usual, the government has rather arbritarily chosen a course that is unilateral and fails to understand how primary schools function on a day to day basis.

And hardly anywhere will you see any mention of keeping the teaching staff safe. We are advised not to wear face masks. It would, I believe, be impossible to teach wearing a face mask. So much of communicating is done verbally and not being able to see your teacher’s lips move would be ridiculous as well as quite strange or even scary for the very youngest. The Sun article is illustrated with a photo of a child wearing a mask but I don’t see this happening – certainly none of the children in school this last week were wearing one. And we don’t need PPE because children don’t pass infection on. Maybe. According to some small studies. Which are contradicted by other studies. But why wait for a consensus…?

Today The Sun writes that, ‘children are likely to play a smaller role in transmitting the virus.’ Why not append that sentence with, ‘…but we just don’t know yet.’ Instead, it takes issue with teachers for not wishing to do their bit while other keyworkers are out there on the frontline. So, it implies, why aren’t this Communist bunch of lazy, workshy rebels prepared to come into school and die because the kids are gonna be alright…

It would all be much more feasible if we had ‘flattened the curve.’ However, take a look at the graph for number of UK cases of coronavirus and also for the number of deaths. For infection, there’s less a flattening of the curve than a plateau effect and in the last week there have been 18,000 new cases. The deaths graph resembles a stuttering heart beat in a patient that refuses to die. Two days ago, 351 people died of Covid-19, and that’s just if you believe our government statistics (which I don’t).

This government does love statistics and dates: this number of tests carried out by this date, this number of test and trace volunteers recruited, schools to reopen on 1^st June. We decide, you go figure it out, is the basic approach. Go back to work tomorrow if you want, but only by flying broomstick. Kill some teachers, but the kids are alright. Lie and cheat, just don’t get found out: the Boris Johnson government motto.

I’ll be back in school whenever I’m asked. It is what I am paid to do. But I will be going back with a lot of misgivings and if it later turns out some teachers have died then let’s remember how The Sun urged us to go back:

‘(It) is a national disgrace… And teachers are in no more danger than millions of other key workers… Parents should not be taken in.’

Latest data for the UK (as of 6pm):

Infected: 254,195

Deaths: 36,393

Celebrity deaths: A lot of footballers have been trying hard to get on this part of my blog, throwing parties, inviting their lovers round, meeting up for coffee etc in the misguided hope that wearing shinpads protects them from Covid-19. It can’t be long now…

People I know who are infected: 0 (It’s all a hoax; I’m now a confirmed Icke-ist)

Song of the Day: ‘We Don’t Want No Education’ – Pink Floyd