Teaching Drama, and Being Hit Over The Head With A Chair

For Emma, who gets upset when I don't update the blog regularly

I used to teach Drama. I was dreadful at it. I would be OK now, I think, but I got stuck behind the 8 ball early on and never really recovered with that class, in my first year of teaching at Big School.

I was recently asked by a colleague to state the worst 5 things that happened at my previous school. Given that at No.4 I had written: "Child tried to hit me over the head with a chair", she was quite surprised that I had "Teaching Drama" in at 2.

But it was a bit like this, you see.

Teaching Drama

When I arrived at Big School, all keen and ready for battle, and received my first timetable with the excitement of a Primary child opening a new set of Staedtler felt tipped colouring pens, I couldn't workout what the acronym Dr meant.

Drama, a helpful colleague informed me, laughed, and walked away shaking his head.

I went to the office to sort out the mistake. No mistake. I had expressed interest at interview, I was informed. Assuming this was true, I lived with my lie. After all, during an interview if someone asks you about your kite flying experience, you tend to talk up one disasterous Sunday with dad 17 years ago as a childhood dream yet to be realised, when do I start? Don't you?

It was years later that I realised that it was they who were lying to me.

So there I was, with two lessons of Drama on my timetable. How bad could that be, I thought? I can learn a few things, work with different department. I could even lose the tie from time to time, dress in black, take a coffee to lessons, swear infront of the kids, let me call me 'Doog'...?

I used to throw up before lessons.

That makes me laugh to look back on it now, but it’s true. I had break duty before the second of the weekly 2. I would stand on duty in the playground, feeling the seconds tick down to the start of the lesson. There was a disabled/staff toilet (yes, I always liked that joke) with a code on the door, and like a bulimic teen I would nip in there and hurl. Then, ready for battle, I would emerge; reeking.

And then I would get my ass kicked. But I learnt a lot. (?)

The school was growing faster than its population, so, in my first year, when you taught a 'non-core' subject like Drama, you could find yourself teaching in places like the refectory. So, 30 kids, in the refec, directly after break.

And to add to my joys the refec after break is where that famous slippery slope you read about actually ends up, with every bad kid in the school sliding down on chip fat and coke to group and congeal, like a stagnant pool of second rate DNA, a walking Daily Mail headline of low life expectations for the less than 5 GCSEs.

Lessons would start with me turfing out all of that lot, and end a long long time later.

Not knowing anything about the subject, far less how to teach it, I fell back on the work the department used. This was suicide as the department were in a worse state than me. Term 1: Group work and Improvisation. Somehow even the stupidest kids can improvise something that can make a teacher look stupid in front of a class. They might have 'Will Spend Rest Of Life Serving And/Or Eating Chips' tattoed on foreheads, but they can be a God for a 60 seconds when I try to bring them down.

Whenever I told off a kid off for fighting, or bullying someone, they would hit me with we're trying to get into character.

When they I told them to put down something dangerous, I was told it was a prop.

When they swore, they said their last teacher, the Head of Department, allowed it. I checked, she confirmed that she did, indeed, let them saying things like m*therf*ck*r and whore, as long as it was in context.

I asked her what strategies she'd used to control the class. She gave me the single most ineffectual piece of advice I have ever heard: If they misbehave again, just tell them they're throwing away their chance to get an A*. That was the last time we spoke.

It never got better.

I went to my mentor, explaining all of this. She'd also arrived that term, but had come from a properly rough school, listened patiently to my story, and said, I'll support you 100%. I'll take the class, or get you retimetabled, whatever. (Pause. Brilliant, I thought) But do you know what I said to myself when they broke my fingers? You're going to get me that f*cking easily. (Pause. Shit, I thought.)

So...

After Thursday's lesson I would dread Friday's. Friday's I would survive and look forward to 9 working days till next Drama lesson. I was so badly in denial that I was teaching it that I never planned my lessons properly, so it just got worse and worse. It's the only singularly negative thing I've ever experienced in teaching.

And yes. Way worse than being hit over the head (well, nearly) by a chair.