The Cheerleader

The office phone doesn’t ring twice these days. It can’t. Every time the steep panel of lights glow to show an incoming call the handset is snatched from the cradle with a breathless hello. Her Majesty’s Inspectors are due; overdue in fact. Each phone call could be them ringing to give the obligatory 24 hours notice of their next 2 day visit.

The next visit could be HMI’s last. That is the hope. For two years our staff of 79 souls have worked to rescue this school and now we think we are ready to drag it out of the wreckage of the most difficult period in its history. If the Inspectorate confirms that the school has moved as far as I know it has, it will officially be removed from its failing category. The notion consumes every waking hour. I lie in bed these nights thinking of nothing else.

The phone rings. It vibrates the desktop and the jolt travels down my spine. Hour after hour it is the same. Still no call.

I joked today that I was like an expectant cheerleader, waiting for the quarter back to ring me and invite me to the Halloween Ball. Outgoing calls are kept short to keep the line open. I try everything,; bargaining with God, telekinesis, double checking the handset is replaced properly, just to make it ring. I hover over the office staff as they screen the 25+ calls we receive each hour. “Have you considered X-Calibre for your photocopying paper needs?” the chirpy sales voice sings out via speaker phone. There is no time to reply and the conversation ends with an abrupt CLICK. I will have to live with the eternal knowledge that we hadn’t considered X-Calibre for any needs unless they can supply an end to this incessant waiting. Waiting.

Luckily it is a busy time at the school. Already this morning I have spent 45 minutes with the contractors who are resurrecting the Evangelical Church of Jesus Christ Built on the Rock. They needed access via the school site but could not work unsupervised. Everyone with contact to the children needs a detailed Police check. The builders have no such credentials. Therefore I must shadow them and their work as they move materials onto the site. Deferential and overly polite they apologise profusely at dragging me away from my work. In truth the intrusion is a relief. I cannot hear the phones from here.

Re-entering the office, the cheerleader kicks the dust of the building site from her saddle style shoes. She doesn’t need to ask, the office staff know the question before it leaves her lips; “No they haven’t rung. If they had rung don’t you think we would have come and got you?” She looks at the Halloween ball decorations; inflated balloons, champagne on ice, elaborately adorned cake. One phone call will put the whole scene into motion.

The phone rings once, not twice. Snatched from its cradle the voice on the other end is too familiar to be officious. “My daughter does not lie…” It is a helicopter parent. I am frustrated and the call is wearisome as we cover the same ground we have 200 times. I want to speak the truth, “Your concerns are about your own neediness as a person, not about the school.” For the sake of my future career I settle for, “Your daughter needs to develop a thicker skin otherwise she will always be a victim in life.”

The cheerleader finishes the pot of strong Italian coffee. She walks the school corridors doing the normal things of a normal school day. It is refreshing to do so. Gone are the days of change at a breakneck pace here. The school feels normal. The school looks normal.

Someone has left their Cinderella lunchbox by the playground door. Cinderella elegantly sweeps across the pink plastic lid, “You shall go to the Ball,” I whisper.

The cheerleader’s saddle style shoes have morphed into my familiar size 11 Doc Martens (remember dear readers, equally at home in a business meeting or waiting for the quarterback to ring with an invitation to the Halloween Ball). They echo down the corridors as I walk past the muted sound of a music lesson behind a closed classroom door. Rhythms are played out on muffled wood blocks: FIRECRACKER, FIRECRACKER, SIS-BOOM-BA. Fireworks. There will be fireworks after the Ball.

A group of 7 year olds invite me to watch their drama of Captain Kidd. I smile to myself as the King has a thick Nigerian accent and the good captain himself has morphed into a Pakistani girl. It is a good day for taking on cross-gender identities, it seems.

There is a metallic, musical sound as someone drops a pair of scissors on the floor. I stop short. I thought I heard the phone ring.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

Hic Sunt Dracones

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when every Londoner would own a copy of the “A-Z of London.” The comprehensive book is a collection of city road maps, clearly indexed and easy to use. Navigating this modern metropolis still based on a medieval road system of winding passage ways and narrow streets requires some guidance even for those who have lived here all their lives. Its familiar cover could be seen tucked in between the front seats or along the rear window shelf in every car.

Over the past 2 or 3 years, the A-Z has started to give way to computerised satellite navigation systems. I don’t like my Sat Nav much. The female voice is disapproving and curt. I call her Fiona. I picture her hidden in the back seat; severely dressed in an itchy woollen suit, hair pulled so tightly into a bun that it gives her a perpetual headache. She calls out directions is a cold and pained voice.

Fiona tells me to turn left when I know for a fact the shortest route is to turn right. When I fail to follow her advice she omits a computerised sigh and tuts, “Turn around if IT IS SAFE TO DO SO…turn around…oh OK then, just ignore me…that’s so typical of you.” We spend the next ten minutes in silence until she offers, “And you leave me in the car anytime we go anywhere.”

My old A-Z gives me no such grief. I do mean old, by the way. The Londoner’s navigation bible is updated annually but I have maintained my old copy from the 1980s. Hence many of the newer streets and routes are not listed in the book. Friends riding in the passenger seat flick through the dated and rain-stained edition as if it was a carnival freak show catalogue. “Look- Monument Way isn’t even on here. And the Docklands- they don’t exists! Look!” I keep my eyes firmly focussed on the road as I know the edition’s limitations. “Turn to page 67,” I offer “It says Hic Sunt Dracones: Here Be Dragons.”

It doesn’t really.

This is a good point to offer my apologies, dear readers, for the sporadic regularity of recent blogs. Catharsis has always been at the root of HeadLines but even personal spiritual cleansing must take a back seat occasionally; when the demands of my professional and family life demand so. The past few weeks have been such a time.

Sometime between now and Halloween, the school office phone will ring and the 24 hour notice of Her Majesty’s inspectorate returning to our school for a sixth time in 22 months will be given. This is a monumental inspection for us. One of three things will happen in the wake of that two day HMI visit:

a) the school will be removed from its failing category (the hope).

b) the school will be deemed to be improving and will be placed in a border-line failing category, to be visited again in the Spring (disappointing but possible).

c) the school will be deemed to still be failing and will be closed (the option that wakes me up at 3am in a cold sweat).

At the moment the staff and I are scrutinising every weakness and setting a plan or a road map in place for improving each challenge. As a result, much of my day is pouring over data, trying to find patterns or something we have not identified which will make a difference. I don’t see the children much either at school or at home. That saddens me but needs must and all that.

I wrote the other day about how I explained our revolutionary learning trajectory system to Pastor Modetso. This strategy is a bit of a gamble and means we have bitten off quite a lot ahead of the pending inspection. Because the system threw up previously unknown challenges, the road map for the school needs to be amended accordingly.

We are in unchartered waters. I am relying on every skill, every intuition and experience I have had in 14 years of Headship to navigate the tricky passage ahead. There is no Sat Nav. Fiona is not calling from across my glass box of an office; “Convert the National sub levels for children with autism to average point scores…and do it for all 10 year old Pakistani boys too, they are behind the pace of the rest of the class….turn left….left…..LEFT…oh never mind…turn around if it is safe.”

At least she got a chance to get out of the car and stretch her legs.

Instead I rely on my wits. It is a gamble and I know it. I remind myself that the great leaps of history have frequently been leaps of faith. I keep the faith.

In my battered Japanese van, Fiona is unplugged from the cigarette lighter and sleeps. She is lying down with a headache. All that disapproving is wearisome.

The old A-Z sits in the inner-door compartment: its pages brown and curling. It is a trusted tool and travelling companion.  Keeping my eyes firmly focussed on the road, I let my hand drop and stroke the binding. The book whispers, “Hic Sunt Dracones” as my commute home is filled with the solitary and silent thoughts of the average point scores of Pakistani boys. I stop at a red traffic light and for a split second think it might be the red glow of a dragon’s open mouth.

I mouth silently in traffic.“Keep the faith. Hold your nerve. Keep the faith.“  It has become a mantra.

Keep the Faith,

The Head