At a recent Parents’ Evening I was obviously scowling way too much, because for a change I did not have a huge queue of parents shuffling from foot to foot as they waited to harangue me. Instead I had some time to gaze around the hall, watching pupils drag their parents past teachers they definitely did not want them to see, and gathering in small furtive gangs as their parents caught up with friends and neighbours. An inconvenience for the teachers, but a great social event for some of the parents, that seemed to sum up Parents’ Evening at that moment. It gave me time to reflect on the pupils I have taught throughout the years, and the parents I have met. Once or twice a year I’m given an insight into a different side of the kids I teach, and I have the opportunity to catch up with the ongoing soap opera of their lives.
Four years ago, for example, Mr and Mrs Smith went through a bitter separation. They would turn up at Parents’ Evening, performing a dramatic dance around the hall as they side-stepped each other, with each teacher having to listen to thinly-veiled attacks on the other parent and a list of the ex-partner’s failings and how this was affecting John’s work. Three years ago they were still at it, but this year there was a thawing: as I glanced over at a colleague’s table I saw the two parents actually standing side by side, not talking exactly, but at least tolerating the close proximity of the other person.
Then there was Mr Awkward and his inappropriately young girlfriend. Every year I would dread Mr Awkward’s appointment, because he would grill me like an expert interrogator (maybe he is?) until I felt like there was nothing I could say that would please him and just gave up trying. When his younger child joined the school I believed it to be just a cruel twist of fate that I always seemed to have his offspring in my lessons, and begun to use my experience wisely, warning new staff to be prepared for his barrage of questions and criticisms. The girlfriend was slightly more civil, but having obviously only recently emerged from education herself, thought she too knew best.
So this year I briefed the new teachers, braced myself for his usual verbal assault, and sat fanning myself with statistics as the family group approached. But this year Mr Awkward had turned into Mr Vague and Distracted, nodding compliantly at whatever I said, and when the girlfriend got up to leave I noticed the reason why: she was so pregnant she was about to break water all over the hall floor. I must have had my eyes closed in silent prayer as they had approached, which is why I didn’t notice it before.
New babies, new partners, old grudges… it all seems to happen around me as I sit there at my island of a desk, observing the progression of life at fixed term intervals.
added 28/04/07
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