LEARNING DAZE.... (Part 2).

Ironically, the day before I was due to start my new teaching position the Principal at Camperdown Public School rang me and said she had a position for me.  When I explained that I already had a year's position she was both pleased for me and disappointed.  I was torn between wanting the easy and familiar job which I knew I could do and taking up the challenge of a new school and a whole new set of children with disabilities.

After my success at Glebe I really thought I could do the job.  I also felt a sense of responsibility to the new school and did not want to leave them in the lurch without a teacher.  How I would wish I had been selfish and taken the easy path.

Belmore North Public School was about 30 minutes drive away and located in a largely Muslim area of Sydney. My teaching friend lived close by and she offered to pick me up each morning and drive me to school with her.  In the afternoons however she didn't leave until 5pm as her son did music classes and she would stay behind at school before leaving to collect him.

From the start it was clear that I had made a bad decision.  This was for a number of reasons.  Firstly the children were hostile towards me.  I can understand this now as they had had the same teacher for the whole school lives and suddenly she had left them.  They felt let down and I'm sure in their own, retarded minds, that by rejecting the 'new teacher' that 'Miss' would come back.

Then there was a whole different atmosphere at the school.  I was not made to feel either welcome or offered support, unlike either Glebe or Camperdown where I had experienced friendship, advice and support.  I was given a classroom totally isolated from the rest of the school.  I was in a double classroom on the ground floor of a two floor building - all the other classes were on the upstairs level.  My supervising teacher (a very straight and I'm certain homophobic male) was located upstairs but made it quite clear that any issues I had I should deal with on my own.

Never having taught children with mental or physical disorders I was at a total loss as to how to control them.  No matter what strategies I tried they failed.  The children refused to obey instructions, constantly fought with each other, seemed to take great delight in seeing my frustration and even laughed when I tried to discipline them.  This was usually in the form of threatening to take away privileges (like using the computer or playing games).

The children were all labelled as being moderately retarded.  However they were all mostly very clever and conniving and in some cases dangerous.  I had a class of 13 children, Year 5 & 6 and due to their mental conditions most of them were already starting puberty.  I had one girl in the class who I was constantly having to watch as some of the boys took great delight in trying to fondle her or flash their private parts at her.  Another boy was on medication which he had to take 3 times a day or he would start having uncontrollable temper fits.  I was not authorised to administer the medication so every session, I would have to send him across to the Secretary's office where he would be dosed.

I would have to watch him from the window to make sure that he not only went there but to ensure also that if there were any other children outside (kids usually going to the toilet or on a message) that he would not attack them.  While I was watching him the other kids would run riot and the last half hour of every session was a nightmare of trying to calm them and get some order back in the classroom.

On top of feeling totally abandoned by the other teaching staff, exhausted by the difficulties of teaching this class I was also feeling that I was being deliberately unfairly treated.  This was because I was immediately told that I would have to cover 10 playground duties during the week.  3 mid morning duties and 5 half hour lunch duties (one ever day).  There were 30 playground duties during the week and I was covering one third of them yet there were over 20 teachers.

When I complained to the Principal that I didn't think this allotment was fair he told me that most of the other teachers had 'committee duties' so I had to cover for them.  I soon realised that this was not true but determined not to let them get to me I accepted. So even getting the opportunity to get out of the school and smoke a few cigarettes was limited.

To get home I had to take a 30 minute bus ride to the closest train station and then another 15 minutes on the train and finished off with a 12 minute walk home.  This was just about my only 'me time' during the week.  I was still working Friday and Saturday nights at the taxi company even doing the Radio for the disabled taxi service.  I was specifically asked to stay on by the management as these were the two busiest nights and I was the only person with the skills and patience to handle the job.  It was not only my one 'social escape' for the week but also my one reassurance that I was a worthwhile and capable person.  It also let me keep in touch with my friends who I was no longer allowed to have visit me at home.

Obviously I wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with everything that was happening.  School was crap, home was crap - it felt like my whole life was crap.  Matty revelled in my failure.  He was happy to see me arrive home every afternoon physically and mentally drained and then tell me he knew I 'wasn't cut out to be a teacher'.  When I tried a few times to ring in sick and take a day off he threatened to ring the school and not only tell them that I was lying but that also about my criminal record.  I was trapped.

Towards the end of the first term Matty started to get really sick.  His lump had swollen to about the size of a baseball and the medication was making him constantly nauseous.  Often I would return home to find he had vomited uncontrollably through the house as he tried to make his way to the bathroom.  It was left to me to clean up and then deal with his tantrums or depression.

Everything came to a head two weeks before the end of the first school term.  In the middle of an unusually productive teaching session I suddenly realised that the reason the kids were being so quiet and pretending to work was because one of the boys was crouched down behind the girl student and poking a pencil into her vagina.  I stupidly lost it and yelled at the boy.  He was twice my size and weight and as i advanced towards him he came at me with a pair of scissors and pinned me against the wall.

I couldn't fight him off and as he started screaming abuse at me I got a hold of myself and quietly said I'm not going to fight you so just stab me.  My submission shocked him and even though he was still threatening me he seemed to get confused and possibly realise what he was doing.  I managed to get one of the boys to run to the Principal to get help.  He came back 5 minutes later (the situation was now defused and we were all having 'quiet time') with a note from the Principal which read ' I'm busy now please handle this yourself'.

I handled it myself all right.  In the middle of the classroom I lit a cigarette and calmly walked out of the room, across the playground, past the Principals window and out of the school.  I waited for over 30 minutes for a bus, but being close to lunchtime, no-one at the school even noticed I was gone. At the train station I seriously contemplated jumping under a train and ending it all.  I didn't.  I made it home, walked through the front door and straight into my bedroom.  I locked the door, smoked myself into a stupor while listening to the constant ringing of the phone (obviously the school) and Matty calling me which I ignored.

When I eventually came out of my room, Matty grabbed me and started yelling at me as to why I had ignored him and why I hadn't answered the phone.  It was too much.  I fought back, grabbing him by the shoulders and violently pushing him against the wall telling him if he touched me I would kill him. He was too shocked to respond.  I took my dog and went for a long, long walk before returning home and cooking dinner for a still shocked and quiet Matty. I ate my own dinner in my room after getting stoned again and didn't come out until the morning.
 
That morning I returned to school as normal.  My class was taken by another teacher while I attended a meeting with my supervisor and Principal.  I didn't hold back.  I told them that I would finish the term and leave.  Even when they offered me a 'regular' teaching position I laughed in their faces and told them they could go f*ck themselves.  I really didn't care about the consequences but I think they were scared that I would go to the Teacher's Federation and make a complaint or possibly sue them - which I had every right to do.  I just wanted out of there.

Amazingly the last two weeks of the term turned out to be annoyingly calm.  The kids were well behaved and even begged me to stay on and keep teaching them.  I hated them even more for that.

There were no sad goodbyes on my last day.  I left the school with hardly a word to anyone.  Two days later Matty's lump burst and life would take another change.....





 

LEARNING DAZE......

He talks about you in his sleep
There's nothing I can do to keep
From crying when he calls your name, Jolene

And I can easily understand
How you could easily take my man
But you don't know what he means to me, Jolene

The words could easily have been applied to myself or to Christine.  After he threw her out it would be two days before I saw her again.  She was grief stricken and totally at a loss as to why he had so brutally tossed her aside.

She still didn't know about his HIV and it was while he was spending an afternoon at the hospital that I was able to call her and let her know that I had packed all her belongings and that she could collect them.  When she turned up I was truthfully ashamed that I hadn't tried to intervene or explain the situation.

With her belongings packed in the car I suggested we go for a coffee so we could talk.  I told her everything.  She was both shocked and relieved. To know the truth about Matty's personality, to realize that his cowardice was the reason he had thrown her out, and to know that I realized that although Matty loved me in his own strange way that I knew there would never be anything more between us - except my devotion.  I couldn't  promise her that he would come round to her again but I let her know that if he did that I was happy for it to happen - she just needed to accept the fact that Matty also needed me and that we did have a platonic love for each other.

This was the last school holiday of the year, with one more term left.  I returned home one afternoon to a phone message offering me a one term full time teaching position at Glebe Public School.  I had been working at Camperdown almost full time but my day would be spent either between classes or taking computer or sports lessons with smaller groups of children.  Half of our kids actually lived in Glebe and my reputation had got back to the school there which was why I was picked to take over a class.

During my interview I was warned that it was the toughest class in the school and that I would have my work cut out for me.  I wasn't phased in fact I was really keen to take on my first full time class.  Well they hadn't held back on the reality of the class.  It was a large class with 32 students.  All from 'welfare families, many refugee children from Iraq and 4 Aboriginal boys who were absolutely uncontrollable.

It was also a 'composite class' of year 5 and year 6 students.  So I had to learn to deal with teaching on different levels, teaching to children with minimal English and to learn how to maintain control over a variety of behaviours.  Thankfully my supervising teacher was in the classroom next to me and I also had a teacher's aide to help.

For the first few days I floundered.  The children were either totally unresponsive to my instructions or all over me trying to get the individual attention that they obviously didn't receive at home.  The Aboriginal boys were the root of my teaching issues and it took me a while to realize that 'traditional teaching' methods were just not something they could handle.  We had two computers in the classroom and I brought in some Maths and English games on CD roms and devised a clever strategy with the boys.

I used my teachers aide to supervise the boys for the first hour each morning, giving them 40 minutes computer time with English games (which they loved) and then 20 minutes free time to play games just for fun.  The middle session was the same only using Maths games.  The deal was that for the last half hour they sat down and quietly did writing work.  In the afternoons, when they had exhausted themselves during their lunch break I was able to do the 'fun' teaching activities and incorporate them into the class.  By the start of the second week I was running a smooth class and the kids had all settled happily.  By the end of the term my supervisor was confident enough with me to ask me to run one of the weekly assemblies.

This was a school routine and the class in charge had to organize and run the assembly agenda plus put on a small performance.  I don't think many of the teacher's or other students could believe it when my class did the whole thing without a hitch.  Not only that but we managed to wow them with a spectacular multi-cultural dance performance where I utilised the children's backgrounds and my fabulous creative streak to make amazing costumes and dances.

 There was only one child I couldn't get through to. An introverted young girl who just sat.  She was no trouble but no matter what I did she was just a mute, non-performer.  Her mother was a heroin addict living with 3 other children and her current boyfriend.  Each morning at the daily assembly many of the parents stood outside the school gates watching.  With this girl I began to notice that her mother and boyfriend were there every morning and usually with the girl.  The mother's boyfriend would always be holding her protectively and would not allow her to enter the school gates until assembly finished.

One morning it just struck me that the poor young girl literally looked liked she had just been f*cked!  With my past history it was suddenly so blazingly obvious that the girl had that 'morning glory look'.  Horrified I spoke with my supervisor and the school counsellor about my assumptions.  The mother's boyfriend was sexually abusing the child.  The girl was immediately pulled from class and the relevant government agency alerted.

Long story short.  It was confirmed by the Department of Community Services (DOCS) that the child had been sexually abused by the mother's boyfriend who was charged and imprisoned.  A few weeks later we learned that the girl had been placed with her father.  To our horror they had not investigated the father's background and it turned out that he had been charged 3 years earlier for sexually abusing her older sister and had spent 2 years in jail.  Before anyone could intervene the girl was sent to Lebanon to her Uncles.....we dreaded to imagine what was in store for her.

This family would ironically come in and out of my life at the most tragic of times and under the most tragic circumstances in the years to come.

While everything at school was going well for me my home life was much different.  Without Christine there to help with the rent and Matty receiving sickness benefits I needed to take on extra shifts at the taxi company to make ends meet.  So I was basically back to my uni routine of working every day or night of the week and trying to run the house, look after the dog, and make sure that Matty always had food available to heat in the microwave when I was doing night shifts.

His Pneumonia had started to have a big effect on both his physical and mental health.  A large lump had started growing on his neck and he was beginning to look like the 'Elephant Man'.  This caused him to shun going anywhere outside or to have people visit us.  The only time he left the house was his weekly visit to the clinic when he would either take a taxi or if he wasn't feeling too week would wrap a scarf around his neck and take the bus, but this was rarely.  The cocktail of medication they were prescribing him also seemed to make him unstable.  One moment he was full of beans, the next he was depressed or even worse angry and threatening.

When the term ended I had six weeks with no income other than the taxi shifts.  Thankfully they were generous enough to give me lots of casual shifts and overtime - a lot of which was Christine's doing so we managed to get through.  I wasn't going out at nights but at least I could relax with a few cones which I was now able to smoke freely in the house.  Matty had stopped smoking altogether and didn't seem to mind when I smoked in front of him.  I think he was happier to have me close to him and at his beck and call rather than away in my room.

Although we got closer without Christine there we never again had sex.  Often when he was feeling really low he would sit with his arm around me while I smoked and watched TV but that was as close as it got.  What he couldn't stand was me being away for any longer than I was supposed to be.  There were many times when even if I was out walking the dog and took longer than normal I would return and have to put up with a mouthful of abuse.  As his lump got bigger things got worse.

He began hitting me again.  Often for the smallest of reasons. When dinner wasn't ready quickly enough.  If I had talked on the phone to my parents for too long.  If I worked overtime I had to ring him and let him know I would be late home.  Even then I knew I would be in for either a torrent of abuse or a quick punch in the stomach.  I can't explain why I put up with it.  I still believed I loved him, I felt guilty that he was suffering, I was too proud to walk out and start on my own - not that I could afford to financially.

Summer over and I was given another full time position at a different school.  It was by the same teacher who had given me the job at Glebe.  This time it was at a school some distance away and teaching a class of intellectually and physically disabled children.

I was offered a year's position, filling in for the teacher who had had been teaching these children for the past 5 years and was taking one year's leave.  I believed I was up to the job and happily accepted it.  It would be the worst 10 weeks of my teaching life......