Confessions of a Teacher #1

Being a teacher is hard. Scratch that. Being a teacher is arguably one of the most bloody difficult jobs on the planet. I've watched grown men and women literally brought to tears by 'that kid.' I've watched seasoned veterans broken as 'that kid' tears down the walls of hard-earned resilience that had been earned in the fiery crucible of the classroom, until those walls were nothing more than fine sand in the wind. 'That kid' is really taking a pounding in this article, but for any man or woman that has spent any time in a classroom, 'that kid' is an apt phrasing for what we really want to say.

It was Friday afternoon when 'that kid' struck again. Struck in such a way that the mere thought of this attack harkens a pain and memory that haunts me to this very day. Some part of me wants to be impressed by the wound that 'he' inflicted upon me, the other part of me...the part that has to wake up every morning and deal with these little psychopaths (or as a layperson might say - 'students') feels a sense of shame that has yet to be expunged.

Anyway, it was on this unfortunate Friday that I happened to have a department meeting with my team at 4:30. I'm a department head and needed to provide a complete data overview of each class and student to help the teachers build their short-term plans as we moved into the Spring/Summer exam phases.

It was about 4:25 pm and 'that kid' had just spent close to an hour with me sitting his most recent detention. Now for the record, I'm not the kind of teacher that takes pleasure in detentions, but 'that kid' had turned me into a little bit of a sadist. So much so that I had begun to get ...creative...with my choices of punishment. Now to be clear, we are not talking about something harmful or illegal - I'm a teacher because I genuinely love working with young people - but 'that kid'...he just brings something out of me. So, my detentions with 'that kid' have become, as I mentioned...creative.

One such example of my creativity (or sadism) was when I made him count the pinholes in a corkboard. I told him that if he could get the number right I would let him leave early...I don't know how many holes are in that corkboard. Another such example is when I made him write out 5 pages of lines but told him, once he'd finished, that he had written the wrong sentence.

On this particular day, after an hour of corkboard-hole-counting, I received a radio call regarding an incident on the floor below, so I left 'that kid' in the classroom alone for 2 minutes. I want to stress that when I say 2 minutes, this wasn't a soft 2 minutes, I mean a hard 2 minutes! I returned to find 'that kid', with his demonic eyes and slick black hair, sitting in his seat and staring vacantly at the whiteboard. Some might find this strange, some might even find it a little creepy, but my time with the spawn of the devil 'that kid' has desensitised me to his creepiness.

With a mere 3 minutes left of his detention, I decided to give 'that kid' his freedom. This wasn't out of pity for him, it was out of necessity. I needed to get to the conference room to set-up and have a notoriously slow laptop. As IT 'that kid' packed away, his eyes stayed locked upon mine. Never flinching, never blinking, just transfixed upon my face. Could he detect the fear rippling through my body? Did my countenance reveal some clue as to my unmitigated terror? Regardless, as he left the classroom I saw the shadow of a smile slip upon his face, his evil, scrawny face.

I didn't have time to contemplate whether he was planning an evening of scouring the land for the souls of other children, so I dashed desperately to my meeting. Alas, I was late and was met by a crowd of angry adults that had been forced to wait after school on a Friday. I smiled awkwardly, doing my best to mitigate the tension in the room when I saw my Head Teacher sitting at the back. With his arms crossed, he bore his familiar mask of contempt. Contempt towards having to be in this meeting. Contempt towards me for being late and I truly believe contempt for all his life decisions.

My laptop turns on, projecting my laptop onto the giant 'smart screen.' I quickly go through the motions - steadying my breath, wearing my most amiable smile, when I see a sudden wave of faces shift; followed by moans of terror. Moans of fear. And moans of shock. I turn and see that my presentation, the presentation I had been preparing for a week was no longer the last screen that I had been working on before closing my laptop to run downstairs to deal with the incident. Instead, a certain website that features individuals in various states of pleasure was open, with a young woman doing unspeakable thing things to a courgette. I remember a rising heat and then a series of fumbling movement as I desperately tried to close the screen, but that only made it worst. Made it looked like I had accidentally left something on that I probably shouldn't have been watching around children. I turn back to see the woman now doing something even more distressing, but the courgette was no longer the object in play; instead, she had moved onto an aubergine. I screamed and wrenched out the display cable, but all that did was cause the screen to freeze as the woman inserted said aubergine into...places. Dark, terrifying places.

Finally, the screen went blank, my breathing was still elevated, my mind was still racing, my colleagues were still in shock, and my reputation was forever ruined. At this moment (and I swear to the veracity of this) I turn and see 'that kid' in the doorway. His eyes ablaze with the fires from the pits of hell dead, but a smirk on his face.