You'll probably think I'm making a lot of this up just to make me sound better than I really am or smarter or even luckier but I'm not. Besides, a lot of the things that've happened to me in my life so far which I'll get to pretty soon'll make me sound evil or just plain dumb or the tragic victim of circumstances. Which I know doesn't exactly prove I'm telling the truth but if I wanted to make myself look better than I am or smarter or the master of my own fate so to speak I could. The fact is the truth is more interesting than anything I could make up and that's why I'm telling it in the first place.
Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone
"I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine, I will be the one who loves you..." George Michael's croon floats across the ice as the skaters glide in erratic circles. The wisps of steam rising from the ice and the way the skaters smoothly slide lend a touch of glamour to this tatty barn of a building in a suburban shopping centre. It's a forty degree December day outside, but cool and dim here by the ice.
I'm standing at the edge of the rink, chatting to Candace and watching our skating, laughing students.
"Did you hear I got that curriculum job?" she asks.
"No, I didn't know - well done. When did you find out?"
"Andrew told me this morning - I'm not really s'posed to tell anyone yet. I really didn't think I'd get it," she says, "Everyone said James had it in his pocket and no-one else had a chance. But I thought 'What have I got to lose?', and put in an application." I'm excited for her - she's a friend and ally as well as a colleague, and it's great that her talents are being recognised. She'll do a great job for the school.
Candace is looking to me for some affirmation of her worth and ability. Below her expensively blonded hair, her warm brown eyes are surrounded by rays of fine laughter lines. Those eyes are such an accurate barometer of her moods - usually flashing with joy and intelligence, and an irreverent humour, occasionally sad, or questioning, as they are now. She's a talented, capable teacher, but she seems to want to hear that, to require the approval of others. I'm pleased to let her know I think she'll be great in her new role. Besides, I've been known to need some affirmation myself.
Every five minutes or so, a group of smiling teenagers slides to the wall to ask "Are you coming skating Mr Geelan?"
"I can't guys - my leg's still too weak. It's almost there, but I don't want to risk it..."
I broke my left leg roller-blading in February and spent the first half of the year on crutches and then limping in a cast. Although I only have a slight limp now, the kids accept this and skate off, yelling over their shoulders "See ya, then".
I'm pleasantly surprised at how many, and which, students come to invite me onto the ice - it's a nice feeling to discover that I'm more than the policeman I seem to have to be in our school encounters. The realisation that these students see me as a friend takes away some of the tiredness and depression that seem to be getting stronger as the year comes to an end.
I really don't know how these students see me. I wonder whether this is because I haven't listened to them, or because they haven't told me - or perhaps because we can never see ourselves clearly in the eyes of others; we look too avidly, and through the distorting lenses of how we see ourselves.
Andrea sits by herself at the side of the rink, her white crocheted cardigan wrapped tightly around her thin form. No students skate up to invite her onto the ice, and no teachers go to sit with her, although they nod politely as they pass. I go and sit with Andrea, talk to her and spend some time, and everything's pleasant, at least on the surface. But this attractive looking, slightly greying woman in her late forties is really not popular with teachers or students; she should never have been teaching at this school, as she would be the first to acknowledge, and the conflict of styles and aspirations made her caustic and dangerous. She was emotionally and physically violent toward the students, reacting out of her fear and disorientation, and the students reacted out of their own fear. There's a sense of relief - from Andrea as well as her students and colleagues - that she won't be in the school next year.
She, too, has just found out that she has a job, back in the type of school where she's comfortable, and she's looking forward to the future.
I laugh, and Peter looks at me questioningly. "Sorry," I say, "but I can never hear that term without laughing. I saw a standup comedian once, talking about how men do the 'pat check' on their pants when they leave home - 'back pocket - yep, wallet's there, front pocket - yep, keys are there, front of trousers - yep, genitals are OK!' - so whenever someone talks about 'member checks'...." Peter grins, and I continue.
"I showed some of the stories to some of the teachers we worked with last year," I respond, "but in a way member checks is not the right metaphor for what I want the stories to do. The characters in my 'novel' are based on the actual teachers and students, but they're really not meant to be true and fair representations of particular people. So, for example, the character of 'Carolyn' is based on one teacher, but I've really taken some things she said and did, and compounded them with other things about teaching that I'd observed, and with my reactions. She probably carries a bit of simmering resentment I felt toward my own parents and teachers when they refused to trust me, too!"
"That's interesting," murmurs Peter, "because I can see someone like Ken Tobin saying that you'd been 'symbolically violent' toward that teacher by the way you represented her. How would you respond to that?"
"I guess by saying that the characters are not the people, and shouldn't be seen as representing them in a realist way. Certainly if the teacher Carolyn is based on ever reads this account, I hope she'd recognise some characteristics of herself, but there'd be other things where she'd say to me "that's not a fair picture of me", and I'd say "good, 'cos that bit's not you". I'll be able to make all that stuff - about the purposes for making the characters, and their relationships to real people - much more explicit for the reader in the second part of the thesis. But it needs to be clear in the first part too, because I imagine teachers - for whom it's partly being written - will only read this part, not the really academic, formal stuff in the second part."
"So it's really a matter of what significance you want readers to attach to their readings of your text," Peter comments. "You need to give them some pretty explicit signals, because I think people will tend to default to reading it as an attempt at realism. How will you do that in the book?"
"How about I include a discussion of these issues with the fictionalised 'Peter' in the prologue - something that breaks that realist mold from within?"
"Yeah, that might work," says Peter.
"Why do that, though? Why not just tell the story as plainly as you can? It makes the problems of justifying your research in academia that much more difficult, doesn't it?"
"Two reasons. One I suggested a moment ago: by selecting the incidents and ideas and words of the characters - and that's something I have to do anyway, because I can't fit every last second of every school day for a year into a single book - but by doing that purposefully, the ideas I'm trying to convey - my interpretive assertions if you like - come across more clearly in the text. By compounding two non-trusting teachers into one character, for example, the story becomes clearer and more manageable for the reader. The idea about the damage caused by lack of trust did arise in the school, but I can make it more explicit by telling the story a little differently. This is the sense in which novels can tell us true things about life and the world, perhaps better than non-fiction writing."
"The second reason is for the protection of the teachers. I actually taught in two different teams, with several different teachers, but I've disguised their appearances, their characteristics, their locations and even where the school is, as part of my ethical responsibility to ensure that the teachers can't be identified and receive any negative effects from the research. Since I'm being absolutely clear about the fact that no one character is a particular teacher, even if someone does know which school I was teaching in, they can't bring consequences to bear on any individual based on this book, because I'm stating that the correspondence is not direct. People are people, characters are characters - but the resemblance between them goes way beyond the 'purely coincidental' of the standard disclaimer."
Simon is moving around the ice twice as fast as anyone else, skilled and sure. A rink employee asks him to slow down, and I tense for the explosion, but he just smiles and slows down - a bit. The changes in Simon through this year have been astonishing, and our reflexes still haven't really adjusted: we tend to expect him to behave as he did in Term Two, but he confounds our expectations.
Carolyn and Tanya are chatting together, and tending to the occasional casualty. I've spent dozens of hours working with Carolyn this year, and have barely spoken to Tanya - I'm not really comfortable spending time with either, and I'm relieved that they're talking together. Carolyn - a few years younger than me, slim and pretty, hard-eyed - expected more of me than I was able to provide, but she also expected things that I had never intended to offer, nor ever had to give. Our personal styles and attitudes are so different that it was no doubt a mistake to concentrate my study in her classroom. But that's the way it grew up during the year, and perhaps it meant I learned more, as well as hurting more.
Later, driving home from the skating rink, I remember the people, events and emotions of Arcadia High School, 1996. No, that's not exactly it: the school has nine hundred students and fifty five teachers, and many of them I don't even know by name. I taught in Cowan Team, and came to know seven teachers and perhaps a hundred and fifty students. What I remember on the drive home is my life in the school this year - my own experiences as a teacher, researcher and learner. These are my memories.....