Believe those who are seeking the truth - doubt those who find itAndre Gide
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free
John 8:32
The blocks to the school's vision for reform, caused by two of Arcadia's Curriculum Consultants, have been partly solved. Fred Simmons, the Science Curriculum Consultant, has taken the second half of the year off on long service leave. He's been replaced by a new person in that role who seems to remove all the blocks I'd identified earlier, as well as to provide some positive benefits to the school. Darshan Vijaya is right up to speed on the requirements of teaching science in an integrated way. He doesn't insist on content as an end in itself, but on relevant, manageable, interesting science lessons for all. He's much more personable than Fred, but beyond that Darshan is really keen to help and be involved with the teachers and to support them in their science teaching. He's really revitalised the science program in the school - this is interesting: to what extent do single committed, capable individuals have a dramatic effect on a whole school?
The situation with Ellen Carver, the Technology Curriculum Consultant, hasn't resolved itself in the same way, but my involvement with the planning process in meetings has been reduced quite a bit, so her demands don't impact on me directly. She's also become an acting Deputy Principal this term, leaving the Technology planning to the much more flexible James. I suspect Andrew has also had some input in moderating the demands of the technology team on the teachers - at least, the Cowan teachers seem much more comfortable with technology, but I noticed that none of those creative projects they came up with ever got made by the students.
In team meetings, Fiona continues to hold the chair, and to plod through the agenda in her steady, focused but uninspiring manner. All around her the teachers play with allusions and meanings, and joke over her head and behind her back. She frowns when they become too rowdy, and they slump in their chairs for a few minutes, then begin again. They'll challenge her and de-rail the train of procedure if it's an issue they care about enough, but basically they've stopped seeing the team meetings as an important part of their teaching and planning activity. It's become just another bureaucratic requirement that they have to attend, and the real planning and operation of the team happen elsewhere.
In recognition of this, the team meetings usually only run for about an hour of the two and a half hours available, then the teachers go to their own desks or form smaller sub-groups to carry out the actual planning work.
It all works, after a fashion, but it's a long way short of the ideals of teacher collaborative planning that were imagined by the developers of the school's program. The teachers who are new to Arcadia this year aren't being inducted into a culture of integrated curriculum by the more experienced teachers, and are tending to default back to a much more traditional teaching approach, with separate timetabled periods for different subjects. The necessary synergy - of culture, values and strategies - between the different facets of the reform package at Arcadia (portfolio culture, teacher collaborative planning and integrated curriculum) is simply not there in Cowan team. As a result the reforms are becoming untenable, and Cowan team is becoming more and more like a traditional high school.
In first term, Emma understood this, and she won them over. She visits the school now and then with her new baby, and the whole class crowds around her and tells her stories of what's happening in their lives, and begs her to come back soon.
But if you talk to Andrea, they're hopeless - disobedient, undisciplined and rebellious, don't have a brain between them: the sooner they leave school and get a job at McDonalds the better. And it's not only us she tells, it's the students.
Andrea is not a bad teacher generally. She's just a bad teacher in this context. She considers herself to be a teacher of senior school mathematics, and expects students to be capable, organised, focused and self-disciplined. With those students, she's kind, caring but no-nonsense. She knows her material, has a fund of resources and strategies, is confident and prepared. Andrea never wanted to come to Arcadia - it was the only job available, and she was the only qualified person available at the end of Term One. Her responses come from her fear and disorientation and desire to be somewhere else. I can understand all that intellectually, but viscerally I still want her out of the school - what effect is she having on the self-concept and love of learning of these 30 human beings? And can that damage ever be undone?
"Of course we do - but then again, you've got the accountability factor: you can't have people who don't teach particularly well, who refuse to teach, or can't handle the students, or are violent or whatever. And I think it's good that people are accountable for their actions."
"How is it measured though?" I ask, "Do you think the ways that accountability are measured now are appropriate, that they work?"
"No, I think we're gonna have to work on them, I really do. I think we've got a mismatched system. The kids don't know what the rules are, and I don't think the teachers know yet. I mean, I think I've got some direction, but I haven't changed my teaching methods..."
I look at her in disbelief, and she explains that although the visible strategies in the classroom have changed to fit the Arcadia model and her different circumstances, the basic principles and beliefs she brings to her teaching are unchanged from her long and successful teaching career. She has always valued student's responsibility for their own actions and behaviour, active learning and caring teaching, and still teaches that way.
"Well, being a cynic, I think many of them would love to see the kids in little uniforms, boaters on their heads, going to school, sitting in straight lines, saying 'yes ma'am, yes sir', popping home, doing their homework, and aren't I a good boy or girl. And that's natural... I think they want to see that, they don't want to see them coming out in sweatshirts and f'ing and b'ing and that sort of thing. They pre-empt what it should be, they have a view what it was in their day."
"Yep. So to what extent are we reactive to that, and to what extent do we try and challenge it?"
"As a state school we're very reactive, because (1) they're voters, (2) they pay taxes, (3) they can chuck out the Education Minister... It's higher level stuff: it all comes down to money and votes. I mean look at the heavy weather we went through in this school - community saying 'Oh, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that' but I think we are winning the war. We lost the battle, to start with, because we really got known as unbelievably interesting things, including 'the poofter school', but, no, I think we're winning the war, but the war is gonna take 20 years. It won't change overnight."
"Mmm, it'll probably take until some of these kids are the parents."
"Yeah, either that or you have a dramatic change and information technology comes through overnight. And that's not gonna happen, even if the Premier says it is. But I really think that we are in a situation where we've got a foot in both camps. Having said that, I think it's working here. I think the kids are far more responsible, far more good." And on that optimistic note Candace hurries off to class.
One morning I try to make the first move to change our armed truce. "At end of last term we had that meeting with Fiona and tried to sort our expectations out a bit. There were obviously things that I was being unprofessional about and I apologise for those, but a lot of it too was expectation problems. Every time you were doing a lesson I was cheering because I wanted to support you to teach science and you were spewing because you were thinking it was my responsibility to be doing it or something."
"Oh no, I wasn't spewing, it was more a case of 'I've got this science expert at the back of my class, watching a non science expert'. A lot of the time I felt like you were sitting there thinking, 'she's not talking about that, she's not talking about that'. But it does go back to expectations: I sort of expected more structure and support but then I got to the stage where I couldn't actually trust that it was going to happen. First term I felt fine with science," Carolyn comments, "because it was environmental biological science and I found that interesting, I could teach that with the resources that people shared around, but when it got to the chemistry, I was thinking, 'this is way past me'."
"Yeah, I think one of the things that was really unfortunate was that all my doctor's appointments were on Wednesday and so that really cut into things and then I didn't really cover those and say 'OK...here's some stuff to do'."
"Oh," she says, a bit grudgingly, "I mean that's fair enough, you had a broken leg..."
"Yeah, but in a way maybe that contributed to that feeling of not being able to rely on me to be there when I said I would be, and I guess that's hard to reestablish..."
"I'm a bit worried about her," comments Alyx one afternoon after school. "She's a lot happier in herself, and she's slowly getting a less frightened look in her eyes, but she's really starting to cling around me. She wants to talk to me every lunch time and stay in the room when the others go to LOTE, and just generally doesn't want to be away from me. I wouldn't mind, I guess - I mean she obviously needs someone - but I need time off from kids too, to do my planning and just unwind. The other kids have started to tease her about it too - I think they're jealous of all the attention she's getting, and they can't know the reason."
"Yeah, it's hard, isn't it? There was a kid at the school I taught at in Melbourne. He had cerebral palsy - his mind was fine, but he had to walk with crutches. He'd lived at home all his life, and his Italian mama had waited on him hand and foot and basically made him the centre of the world. He had no social skills whatsoever - expected everyone to treat him the same way Mama did. He sort of latched onto me, and followed me everywhere. The ticking of his crutches approaching started to turn up in my nightmares, like Captain Hook's ticking crocodile!"
"What did you do?" Alyx asks.
"I sort of tried to gently disentangle myself, but someone with no social skills has no understanding of subtlety, and I really just didn't have the heart to be as direct as I needed to be. So the situation basically just went on unresolved, and it stressed me out to the max. That should have been quite a fun year, but by the end of it I was just a ball of nerves. The sound of crutches still makes my stomach clench. I ended up leaving the school at the end of that year - not for that reason, but it was a relief anyway to not have to solve it."
"Yeah, it's really hard to think about what's best for her. She's already been let down more than once, by her parents when they didn't see what was happening and rescue her, and I don't know whether she could handle being rejected - or what might feel like rejection. I don't think she's ready to just go off and be a 'normal' 14 year old either - she's sort of missed out on making friends because she's been too withdrawn, and now they're all in their little groups."
"I know, but you also sort of think 'but she has to start making some new patterns', you know? I mean, I'd be the last to tell someone to 'just put it all behind you and get on with your life' - I know that just hurts people more, 'cos they don't actually deal with anything. But if she starts seeing herself as a victim and stays an emotional convalescent all her life, that's not gonna help her either. I really like the language of 'survivors' instead of 'victims' of incest - it's more positive, and it suggests that, although it wasn't your fault and there was nothing you could do at the time, you can go forward and make a new life, like survivors of any other disaster."
"I'm really not sure what to do about the clinginess," says Alyx, "I'll probably just encourage her to go out at lunchtime and recess - even let her know that I need my private time too. But I'll also really keep supporting her. She really is like a new kid though - instead of having her head down on the desk, she's up, focused and listening. She won't usually put her hand up, but if you ask her she'll answer the questions, and she's getting all her work done. I'm amazed at the difference, but I s'pose I shouldn't be - I can't imagine what her life was like before, and we were expecting her to cope with school as well. How many other kids in this school have stuff like that going on at home? And we just look at them the same as all the other kids."
"Well, if the statistics are similar to most places - and they would be - in a school of nine hundred there'd be more than a hundred kids who are going through incest or some other kind of sexual or physical abuse. And that doesn't include the places where home is just a war zone the whole time, or the parents are always drunk or stoned. I reckon it's amazing that a lot of these kids even make it to school, let alone function."
"True - thank God Shannon at least has a bit more of a chance now."
If this sounds like a happy ending for Shannon, in a sense it is, but there's every chance Shannon will never be fully able to trust - that's been stolen from her, and can never really be given back. But if she can find the courage to love, and someone who will love her and be absolutely safe for her, she will, over many years, learn a new kind of trust.