Monday 25 July 2016

Collected Stories from the Staffroom - Volume I, 1992 - 2012

 The Joy of Sellotape

i)               Learning Disruptor (1993)

Ray staggered through the classroom door stumbling into a desk. He sat very quickly and looked keenly at the board. As other pupils entered the room, they took off their coats and got their exercise books and pens out ready for the start of the lesson.
Mrs Gaysford noted that Ray hadn’t yet done this and had his hands under the desk. Better than flicking things around the room she assessed, and began the lesson.
After a few minutes, it became even more obvious that Ray wasn’t engaging with the lesson and still had his coat on. He was also wriggling and looked to be in some discomfort.
When he stood up in response to the teacher’s request, it became apparent that the discomfort may have been related to his fingers having turned a purple colour. The cause of this looked to be at least two full rolls of sellotape that had been wrapped repeatedly around each of his hands, binding them together, tightly.
The next 12 minutes of the lesson involved Mrs Gaysford  managing ‘helpful’ members of the class variously offering to cut the sellotape off; hit Ray to show how stupid he was; run to tell the headteacher; using (against school rules) penknives to remove the tape and generally give opinions and predictions about the impact of loss of circulation on fingers.

ii)             Teacher Bondage (1998)

As a teacher walked up the hill to the Music Department in a rural school, she heard an adult’s voice requesting ‘help’ in a quiet but desperate voice. As she turned following the noise she saw the music teacher (permanent member of staff and NOT a supply colleague) taped to a large tree. No pupils anywhere in sight.
Asking the teacher how this happened led to no coherent answer and it was only a few months later that the pupils involved explained to a new drama teacher how it occurred. They had convinced the music teacher to stand with her back to the trunk with her eyes closed, while the class organised a ‘surprise’ for her. One pupil then ran around quickly reeling the tape around the tree and teacher, pinning her arms down.
Then the class ran off.
Moral in the story – NEVER stand against a tree with your eyes closed.

iii)            Student Travois (2003)

Determined to show he could handle situations and stay calm using his experience of positive relationships with pupils, Maq attended his second ‘on call’ SLT duty. The phone call sent him to the science department where, it was reported, some year 10 boys were running around disrupting lessons in the area.
Maq strode meaningfully forward and as he entered the open area in front of the classrooms, four pupils, almost unable to walk upright properly through laughing, were dragging another pupil, Mark, around on a chair. Mark was taped to the chair with long strips of sellotape around his forehead, shoulders, chest and arms, waist, and legs, completely binding him to the chair.
Maq knew exactly what to do. He phoned for back up immediately.


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