My Small School

I used to run a small home school for students who had been expelled from state schools. It was my unofficial response to the lack of proper support for disruptive students.

At that time in the UK, in the 1980’s, it was common for disruptive students to be suspended from school for a few weeks so they could calm down. Both of them, the teacher and the student, I mean.

Often there had been a fight with one or more of the teachers, and perhaps other students.?

If several suspensions had not produced the desired result, the student was expelled from the school. It was expected that the student would apply to go to another school.

My Home School

My Home School was a kind of halfway house between schools.

A young man turned up at my school with his mum one day. We were chatting over a cup of tea, about him having lessons at my school, when he got up and grabbed my camera, my very expensive SLR camera.

My eyes boggled and I paled visibly. Photography was my hobby and I had invested a lot of my money in that camera. What a fool I was to leave it out where he could get at it.

“Can I look at this?” he asked, not waiting for my answer.

He watched me intently as he pressed all the buttons he could find.

“I’d be happy to show you how it works,” I suggested. “We can take photos as part of the lessons if you find that interesting.”?

I held out my hands for the camera.

“It’s okay,” he said, “I just wanted to see what you would do.”

“And now you know,” I replied, smiling, relieved as my camera was put gently back into my hands.

Learning from Mistakes

Was it a mistake to allow the student to get his hands on my expensive camera? Was I foolish and too trusting?

No. Cameras can be replaced. This was not about the camera.?

There were many such ‘trust me’ incidents at my home school. Sometimes we would be in the kitchen making cakes and a student would get hold of a knife. The thought that this was a disruptive student who had worn out their welcome in several classes, maybe several schools, went through my mind. Then I reminded myself that we are all children inside, and are curious about our surroundings. And we all want to be trusted.

My Mistake and what I Learned

The mistake was a financial one. I never managed to get the necessary paperwork to the local Education Authority to authorise my school, so I could not claim any financial support for the work I was doing. I carried on working for free for as long as I could. I worked elsewhere in the evenings to generate the much-needed income. Later, I learned to pay other people to do the paperwork that I disliked so much.