Why I love my job

We all know that working in a school can be tough. But even when it has been the most challenging of days, it is really important to be able to keep a healthy balance between that which is frustrating and everything else that has been a success, or even just made you smile.

So in the interests of promoting my own personal wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, I offer here an account one of the more interesting days that happened in school recently.

The day started with an email from a parent regarding the absence today of one of our Yr6 pupils:

“Good morning Ralfs not gonna be in school today, because he's?favourite guinea pig died in the night time. Ralfs crying and he are very sad, thank you!”

I advised Ralf’s father that coming into school today would actually help him deal with his bereavement and that we will do everything we can to support him at this very sad time.

And, being a Headteacher concerned about Ralf’s education I also am hoping that not missing a valuable day of school just prior him taking his Yr6 national tests will help Ralf to secure his written English at a higher level than his father’s.

But also being a caring Headteacher who wants to help to secure Ralf’s wellbeing, I looked online to see if there were any resources that we could use to support a pupil who had lost a pet…

Astonishingly/Amazingly/Remarkably… actually I’m not really at all surprised… I discovered that there is an online resource that is all about pet loss support AND there is even a page on dealing with guinea pig bereavement!

More spookily though, it is called The Ralph Site…

Grieving the loss of a guinea pig – The Ralph Blog Site

While discussing this in the office, one of my admin staff said that she had a goldfish at home that she had ‘liberated’ from a special needs school where she had been working some years back. Apparently, she had been worried about the children frequently splashing their hands in the fish tank and distressing the fish. So she had offered to take the fish home to look after over the summer break but then told the school that it had sadly died so she didn’t have to bring it back to school. So I now knew that I have a fish rustler on the staff, albeit a caring and concerned one. It seemed a bit of an odd twist to what we were speaking about and I was wondering where it was all going in relation to our conversation. But she then said that the goldfish had been concerning her recently as it had started swimming on its side (not a good sign for a fish – probably not long for this world). Ah, I thought. Pet bereavement. That makes sense now.

And then she finished by telling us that the rapidly fading goldfish is called Ralph…

We all went a bit quiet as we considered this coincidence.

After a short pause, and clearly feeling that we had entered into some kind of safe confessional space, one of my other admin ladies said that at a previous school where they kept a number of guinea pigs in a large glass tank, she had accidently killed one by stepping on it while she had them all out of the tank to clean it. She said that she hadn’t been brave enough to own up at the time and had just put them all back in the clean tank (several moving around well and one in a state of extreme stillness). She told us that she had firmly claimed that they were all fine when she had left them. She then said that she had never told anyone else about this until today but that she now felt a great weight had lifted from her after telling us.

Thankfully she didn’t know the name of the guinea pig in question but, even without finding out that it may have been called Ralph, it was all getting so mad that I did question out loud whether we had slipped, Matrix like, into some kind of alternative reality. And it was only 9:30am

I went back to my office reflecting that, if I hadn’t been doing this job as long as I have, I might be thinking that my day couldn’t get any more surreal.

The rest of the morning was pretty quiet but that never lasts long does it?

Just before lunchtime, my CMLD ARP lead emailed to say that one of his children had created a Lego crucifix and was attempting to ‘exorcise’ other children in the ARP by thrusting it towards their foreheads and shouting, “May the power of Christ compel you!”

Well that fits quite appropriately with the madness of the day so far, I thought.

Of course, we made a call to Mum and, along with what we already know about the family, assured ourselves that this was more a case of Mum not monitoring what he was watching on his tablet (appropriate words were had with her… again) and not a case that was a religious/witchcraft abuse concern. Perhaps surprisingly, the other ARP children didn’t appear phased by the incident. However, one of our very religious LSAs seemed to be more than a little affected by the whole thing.

And then, thankfully, it all really did just go a bit more quietly normal and I was able to get some of my to-do-list sorted.

Then at the end of the school day, with children heading home and dust starting to settle, I tried to sum up what I had learned:

• If your name is Ralf and your guinea pig has just died then we do understand you are very sad but you do need to be in school.
• If you have a pet called Ralph then it might be wise to change its name. The discovery of The Ralph Site and a goldfish called Ralph nearing its demise clearly shows that there is some kind of link between the name Ralph and a fragility of impermanence amongst the living.
• That, despite safer recruitment training, DBS checks and vetting, it is still possible to find that you have employed a fish poacher (not to be confused with a salmon steamer) and someone who has committed cavia porcelluscide.
• It is possible for a child to freak out a member of support staff with nothing more than a Lego cross and a few excellently chosen words from a 1973 Billy Friedkin movie to which he shouldn’t have had access.
• Regardless of how long you have been in the world of education, there is always something ready to happen that is quite different from anything that you have previously experienced. And some days hand more of those to you than others.

But that is why I wake up every morning knowing I have the best job in the world and I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else.