I sat down in the staffroom towards the end of a January day. It was quiet in there, a free period, and I probably had a pile of A4 hardback copies to read through, or a worksheet to finish off and print 25 copies of.

The principal stuck his head in the door and addressed me in a soft polite voice. ‘Can you come into the office for a second?’

I went to the principal’s office, wondering what it was all about, and sat on one of the sombre antique-looking armchairs. I hadn’t been in the place since before the old principal retired last year.

The new principal and deputy were younger men who went about their new jobs with a hurried, impatient air that suggested they thought the old principal had been too easygoing. I felt the new principal liked me. But from the deputy I’d always got a vibe that he didn’t quite understand the point of me. I can imagine him thinking: A male teacher who doesn’t do rugby or GAA? Why does he even get out of bed in the morning? 

I can’t remember if Roberto was already there or if he was summoned in after me, or if he arrived in the custody of the deputy. Roberto, not his real name, was a fifth-year Spanish Lad (Actually Catalan, but anyway, a member of that school’s numerous and anomalous Iberian tribe).

The deputy spoke to Roberto in an angry, impatient way. ‘Mr ______ here says that you wouldn’t take your jacket off. Do you have anything to say for yourself?’

I was more confused now. A couple of days before Roberto had refused to take his jacket off in class. That was such a trivial thing I’m not sure why I even wrote him up on VSware for it. It was January in Ireland and this kid was from the Mediterranean.

Roberto said that it was true and he was sorry, but he was not sure why he was being singled out.

He turned to me. ‘Come on, sir. You know I don’t mess as bad as the other guys.’

I hope my voice didn’t come out as wheedling as I remember. ‘It’s true that we have problems in that class. And you’re not the worst. But if I ask you to do something, you need to do it and not argue with me.’

But he was right. The jacket thing was unusual. Roberto was one of the few kids in that English class who weren’t a constant headache to me. I was putting up stuff on VSWare every other day about that crowd. But Roberto was dozy and withdrawn – I mean withdrawn from the work, but also from the messing. In the context of that absolute urinal of a class, I’d take that trade-off.  

But in making the classic ‘Why are you singling me out?’ defence, Roberto had walked right into the trap.

The principal and deputy laid into him: ‘This is not acceptable.’ ‘What other people are or aren’t doing has nothing to do with it.’ ‘You need to take responsibility for your own actions.’

These are the things us educators always say. But this wasn’t a schoolmarmish telling-off. The tone was harsh, aggressive. In the army they’d call it a bollocking. Roberto withdrew into himself.

‘You can be sent back to Spain. Do you understand? If you don’t start behaving yourself, we’re going to send you back.’

Roberto listened to these ugly threats, looking sullen and upset, saying only ‘Yes… Yes…’ whenever it was demanded of him.

After Roberto was dismissed, the principal and deputy turned to me. ‘You shouldn’t have agreed with him. The way you said there were problems in the class. You can’t accept any of that.’

And I realised: this ambush was not for Roberto. It was for me.

I was too surprised to really argue. ‘OK, but it’s true, there are serious problems in that class. And Roberto is far from the worst…’

They shook their heads. ‘You can’t just accept a certain level of disruptive behaviour. You can’t let them get away with breaking the rules. You shouldn’t have let things get so bad with that class.’

I can’t remember which of them said what, and I’m only pulling together our words from memory as best I can a few years later; I think the principal did most of the talking. They weren’t quite as aggressive in tone as they were with the kid, but it was just as obvious that this wasn’t a discussion. So I pretended to accept what they were saying, just so I could get out of that room quickly and get back to work.

***

After school I had to cycle out to the suburbs on an errand. I pumped those pedals hard on that bike ride, ranting in my head about what I should have said.

I had barely seen the principal or deputy since September. They had not spoken to me about this challenging class or, as far as I know, spoken to any of the kids for whom I’d written long rap sheets. They hadn’t said a word to me about it right up until this weird encounter in the office.

In fact, they hadn’t wanted to know about it. A couple of months before, I’d brought four kids from that class straight up to that same office after some particularly bad incident. But the principal had dismissed us impatiently and hurried off somewhere. I remembered, too, that a couple of times the deputy had burst into my classroom. Paying no heed to me, he had laid into the students like an unusually rude drill sergeant – for wearing jackets in class.

Always with the jackets!

The kids could shout ‘f****t’ and ‘foreigner’, throw stuff around the room, interrupt me – but god help anyone who still had his jacket on at 9:05 on a winter morning.

Maybe it was ‘broken window theory’ or something. But I call it chickenshit.

That wasn’t the word I used to their faces. But I did challenge them (In the mild way I have when I’m not safely behind a keyboard). The next day I approached the deputy and principal together and asked to speak to them.

The three of us sat in that office again. ‘I had a big problem with our discussion yesterday.’ I gave chapter and verse on the ways I’d been following policy and teaching the curriculum in spite of challenges. ‘I don’t accept this idea that I haven’t been doing my job.’

The principal responded in a kind tone that I shouldn’t be trying to deal with these problems all by myself. He spoke with a confiding lean toward me, and the deputy backed him up with sympathetic nods. The principal said I should work alongside my colleagues more and communicate more to try to tackle these problems.

He’d shifted the goalposts. But I said that was fair enough and that maybe I hadn’t communicated enough and that this was something I had to work on. I stood up and most likely said some complete platitude, and we all thanked each other and got back to work.

***

And we never spoke of it again. Which contradicts the bit about communicating, right? But it was consistent with the real message I had received: that from now on I should deal with this crap by being tough and mean and zero-tolerance. They had blamed me for the students’ behaviour, so I knew it was not just pointless but dangerous to ask them for any help.

Roberto wasn’t packed off back to Iberia. Nothing else changed either. From then til summer I dragged that class kicking and screaming through a respectable quantity of great literature. The year head continued being helpful, but I had very little to do with management or they with me. We remained polite, and the principal did offer me a job supervising on exams in June.

As for their advice to get all mean and tough, I didn’t make the slightest effort to act on it. Partly because it’s not in me – and I wouldn’t accept the idea that teachers need to have that in them. Partly because I knew that even if it was in me, it wouldn’t salvage that class.

And partly because I knew that their advice was rubbish. ‘Communicate more with us’ – yes, us, the people who ignored you and then blindsided you. ‘Take a zero-tolerance approach with those kids’ – even though we’ll never, ever back you up (unless it’s a question of jackets).

My only real regret is that I didn’t tell Roberto that I thought it was bullshit, the way they treated him.

To this day I don’t really understand what the principal and deputy were trying to do that day in the office. But I understand that their advice was just an attempt to put all the responsibility back on the young and precarious teacher. Like the Spanish Lad, the bindle-stiff sub teacher is not going to be here next September.

A couple of years later in another school I encountered a principal and deputy who were helpful, sympathetic, kind, open and patient. It was all the more impressive because this school faced bigger problems. I was only there for 6 weeks or so, but that was when it really sank in, what a load of crap that previous principal and deputy had tried to put over.

I’m not writing this to be bitter, but to show the importance of good management in tackling messing, and what bad management looks like. Whoever needs to hear this: your boss may seem busy, important, experienced and confident. But don’t judge by appearances. Judge them on whether or not they are actually helping you to do your job. Sometimes you need to accept that you can’t do it on your own, and if management offer you bullshit instead of help then failure is not your fault.  

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