Incognito

(Fiction)

Tie straight, button done up and newly cropped hair neatly (ish) brushed, he stood up and walked to the door to welcome his new form class. As they walked in, beaming with every handshake and personal greeting, their stares and wonderment were tangible. Questions were hanging in the air, as they always are with a new teacher.

He knew that this would happen. He was an alien on a new planet. He’d always imagined teaching as being some kind of intrepid adventure – himself as Captain Kirk, Teaching his Enterprise and the world of education his own, personal, Alpha Quadrant. Every child he met would be part of a fascinating new culture that, in some way or another, would benefit from his insertion into their little microcosm. All very Original Series.

The atmosphere was buzzing with the unwritten potential that each and every one of them represented. Fresh minds, ready to be shaped and moulded into the best ‘them’ that they could be, brimming with enthusiasm and excitement. He’d quickly learned, though, that First Contact Missions rarely went according to plan, and quite often non-interference was not only a Prime Directive, but an absolute necessity. They had their own lives, their own storms of hormonal summers, in which he was only a passing breeze at best.

Mrs. Sankey, the Head of Year for this group, had told him that the ‘new crop’ of Year 7s had taken part in an extensive induction programme. It was all very new and exciting, apparently. Part of a scheme to smooth over the transition from primary into secondary by introducing form groups early and establishing a specially selected buddy system that matched students from different areas together. In principle, this served to lessen the trauma of the first days and weeks of term. A series of activities and integration classes aimed to create friendships and break down the dividing walls.

It sounded very ambitious, but he could see how important it was. The local community wasn’t exactly known for its mutual cooperation. Generational feuds were rife, and often rooted in religious tensions fuelled by Irish and Scottish workers back in the 19^th Century. Meanwhile it was a common ‘joke’ that the massive foot-bridge connecting East and West across the river was laid with foundations of bodies from the 70s gang hits – at both ends. There was also a rumour of the ghostly spectres of two ill-fated lovers, who in 1984 were brutally executed and tossed in the river for ‘probably’ having Aids. Such was the joy of moving into the North-West.

He had stepped into a new and challenging world where he was decidedly different – perhaps more so than they would ever realise. He was the outsider and might never truly fit in. Indeed, some of these kids would end up becoming movers and shakers, the 1% of the total student cohort that would take up 90% of his time and they were sure to make his life as difficult as they could.

Yet for the most part, underneath everything, these were all the adults of the future and, if he did say so himself, he could become a role-model for the young minds in search of guidance. Learning how to navigate in order to maximise his impact would be one of his many priorities over the coming weeks and months.

But therein lay that motivation – the middle-class saviour complex that had inspired him to become a teacher in the first place.

—

He knew he couldn’t save the world.  

‘Remember: the butterfly effect of your presence in one child’s day to day can alter the fabric of their journey through life in profound and unexpected ways.’ That’s what Bill had said to them one dreary November morning while they were learning about the intricate theories surrounding formative and summative assessment. ‘Your present represents their future, and the way that you address their so-called ‘failures’ or ‘mistakes’ can either wound deeply, or lay the foundations for self-improvement and esteem that they might not be getting from anywhere else.’

Of all the lessons and lectures of his teacher training, this had resonated most deeply. He knew all too well that the past is a dark and dangerous place, filled with skeletons and horrors that even the bravest of people often try to bury.

You wouldn’t think that growing up in picturesque, suburban, middle-class England would be all that bad – at first blush. His parents had been loving and supporting, family living just around the corner. School was shiny and new (by 1990s standards) and the combined primary and secondary meant that there wasn’t really that much that changed throughout the years. It was comfortable and settled, no complaints here… A far cry from the life these kids were leading, that’s for sure.

Every silver lining has a cloud, though. And an underbelly as bloatedly rotund as it was foetid. Excessive competition, posturing and institutional bullying. These were just some of the hidden worlds underneath leafy green canopies. Nevermind the routine sexism, favouritism and all the other ‘isms’ that his ‘snowflake’ generation had the gall to call out. Mr. Morton had been the worst – a misanthropic, myopic, multi-bigoted fascist who made no effort to hide his disdain for anything that he deemed ‘unconventional’. Always a helpful trait for an art teacher and assistant head.

Consistently, where friends (classmates…) buckled into the routine of conformity, he had tried to push the boundaries, to rebel – in the most middle-class way possible – and take the road less travelled by, within reason. On one occasion, a particularly tense debate about the nature of authoritarian control on a Western democracy, and how it was not all that different from Stalinist Russia, had descended into a full on feud that lasted for weeks between him and his best friend Rose. Meanwhile on the other side of the coin he was considered a ‘radical’ sympathiser of oppressive regimes for daring to be against the war in Iraq, and less said about LGBT rights, there was no ‘Q’ or ‘+’ then, the better!

Ultimately, this took its toll and the overall impact was devastating. Not least, it was exhausting and more than once landed him in front of his head of year with a firm ‘that’s not how we do things around here’.

It also had the unfortunate side-effect of forcing him to avoid the parts of himself that really needed to break through. Where other teenagers experimented and explored their senses of identity, chiselling away at the uncarved blocks of their lives, he buried wounds and feelings in the cavernous trenches of his psyche. Thoughts became so deeply hidden that even to this day he and his therapist had a regular weekly thrill ride of uncovered memories. An intense hatred of his own body, seemingly out of nowhere, prevented him from ever getting into relationships with the girls around him. The resulting barrage of confidence-suppressing hormones and teenaged angst mixed with the unknown phantom that seemed to call him home to remind him daily that there was just something, fundamentally wrong with him.

Mathematics was, bizarrely, an escape from the cages of community and society. There was a profound simplicity in the firmament of quadratic equations, geometry and ratios. Unchangingly etched into the structure of the very universe, the unwavering facts of Mathematical truth (as he thought of it then) soothed his soul in a way that politics and history could not. He could get lost for hours in a single puzzle, twisting and turning the different possible solutions and combinations like a mental Rubik’s-paved gymnasium of ever-shifting probabilities. Against a background of chaos and shifting sands, there was at least some peace.

Little surprise, then, that a first-class honours followed by a Masters with distinction preceded his decision to do a PGCE and become a Maths teacher. If he could just convince one or two students to love the subject as much as he did and see the intricate beauty of the space and time around them then that would be a win.

Where his own teachers had cultivated uniformity and out-of-date stereotypes, he could be slowly challenging the established order and undermining the oppressive subliminal brainwashing of the education system.

Inevitably, by way of the mountainous paperwork, marking of workbooks and writing reports, the lofty heights of changing the world grew increasingly irrelevant.

Slowly but surely the techniques of classroom management and tactful communication with parents became all that really mattered. Self-expression, a prized value that he hoped to nurture, soon morphed into the conviction that a blazer and tie were the great socio-economic equalisers, while skirts must always sit just below the knee in order to not be a distraction. As the barriers of his youth were gradually dismantled, a new gilded fortress took its place, renovating with every target met and observation passed. Reality had swooped in faster than a bird of prey on steroids and he, the lowly field mouse, was no match for the steely claws.

He was an excellent teacher.

—

Life-changing revelations rarely come at opportune moments. A collection of events, including a spiteful parental complaint, a new headteacher that immediately took against him for no reason and his dad’s onset of Lewy Body Dementia pushed him past breaking point. One afternoon in March, after a particularly challenging final-period lesson with Year 8 top-set, he decided he’d had enough and handed in his notice the very next morning.

It wasn’t that he no longer wanted to be a teacher. He just no longer wanted to be a teacher where he was. So he quit, moved to the other side of the country and took a year to truly get to know himself in a way that he had never done before.

On reflection, the first month or so were not the most productive. A fair amount of time had been spent in front of Fast and Furious movies in jogging bottoms and over-sized t-shirts. After a while he started to read. Trashy romance fiction at first, but more and more he found himself drawn to the inspirational lives of men and women of the past. Martin Luther King’s verbal sparring with leading Klansmen and bigots of the American south ignited the once dormant fire or resistance. The fire of the Stonewall riots and Marsha P. Johnson’s struggles against conventional sexuality and gender norms was as exciting as it was tragic.

Gradually, the world began to make sense again. The wrongness he felt was melting away and he began to find his true self hidden beneath the tainted surface. He went to the doctor, started seeing his therapist and, at last, began to heal. Finding a new job had not been too hard. He was lucky that maths teachers were always in demand one way or another. Plus, while he did have a lot of experience, he was not high enough on the pay scale for newly qualified teachers to slip in through the tight coffers of over-stretched budget deficits.

There was still a long way to go. Much longer than he’d ever anticipated. He’d get there, eventually. He’d get there. For now, however, he had a job to do – and a fresh springboard to start from.

Slowly but surely the seats of his classroom were filling and excitement was building. His own was probably tangible in his body language. This was the first time in front of a classroom in about fourteen months and he was thrilled to be back in the captain’s chair.

The bell rang, deafeningly loud, for the 8.45 start.

‘Good Morning Year 7!’ He said. Confidence, expectation and control emanating from every syllable. This was his world. His heart brimmed with pride.

As one they replied. ‘Good Morning Miss!’

Smoothing his skirt, regretting his heels and cursing his mask of make-up and perfume, he sat at the computer, and began to take the register.