different worlds

Different worlds

Imagine you are 7 you love the sea, the moors and the forests, you know the names and habits of hundreds of birds and mammals, you know how to light fires, build dens, chop wood, climb trees, read maps and can walk for miles and miles in all weathers.

Your morning starts with finding mum on the sofa legs black and blue a cut above her eye, face bruised, a broken vase spread across the floor like abandoned shards of confetti, her nightie caught high and not one square inch of her legs is pink, all is mottled blue, black, purple, yellow bruises. Her pain fills every cell of your body, panic fills you with adrenaline and fear blinds your brain, at least dad is asleep. mum senses you and half wakes, "Its alright, its alright, its all right my little lammie, its just your dad sometimes" she says and drifts off again. Shaking you dress in yesterdays clothes, you can't wash as the bathroom door squeaks and the taps squeal when you turn them on, and you really don’t want to wake your dad. The smell of toast, the clink of a spoon on a cereal bowl might wake him so you don’t eat, eating is not needed on this pain. You have no money so have to walk to school - a good excuse to escape, you cant take your homework books they are buried under noisy cans and cups and bottles on the coffee table, and you really don’t want to wake your dad. On the way out you rip your trousers on the broken door frame exposing a triangle of the underwear you have been wearing for two days and nights, you creep out unwashed, unclean unhappy.

You're out and the bitter east wind cuts your face and legs, winter is not a great time to wear short trousers. A compensation is that you got through the first 30 mins unscathed today. Walking to school is a fearful activity, prior experience gives less that you a 50-50 chance of making it without incident. Today the rain soaks you icy and intimate like a harsh loving friend. There is laughter a scuffle in the playground, stepping outside of your head makes it seem it is not happening to you, watching yourself you see things happen, things said, laughter, someone is having fun and there are a few new bruises in places the teacher won't see. No big deal, it happens, maybe you deserved it for being stupid and not looking after your clothes...maybe if you had those cool trainers this would not happen to you...that is it those things are the key to love and acceptance in playgrounds.

In class you start to dry out, to steam sweatyoldclothes-stalesmell kids cover their noses, giggle, it gets worse two of them ask loudly if they can sit somewhere else. A strange teacher makes it worse telling them not to be rude dragging it out. How much stress are you coping with now? Later when you are remembering that time mum hugged you so hard it hurt and she said it will all be better one day your life and your head is down and tears are in your eyes but the teacher's voice breaks in on your world "Hello anyone in there? Come on stop daydreaming; come and fill in the missing words in the first sentence on the blackboard". The class giggles, as you walk forward you are franticlythinking what were they talking about? The floor is liquid mercury, it is difficult to walk on, the chairs around you are moving changing shape, metallic silverskyblue legs leaning twisting towering above you, faces singing mocking you. You can see one of early words on the board has an F shape at the beginning and in your hand the chalk smells of cleandustwhiteness and feels smoother than anything. The word could be Farmers, that would mean they were talking about things like crops, harvesting, animals, lambs dancing...so maybe the sentence is "Farmers harvest their crops" you can do it, the teacher will be pleased, you are going to try writing "harvest" in the first space and "crop in the second" You grip the chalk stick, you have never really been able to figure out how people make writing come out of the end of sticks, your hands are shaking the world is singing like high summer with bees and flies and love singing so hard you can’t hear anything, kaboom in your ears a heartbeat pounding but you have seen a solution and are going to have a go. You are concentrating so hard that the world fades away. There is emotion, a thudding heart somewhere else you can see your self standing there on a pool of liquid metal, the teacher's presence invokes a vague notion that the post office tower is standing next to you about to topple on top of you, remembering queuing outside of it 619 feet high other stats about the building, images of faces and powder surfaced blackened bricks and exhaust pipes flow through your head think hard think hard, think about you and the words nothing else matters this is my chance to shine like the sunshineliquidgold under a beechtree in late autumn... in front of your eyes squirrels dance up the tree, frost bites your toes sunshine more liquid gold runs through your veins....marks scrape and squeal their way across the black board.....there it is harvest is done, you can hear a burbling noise going on around you but it is all mixed up swirling in your head. Someone in the class shouts out "He cant write miss he is stupid".

You have heard laughter and the words "he is stupid" from the class. You feel alone, You turn round and look again at what you have written, you are sure it must be right but can't find it on the board, there seem to be more spaces than there were and more words too, your heart and spirit sink. A voice from the front row shouts I can't bear to write what they said but 30 years later I can still feel it. Panic starts glands pumping, the adrenaline overload turns your body to what it does best when it is on the edge of panic when the world is not right - movement fills your soul it quivers in your every atom, the teachers hand on your shoulder someone is pushed aside desks go over, things happen, noisy things then you are outside being whisked along a corridor.

Two wrong realities left behind.

Back in the classroom on the board, in a space in a sentence, are three squiggles with a horizontal line through them that was the cross bar of that very important "t" in harvest, in that very important sentence that might have read "The farmers harvest their crops".

The sentence now reads as "1. After _____(your three squiggles)_____ comes autumn and the weather turns colder. The three squiggles mean HARVEST The great 'F' letter that clued you into the meaning of the sentence was that tricky number 1 that signified this is sentence number 1. in today's lesson. If only you could see that reality....if only they could see yours.

And now dad is not only awake he is coming to school to take you home...again, caught between two perilous places you hunt for a chance to move into a better world and when it comes you slip free and run, you run like the wind, you are the wind, no one can touch the wind only the rain can touch the wind, the wind though can touch everything and all at once it connects the world it could take you round the world if you could fly you could touch everything and nothing could touch you, no one can catch the wind, you can't catch me for a penny cup of tea.....

Some running then a sight of the sea grey blue white spitting wild strip in the distance, head down pace fitting the size of the paving stones big wide slabs laid across the path now heavy to move they must be, every other one a stepping stone land in the middle not in the puddle step in the squares not on the cracks then smooth hard tarmac soft under bare feet on hot days now cold hard black dusted with sand and more sand at first bits at the edges mixed with dirt then more and more spread over until it is a carpet of yellow and piles like snow against the kerb. Down down down the long ramp the first 20 yards are fine then over the next I pick up speed and I am cruising then it gets faster and more uncomfortable toes pushing hard into the front of my shoes at first then hurting burning every impact like a hammer blow upwards on the ball of my foot the laces lashing and the front of my foot pushing against  the tongue as I try to slow and stumble taking giant steps slide and tumble onto the almost deserted beach. A different world down here it smells of stale and fresh at once the sea trying to be clean the river and us giving it more than it can cope with, down through the soft sand onto the hard flat sand by the waters edge, golden fills me and the sea piling up waves higher than I am fill me with love wash my pain and my life away I want to be the sea be its power be its love embrace everything and fill the world with love. Why didn’t God make every one loving? That was the worst of his decisions.

The only element that I had no direct evidence for was the actual writing on the board but that was reconstructed to represent a real event involving me writing 'harvest' and mirrors the level of dislocation from reality that I experienced at that age. 

I never shared with anyone at school what the darker corners of my life were like and there was some contrast as some of my life was stunningly wonderful when my mum and me escaped to the wild places. I learned to aspire, I learned to work hard to escape hardship, I worked hard because it was an anchor, I was still branded as stupid because I could not write well with writing sticks but a few teachers could see I was not stupid and that was a lifeline. In secondary school my chemistry teacher said: “You should do a degree one day.” That changed my life.  

I discovered typewriting via my wonderful girlfriend and that changed how I could communicate although it wasn’t until I was at college that I was allowed to submit typed essays. I developed good writing strategies, although in this informal piece that might not be fully evident. I went on to gain a science degree then ran my own business as a builder and landscaper while also selling sculptures and paintings in galleries in St Ives for many years. 

I was also helping out at Sennen school where my first two children attended, first driving the minibus and teaching swimming then as a TA teaching primary children digital skills via Logo and doing outdoor learning too. I started installing computer infrastructure - connected local area networks in schools in west penwith in the early 90s. Then one day the head of Sennen school Clive Cooper asked if I had a degree and suggested I do a PGCE and become a teacher. I did the OU PGSE which was partly online. During the course I started some inter school internet projects sharing weather data children were collecting so we could track the progress or low pressure systems across. Cornwall and Devon then taught year 5 and 6 pupils how to build a web site for the school to showcase their art and local studies work, I didn’t realise how unique that was in 1995/6 until several years later. My final paper for the PGCE proposed that we weren't far from being able to set up fully or partially online schools for pupils unable to cope with physical schools weather for medical or or other reasons. I got a decent mark but the feedback pretty much said that would never happen. I taught in several schools for a few years then was offered a job at The Ultralab research unit pretty much on the basis that I knew how to do email, could build web sites and had ideas about online learning.

So from TA to teacher and now i was running a project for a university research unit developing an online learning platform for Specialist Registrars in thoracic medicine to augment their on-site learning on the road to becoming consultants. I was digitising X-Rays, developing codecs for streaming video of cutting edge lung surgery, digitising case studies of patients, and working in some of ten top hospitals in London. A bit of a change from the child who struggled with writing snd was branded as a rotten waster by his father. i was diagnosed as autistic while in this role. 

Next step was working on the Talking Heads project linking headteachers across the UK in an online learning community then I was helping set up ‘notschool’ a fully online school for children for whom the mainstream system was not working. This was the school that only 4 years earlier i had been told by the OU would never happen. Some were from difficult circumstances similar to my own childhood and worse by far, others had physical health problems, many were long term excluded. We called them young researchers, let them choose and design their own learning and watched most of them flourish. Editing these notes in 2023 I am proud to say i am currently informally coaching a not school pupil who gained his masters degree last year and is setting out how he will approach the PhD he is now registered for -  online schooling clearly worked out well for many of the children. 

 When I started this post I had been working in HE for 15 years helping school leaders and aspiring teachers improve their practice and reach their goals. I still read papers about how working class parents don’t have the ability to inspire children and that the lack of socio-economic capital will always hold the children back and that makes me shudder as it helps teachers categorise children and label them in ways they do not deserve. I still occasionally meet or hear of children who have dyslexia or synaesthesia or any of a range of differences and who are not understood or diagnosed and are labelled as disruptive low attainers. Fortunately recent advances in neuroscience and imaging are helping show just how different brains can be. 

 I didn't know I had synaesthesia until I read 'In Water Melon Sugar' in my 20s and have rarely met any teachers who have heard of it. Every day has its own colour and shape, words create smells, tastes, feelings, mental images etc. that usually have no relation to the meaning of the word and can be intense. As a very young child this was often overwhelming but as time passed they became normalised and reassuring like birdsong or background traffic noise in a city. 

If you are a teacher you are a professional with a high level of responsibility for the day to day reality and for the future of children. When a child is not doing what you expect, think about the reality they might be hiding, think about what the world might be like from their perspective. Understand that, to them what they experience is normal, there is no reason for them to question life or to share it with anyone. Offer them respect and hope, you might be the only one in their life to do so and you might just change their lives.

 The impact of my father’s constant reinforcing of how useless I was went deep. For example in the late 80s I rose one morning at 4am and went surfing at the beach my house overlooked in Cornwall, I headed well along the beach where the waves were a playful 10-12ft. The finals of the British nationals were being held near the car park where the waves were maybe 4-6ft. I skirted the competitors and walked up the beach at 2pm where the guys organising the competition tried to persuade me to enter saying I would win all three categories as i was in a different league to the others. I just couldn’t do it, rotten waster rotten waster went through my head and I walked up to home. 

It took a few years of working in schools and that few sentences from the head teacher of Sennen school telling me i could become something - a teacher to transform my belief in myself but even today I struggle at times. 

As a parent or a teacher you need to look beyond what you see in a child and offer them support and empowerment to find their own way to blossom and grow. Find those words that will stick in their minds for a lifetime, words that follow phrases like: You can….   You are able to…. One day I think you could… Have you thought about doing …