It had been a big project, led by our visionary headteacher, Mike Moore, and enthusiastically supported by our Child Protection Officer, Gary Clark. Called ‘Reach for Success’ it was the culmination of research, endless meetings, and lots of political toing and froing with the education authorities, most of which I wasn’t personally involved with, but some of which I was, and we were now the proud ‘owners’ of a dedicated teaching facility in the local youth centre. It was designed to bring out the potential of a specific group of children – those who would not, in all probability, achieve academically in the same way as the majority of the kids.
It was an important step, not least because it meant we could target those kids that might leave school feeling academic ‘failures’ but were of course supremely capable of succeeding beyond school, and deliver an alternative and more appropriate teaching programme for them, including cookery, health and social care, basic food hygiene, childcare, beauty and more manual training in mechanics and carpentry than they could get in the main school. It was to be delivered as a rolling six-week course of learning exciting new, career-focused skills, and would also include targeted work on behaviour and self-development, which was where I came in, of course. I’d also had to provide the teaching staff down there with some specific agendas, which could be implemented during timetabled lessons.
All the hard work now completed, and the key staff in place, we were almost ‘open for business’, as it were. All that remained for me to do was to help identify the first group of pupils that we would send on the programme, make a weekly visit to the centre to check on their progress, and keep teachers and parents in the loop about how each individual was performing. It was a really exciting and innovative development for our school and I was proud of how much we’d achieved in a relatively short space of time.
It had been a pretty full-on job over the past few weeks, as well. So much so that it meant that I had spent even less time at home with my husband Mike and my own two children. Who weren’t exactly children any more, to be fair. Riley, my daughter, was almost 19 now, and my son Kieron had just turned 17, though sometimes, when I came home after a physically exhausting day spent painting and decorating at the centre, you’d think they were kids. I’d more than once come in to find the house in complete chaos – which I hated – and to find two starving teenagers and a husband with a hangdog expression, all obviously of the opinion that a law had been passed forbidding them to eat until I arrived home.
Not that it wasn’t a situation of my own making. I might stomp about a bit, do a lot of martyred sighing and so on, but that didn’t mean I was blind to my own failings. In fact, it often amused me that I spent all day teaching other people’s kids how to look after themselves, only to then go home and insist on doing absolutely everything for my own.
‘You’re making a rod for your own back, Casey!’ my mother was rather fond of saying, and even though I’d huff and puff at her, I was inclined to agree. Not that I’d have it any other way of course. I secretly loved still being needed by my two older teens, no matter how much I pretended to protest.
Right then, Casey, I said out loud to myself, since there was no one else to talk to. Best get cracking – these walls aren’t going to sort themselves out! I then rolled my sleeves up, both actually and metaphorically, and, after placing a hopeful hand on the nearest radiator and having my hopes dashed, prepared to do battle with the displays. With any luck, I’d have an uninterrupted hour and a half now, so, before tackling the remaining backlog of paperwork in my pigeonhole, I could do a good job of stripping down all the previous students’ work, and prettying it up again, ready for the work my new charges would produce.
But that’s the thing about school life; it was almost always unpredictable. So much so that I could probably have predicted that the sudden rap on the classroom door 20 minutes later would mean a complete change of plan.
And it did.
My room wasn’t like a regular classroom. For one thing it was half the size, and for another, it wasn’t even a classroom. It had been once, back in the dark ages, when the school had first been built, but after a spell as a learning support room, it had gone the way of many a backwater space – home to a small, motley collection of tables and chairs, and not a great deal else. It had been passed over, forgotten, trapped in a time warp at the end of a corridor, and it suited my purposes perfectly.
The headmaster, Mike Moore, who showed me various options when I’d first secured the job, had expressed surprise; in terms of size and spec he’d definitely shown me better. But there was something about that little room that had chimed with my sensibilities, both as a work space for me and as a safe space for my pupils – who I had an inkling would know all about being passed over and forgotten.
Best of all – and, to be honest, it was probably the deal-breaker – it had double doors that opened out onto a lovely grassy area, tucked away at the back of the school. Oh, the things we could do out there, I’d thought.
And, if I did say so myself, I thought I’d made it quite special. I sectioned off an area at the front for myself, which contained a desk, a set of drawers and (important, to my mind) space to make hot drinks and toast. This last addition had caused a few raised eyebrows. In these days of health and safety consciousness, one couldn’t just turn up and plug in a toaster as one might do at home – no, Mike Moore had been required to call an engineer in specially, to test and ‘pass safe’ my two electrical appliances, which I heard on the grapevine caused a ripple of mild disgruntlement in some quarters, due to the ‘unnecessary’ expense.
I believe I then made matters worse (no, to be fair, I know I did) by going out and spending some of my precious teaching budget on such fripperies as bright emulsion, half a dozen floor cushions and a selection of potted plants – all of which I deemed essential too. Essential to the creation of the warm, calm environment I was after, so, knowing all about politics after years spent working with vulnerable young adults for the local council, I simply ignored the whispered grumbles and exasperated glances, which, once it became common knowledge that my Unit would mop up the most challenging children, did not continue very long, to no one’s surprise.
I had several large display boards and had got to work on them quickly, taking down what remained of the previous bunch of students’ work and, while I was at it, wondering how they were all doing. Being out of school for a few weeks meant being somewhat out of the loop, and I made a mental note to try and track them down when I could. In the meantime, I decided, surveying the newly barren walls, I’d hang on to the gold card frames that we’d put up for Christmas but would be perfectly serviceable for a while yet. I could then turn my attention to my ‘quiet’ area.
A good number of the children who came to me had a tendency to become volatile, so a ‘chill out’ space was another essential. It was a place I could send kids to calm down if they needed to and, equally, it was a place that might prove preventative on that front – not to mention being somewhere a shy child could escape to, should the bustle of the classroom get too much.
It was a simple space – the only seating being those half-dozen floor cushions – and bound on two sides by a pair of bookcases at right angles, facing inwards. There were books, of course, but also a selection of stationery: trays of paper, pens and pencils, in case creativity blossomed and the urge to be artistic took hold.
The knock at my door came just as I was deciding if I had time to rearrange the muddle of books, while putting a new label on the crayon tray. I bobbed up to find Donald Brabbiner, the deputy head, had put his head round the now open door.
‘Casey, do you have a minute?’ he asked, looking stressed. Not that Don looking stressed was anything unusual in itself, currently. The school was in the middle of preparing