LSAs are a useful but subordinate part of the Great Education Campaign, a fact not lost on us. We try to help, make appropriate contributions, run errands. We’re good at prompting, encouraging and giving attention to small, neglected creatures who are rarely heard, but it’s difficult to discern the long-term impact of what we do. We are also completely replaceable. When one of us is sick, another can slot into their lessons with no decrease in the quality of provision. If I died, my classes would run just as well.

Because we work with the least able students, eureka moments, when everything clicks into place and the student suddenly gets it, are rare. So are measurable, lasting academic achievements. On those occasions, most credit must go to the student themselves (they deserve it) followed by their teachers. We stand at the side, applauding warmly, because we love them, happy that we helped, but it’s not primarily our victory.

Occasionally teachers openly resent us, especially the young, under-confident ones. They shush us for talking over them or sigh with audible exasperation, even though we are forced to do it: we’re trying to explain their complicated instructions, but the teacher NEVER STOPS TALKING. I think it’s a control thing. They are terrified of silence and what the students might Get Up To in it. But we don’t feel we can advise them. We can’t tell trained instructors how to do their jobs. It isn’t our place. We feel uneasy and apologetic to be in their lessons at all. We feel like trespassers, trying to find something useful to do to justify our intrusion.

Teachers also have this terrible habit of sitting the SEN students right at the front of the room where they can keep an eye on them, something they never have time to do, and really IS our job. This makes the kid almost impossible to get to. I’m always moving up through rows of desks, crouching like an army medic trying to reach the wounded under fire, while, above my head, the teacher machine-guns the room with words.

Perhaps helping the students reach experiential, developmental goals is more our domain, but these are achieved haltingly, if at all. Having “special educational needs” means, by definition, having difficulties achieving normal milestones. And, anyway, these goals are approximate, compromised and vague, often abandoned at times of stress, and might have been achieved just as well without us.

Instead, we LSAs bear helpless witness to the pathos of the children’s struggles. We watch them plodding along behind their peers, floundering and wading laboriously through work that their class-mates skim over with ease and boredom. We see them never completing tasks and thus never properly experiencing success, rarely receiving sincere, meaningful praise. We hear them being told they worked “really well today”, despite getting nothing done, simply because they weren’t particularly disruptive. We witness them being judged and judged and marked and graded every single school day and always being found wanting, so that every school day is an exercise in humiliation and defeat.

For the more aware – those from disadvantaged backgrounds or with very specific, learning difficulties, rather than general, holistic weakness – this can be their experience of school since they were 4. That’s 11 years, by the time they sit their GCSEs. We have to witness them losing sight of the reasons for being here, becoming distracted and disruptive, ceasing to even begin learning because they can see no practical goal or purpose to it, acting up, getting “a reputation”, coming into more and more conflict with the discipline system, turning from sweet, needy, troubled children, who want to be told that they are good, into miserable, defeated tweens, then cruel and vindictive teenagers.

We watch them navigate their days without focus, sometimes distracted by terrible home lives of poverty, abuse, neglect, drug or alcohol-dependent parents, parents in prison, parents committing suicide. We see them being drawn into criminality, gangs, drug-dealing. We meet them coming to school stoned…

And we like them. That is our job. All children need to be liked, especially at their most difficult, but that leaves neither of us with a sense of achievement. There’s no SMART target in that. (SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).

And then there are those so impaired that their grasp of the whole world is weak, whose days and nights seem to pass them like cloud shadows on the high downs, for whom the whole laughing, shouting, running, gossipy school body flitters about above their heads like bats swarming into the dusk. (I see you, sweet-heart. I recognise you, still slowly packing your bag, in the empty classroom, after everyone else has left. I’ll wait for you.

Impatiently.)

In the office, we ask each other, “What will become of them after they leave?” and we do not know the answer.

In theory, Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) help students to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of their learning. We help them gain access to the curriculum and thus to learn skills, and to know things that would otherwise be beyond them, and this should empower them (a little).

Hopefully, we help to broaden their minds, horizons and opportunities in life. We aid them in engaging more fully in the world. We support them in gaining social and intellectual experiences that, without us, they would not have. We help. It’s very valuable work. In theory.

But

The teachers, not the LSAs, own the classroom. it’s their kingdom and their curriculum. They plan and direct the activities. They are the learning experts, with degrees and certificates under their belts, testifying to at least 4 years of subject and pedagogical training. They are the ones with enough expertise to properly differentiate the learning materials. They are the ones with the authority to discipline and direct. They are the ones the students love or hate, whose approval is sought.

They are the heroes, the authors of their own successes and failures. If it all goes well, they glory in their triumph; if it all goes pear-shaped, they are the ones who crash and burn dramatically, passionately. I’m not saying we’re useless, but it isn’t our place to take either the credit or the blame. It would show a laughable self-importance and lack of awareness.

I have watched NQTs (Newly Qualified Teachers) crawl tearfully from the wreckage of beautifully prepared lessons; I have witnessed great teachers, the titans of their craft, rise magnificently to the challenge of year 8 on a giddy rampage, or founder and topple slowly under the relentless daily onslaught of bottom set year 9. I’ve seen the look of doubt and alarm that spread over the face of a poised, self-possessed and highly capable music teacher as she first encountered my charge, whose sole contribution to the lesson was to hurl himself repeatedly from his chair shouting “Oh! Oh! Miss! I’ve fallen!” (I find the best thing to do, in these circumstances, is to lounge in my seat looking relaxed and amused, catch the teacher’s eye and raise mine to heaven. Then, in a quieter moment, I sidle up to them and whisper, “He hasn’t taken his medication. Shall I take him out for a little walk to calm down?” Similarly, when they say to me, “is she like this in other lessons?” I say, “Yup. Worse, often”, which is invariably true and teachers find very reassuring. See? I aim to serve.)

I once heard one of the best teachers I’ve worked with say, to a wolf-pack of bottom set year 10 boys in a dangerous mood, just before Christmas, “Right. I was going to let you watch the rest of the film and give you chocolates, but I’m not now. You can write essay paragraphs for the rest of the lesson.” It is a testament to how formidable she was that, even then, she didn’t quite lose them. Modern pedagogical thinking is that Carrot and Stick classroom management doesn’t work, and it’s certainly not going to if you don’t tell them the carrot is available before you hit them with the stick. How are naughty boys, already in a rebellious mood, going to react to that? They’re going to keep their heads down but do that weird coughing out of rude words whenever the teacher looks down or at the board, that’s how. And then the whole class is going to bubble up in nasty mocking laughter.

Meanwhile, we LSAs haunt the wings, pale and insipid. We swell a progress, start a scene or two,/ Advise the prince; no doubt an easy tool. We are the narrators of their tragedies: Horatio to Hamlet; Nick to Gatsby.

I’ve revised my most clumsily obvious anorexia allegory. Here’s the new version. What do you think?

Hunger

The bearded grasses bow and shift
beneath the opened airs of spring
on Wicken Fen. It makes it difficult to see
the small birds fretting in the reeds.

Yet follow the prickle of movement down
and there they are, flustering the tall stems’ poise:
reed warblers, their nest a brusque endearment
between two working parents.

Something’s wrong with this nest, though.
Despite their driven care and vigilance,
something’s crept in, something nasty,
and laid a single egg.

You’d think they’d notice all the clumsy mimicry:
how the egg’s too big, imperfectly mottled.
You’d think they’d notice that a squirming thing
squatted there, blind and naked,

greedy, growing, like a baleful obsession,
an egg laid in the head,
corrupting all their instincts,
all their nervous habitudes usurped,

while they hurry through the small rooms
of their compulsions, uneasy,
troubled by phantoms, serving
this voracious invalid, changeling,

cuckoo-child, this gaping maw,
monstrous need,

that must be fed.
It must be fed.

I opted to stay as an LSA. It was the right decision. A few years ago, I was asked to teach some year 7 and year 8 English classes, because of a staff shortage. The year 7s, still lit with the after-glow of their primary-school obedience and desire to please, were absolutely gorgeous. I loved them and they loved me. The year 8s, though sweet kids individually, were little bastards en masse.

After coolly assessing me for a few lessons, the collective decided that I was a bit of a push-over and that my classes were a fun space to play, and to avoid work. No-one dared challenge the collective decision. Even the children who liked me became truculent in that room, although lovely when I met them outside it. All teenagers need to be part of the tribe, and to avoid work if they can, and they knew if I berated them they could argue the toss without serious consequence. They were very good at being disobedient without being unpleasant and, coming from F.E., I used to forget I could issue punishments. I’d stagger out of lessons all flustered, like a cowboy with an arrow through his hat, and suddenly remember, “Damn! I should’ve given the little swine detentions!” And I was nervous of doing it, too, fearing the conflict that would follow.

It didn’t help that I was entering that sudden, steep decline so characteristic of anorexics when, after wandering slowly downwards, your weight suddenly falls off a cliff. After holding it together for so long, you suddenly cease to be able to function properly. My throat locked up, for some reason, so that I could only whisper or shout hoarsely. Abi thinks this was psychological; I’d assumed it was physiological, although if it was caused by the decay of neurons, I guess it could be both.

I truly think the voice damaged my relationship with the students. A loud, carrying timbre is of immeasurable benefit to a teacher, allowing them to be heard and impose themselves, while still sounding kind and caring. I had to opt for either sounding pathetic and incapable, or sounding angry but ineffectual. One or the other. Whereas I was neither; I was in such a lather of exhaustion and bodily malfunction that I could feel neither anger or self-pity.

I think the more perceptive students thought they’d caused me to have a nervous breakdown. (Teenagers are terribly solipsistic). I’m sure we all recognise, from our own school days, that mixture of guilt, pity and self-justifying disdain, and that tiny thrill of power, that we all felt when facing the teachers we thought were nice but ineffectual. How often have you heard kids say, “he just can’t control us!”?

I wanted to say, “Don’t flatter yourselves: I was a fuck-up long before I met you!”

Jo has risen to be co-manager of a large organisation employing lots of people. She’s done this by ability, resourceful intelligence, and by working herself almost to death, as you’d expect from a Beaufort. I, on the other hand, have inherited my family traits. I’m dolefully aware of my own weakness. I’m prone to being overwhelmed and so deeply reluctant to take responsibility. I tend to sit there helplessly, not knowing what to do unless told, furiously berating myself but not doing anything about it.

Although I have taught English abroad and in Further Education, I’ve ended up as a learning support assistant at a large comprehensive school. I joined the department intending to transfer to secondary teaching but, within a week, I realised that I just didn’t have the skills.

Children start life entirely trusting. Secondary children have spent their whole lives doing what adults tell them. After 6 years of dutiful learning in primary school, they are ready to break free. They want to learn about the world through experiencing it. They want to experiment with independence, with who they are and how they can relate to other people, with projecting a persona and establishing a reputation, with power, hierarchy and how these are communicated, with lies and honesty, with relationships, sex and alcohol.

Teenagers are constantly learning, in their own way, but formal education is not their priority and they will do anything to get out of it. Even if they like a teacher, they will destroy them, exploiting any weakness, just to wriggle out of schoolwork so they can get on with their own concerns. They are constantly challenging, testing, resisting, arguing, manoeuvring, manipulating, taking offence: all 30 of the little buggers, without let up. It’s a bear pit. All teachers would quit within a year, if the kids weren’t so damn likeable: vivacious, funny, inventive, with an enormous capacity for enjoyment.

A good teacher, then, must be resolute and determined. Although it’s a hollow sham, they must put on their confident, commanding, teacherly persona as they enter the classroom, like a space marine donning their exoskeletal battle-armour and weapon-systems. They must spend all their time directing, insisting, negotiating, seeing through bullshit, judging, punishing, consoling, encouraging.

It’s exhausting. You are permanently standing firm against the onslaught, resisting the babble of voices and needs, pushing against the pressure of it, just to make a little space to work in. It’s the most fraught environment, demanding level-headed acuity, self-possession and the most sophisticated social skills.

And I knew I didn’t have them. In FE, you don’t get any of this. It’s post-compulsory. Students only turn up if they want to.

on that subject, here’s one I prepared earlier. (It’s a sort-of joke.)

Chalk and Cheese II

I think you’re descended from badgers.
Your whole family are industrious diggers.
You get your heads down and you burrow away
until the job is done: dense, unstoppable engines.

Whereas, well, you know my family.
You’ve seen that strange grimace
we all adopt when faced with work –
lips curling back to bare our gritted teeth,
breath held, as ill at ease as seals on a beach.

Perhaps we’re the children of sea otters,
happiest floating around
on our backs in the nurturing waters,
peering good-naturedly over our tummies,
towards each distracting sound.

All the Beauforts, Jo’s family, are high-achieving workaholics. They’ve absorbed their father’s attitude. All are piano-playing, cultured polymaths; Oxbridge alumni, consultant doctors, humbly grateful for the life they’ve been given, and resolved to celebrate and exploit it to the full. They will all pursue an outcome with stalwart determination until it is completed. It wouldn’t occur to them to do otherwise.

In contrast, my family are all such lazy, intellectually mediocre slobs, stricken by insecurities, and, in my case, miserably ungrateful for the gift of life, squandering its every opportunity. Sure, there’s been a brain surgeon grandfather, but he was an exception. My other grandfather even made enough money as a mechanic/ engineer to send my father to a minor public school. where, Jo and I suspect, he felt slightly out of place and where he learnt the mild social unease that has carried him through the rest of his life. It probably looked good on his CV, though, at least in those days.

My siblings and I are regressing towards the norm, moving back down the social ladder, earning less than our parents. We’re like primeval sea creatures that have risen to the surface on unexpected warm currents, sniffed the rarefied air and, feeling uncomfortable, are sinking back into the depth. Maybe some sort of deep-sea dugong.

In the early years of my relationship with Jo, my (future) father-in-law came round for dinner, probably to check me out. I was told to be on my best behaviour, my hair brushed and neatly parted, promises made not to swear or get too extravagantly drunk. I find these events difficult, and perhaps my father-in-law sensed this, because he got up to leave blessedly early. I was thanking my lucky stars and him, thinking we’d still get most of our evening, when Jo mentioned the bay tree in our tiny back yard/ garden. It had been intended for a pot, but somebody had planted it straight into the earth. It liked that. Now it formed a solid and unsightly trunk, right in the middle. I’d tried to dig it out that day, at Jo’s suggestion, but its root-ball had turned out to by huge and stubbornly anchored.

Hearing this, the Father-in-law grabbed a spade and leapt vigorously out the back door, with a cheery Halloo. He’s always prided himself in being hale and hearty, and would love to be considered a bit of a handy-man, having spent his working life in boardrooms. Perhaps he felt he was matching his virility to mine (no contest at all!)

Of course, I couldn’t leave a man on a pension labouring in my back yard while I looked on, no matter how youthful he appeared, so, fuming, I trailed after him dragging the clattering garden fork behind me. And we dug

And we dug

And we levered and we heaved at the root-ball. And we rocked the sturdy trunk backwards and forwards and the bay tree stayed put. It ignored us. It wasn’t going nowhere.

The sun set. 9 o’clock came and went. The last of the summer evening soaked out of the western sky. Still the F-I-L wouldn’t admit defeat. Maybe he was embarrassed to do so. I grew more and more frustrated and incredulous. Why wouldn’t he just fuck off home? I seemed to be holding my breath. I could feel the unreleased carbon dioxide flooding my cells, poisoning my body. I could feel my heart-beat increasing. It was the not knowing, from moment to moment, if he was just about to stop or was going to go on for hours. If he was willing to break the 9 o’clock barrier, would he not go on until midnight? I have a limited capacity for good behaviour at the best of times. Now, I thought I might burst into tears; I thought I might break down catastrophically, that I might start screaming and throwing my own poo around like an enraged chimp.

It was past 10 o’clock by the time he gave up and drove ruefully away.

I was livid. No, I was horrified. I’d had no idea people could be like this. Surely the evening was sacrosanct! Loafing around was your reward for having worked all day. That’s the way it was in our family! What sort of a monstrous clan had I fallen in with?

I’ve never really forgiven my father-in-law for this, but Jo has no idea what I’m on about. She looks at me blankly. Why, she wonders, would somebody procrastinate in the face of a necessary task that isn’t going to go away.
“Let’s just get it done now,” she often asks,
“But it’s 9.30!” I’ll wail
“But why put it off? It’ll need to be dealt with at some point.”
“Why put it off?”, I’ll echo, incredulously, “Isn’t it obvious? So I don’t have to do it now. And I don’t want to do it now.”
“But you won’t want to do it tomorrow…” etc.

I’m a creature of the eternal present, like the stereotype of boys. The person forced to do an unpleasant task in the future is a stranger who I have little empathy for. Jo’s identity encompasses her likely future self, like the stereotype of girls. She feels her future pain as if it were her own, because it is her own.

I always capitulate, in the end. I know Jo is right and I admire hard work, but I’ll mutter “Bay Tree!”, sullenly, at her. This has become such a sore spot that it is guaranteed to cause a thoroughly enjoyable over-reaction and I can bask masochistically in the warmth of her anger. I kind of like being yelled at. It’s familiar. It’s what I deserve.

I’m attracted to active, cerebral women with good careers and a determined sense of probity, rectitude and moral duty: the modern version of what used to be called “Blue-stockings”. I suspect they’ll be excellent shags, in the right mood: uninhibited and appreciative, having been sensible when picking previous partners, who and how many, and thus without hang ups and willing to direct you to what they want. (I aim to serve.) Clever people often have a good sense of humour, too.

More importantly, I know I’m highly corruptible. Moral decisions are usually hard brain work. You’ve got to use your noggin to be good and I’m not up to it. I’m weak and indecisive and prone to moral confusion, but, once I’ve adopted a position, I’m dogmatic and unable to change. I feel I can trust these women’s wise choices. It makes me feel secure: if I follow their lead, I’ll be doing the right thing. And I admire their ability to concentrate on tasks and goals, their industry and ambition, which are ethical issues.

Jo, for example, is incredibly hard-working, dynamic and resourceful. She has an amazing ability to focus on a task and, blocking out all extraneous data, concentrate on it until it is completed. She does these tasks as they arrive and need to be done. She has no truck with my nonsense about “being a morning person” or “being too tired” or “finishing it tomorrow”. She keeps going until it’s finished, whatever the time of day or night.

What’s astonishing is that she finds it just as hard and as odious as the rest of us. It is an act of will-power to keep soldiering on. That’s why she doesn’t see the time of day, or whether you’re “in the Mood”, as relevant. Sitting at the table opposite me, typing, I can hear her holding her breath, then letting it out in little gasps, at the sheer physical effort of keeping going, as if she was lifting massive rocks.

Her energy is unflagging. Once she’s completed a task, she’ll move on to the next without pause. She’ll do this for days and days, working from before 8 in the morning and coming home at 6.30pm at the absolute earliest.

She’ll immediately switch into intensive parenting mode: supervising, discussing and encouraging homework and music practice; comforting and cajoling; disciplining when necessary. If they’re troubled, she’ll sweep the kids off to the sofa for a warm cuddle, a discussion and some advice. The children refuse to do any of this with me, because I was too fierce about it when I was ill. They are punishing me but it’s a relief – it’s exhausting!

All the while Jo will be snatching the odd hour to complete spreadsheets, send emails, make phone calls, read, annotate and write reports, until she turns the light off some time past 11pm. Even then, there’s a square blue light floating in the darkness, as she checks and replies to emails.

This work rate can be demanded of her for weeks and weeks, in which case she becomes more and more emotionally and psychologically frayed. She starts suffering from insomnia, becoming volatile, unfairly irritable, randomly weepy and needy, worryingly forgetful; losing her keys, her shoes, her name badge. Not only are the wheels coming off, but also the bodywork and the chassis, yet her work-rate never flags. All that is left of her is pure spirit and determination.

Strangely, Jo doesn’t have much personal ambition. What is important to her is doing worthwhile work to the best of her ability. It’s one of the many great things about her. She applies for promotions, and gets them, because she knows she can do the jobs bloody well, and wants to, but not because she wants to “progress her career”.

Something has to give, though, in these work bouts, and it can’t be her relationship with the children. They are her real priority. On the day she got a positive result on a pregnancy test, she reminded me that the children must always come first; that everything else was secondary to their needs.

Inevitably, it’s poor old me who has to bite the bullet and his tongue, and wait until the holidays to be heard, when Jo is communicative again. I’ve got used to starting on some inane anecdote about my day, “Have you noticed that…”, to be confronted by The Hand.

The Hand is held up, palm towards me, in that universal “Halt” sign used by traffic policemen, officers on horseback, and soldiers manning checkpoints. Along with The Hand, Jo says, “I’m really, genuinely interested but I’ve got to concentrate on this or I’ll die. Tell me later.”

I get it: dragging her out of the zone seems to cause her physical pain, when she’s tired. She keeps going by getting into a sort of rhythm. Continuing to concentrate becomes so, so difficult, that the slightest distraction, having to break off even just for a moment to listen to some brief silliness from me, might cause her to have hysterics and a complete collapse.

Actually, I think this is probably good for me. As a young man, I desperately needed to be heard, to be acknowledged, to be recognised. Torrents of words forced themselves up from an almost agonising need in my chest, and enveloped all interlocutors in a spray of verbiage. My words alone were dominant, not my personality. They were experiments with language and its effects on others, not expressions of conviction. Still, other people couldn’t get their words in edgeways, and could never hold forth as I did. There wasn’t time.

Now I’ve learnt, by necessity, that if I swallow the urge, the spasm will pass almost immediately. I’ll have demonstrated self-control, I’ll feel good about myself because I’ve allowed people the space they need, and, most importantly, I’ll have been supportive of Jo. As I’ve said before, she’s our prizewinning race-horse. In her resides the family’s fortune, hopes and pride. She needs to be nursed and comforted, curry combs and hot bran mash (possibly with a dash of brandy), because if she has a nervous breakdown, we’re fucked.

Some urge to say my piece remains, of course. Sometimes I’ll write this blog. Sometimes I’ll just put my head down and plough desperately on, despite her howls of rage, just to get to the end, to have said my piece. I’ll be feeling rebellious, saying “…and when I got there, they’d already run out of sushi! Can you credit it?…”, knowing it’s trivial, but thinking I’m a trivial person. Jo will be snarling, “I’ve NO idea what you’re even SAYING, you know. I’m TRYING to deal with a VERY SERIOUS MATTER, here.” I’ll just shrug, defiantly, hopelessly, as if I don’t care, but, secretly, blighted by guilt, by doleful self-hatred.

You may have noticed that I haven’t once mentioned Covid-19. I’ve also been pretty light on: Brexit, identity politics and the return of far-right; Climate Change; Donald Trump and his bunch of asset-stripping mercenaries; fake news and the manipulation of the mob; ISIS; the refugee crisis; social media and the dismantling of society; Syria.

This is intentional. Writing is a refuge. If I let in such enormous international crises, they would swamp a therapeutic space. I write in defiance of these things.

Comparison to a global pandemic reveals the utter triviality of my problems and fears without allaying them. My whole self-destructive fuck-wittery is a response to how insignificant we all are, and our inability to influence the world around us. If I can have no positive impact, it is better to tread as lightly as possible upon the poor old, abused Earth. I ought not to make demands on other people, either. They’ve got other things to worry about.

Anorexia kept me safe from the terrors of the world. I could preoccupy myself with food, cooking, denial and satiety; I could hurry, head down, across bare, hungry plains to the lit doorway and the cozy fireside of my next snack, ignoring the vast, empty, star-black skies above me. Jo used to find it exasperating that, in the middle of some serious discussions, I’d say, “I was thinking about making Turkish flatbreads for tea…” I think she realised that the very seriousness of the topic led me to talk about the comfortingly banal, and, in doing so, intentionally belittle myself. That’s what annoyed her.

I know this blog makes me seem completely self-obsessed, but I started writing a diary, and then this blog, at the suggestion of my Eating Disorders specialist, Abi, specifically to act as a substitute source of comfort, and to try and explain to myself, and come to terms with, why I had got into this position. This is only one aspect of the more rounded (!), real-world me. I hope.

The blog is supposed to be the place where I explore myself and then communicate what I discover. I’m the only thing I have expertise in, and I communicate because it may be of interest or use to you, in an idle moment. That’s not entirely self-absorbed, right?

This should also explain why other characters are so shadowy. I am no authority on their thoughts and motivations, so I shy away from fleshing them out. I worry people will read these posts, recognise themselves, and be justifiably furious at my reductive and self-serving depiction. All first-person narratives are solipsistic and, to be comprehensible, need to simplify the complexities and contradictions of human consciousness. But these are real people. I haven’t got the right, or their permission, to make them puppets in my pantomimes of self-justification.

(I’m full of plausible excuses for being a twat, aren’t I?)