Absolution

Shadows moved across the hedge, elongated in the headlights of the cars parked in what the village deemed a car park. Their reflection glanced on the puddles that filled the potholes on the gravel surface.

Barry rolled the piece of flint he had kept in his pocket since he was a boy, his eyes drawn to that shimmer of light on water. The stone’s cool surface was comforting.

More cars joined the congregation, moving into formation and further illuminating the hedge on the far side of the road. Feeling a pang of jealousy, he shuffled his feet. The scraping noise of shifting gravel would not be heard over the din of car engines but was deafening to Barry’s ears.

A gust of wind sent an empty packet of cashew nuts chattering across the ground in front of him. Its silver interior sprayed reflections along the car nearest to him. Barry glanced inside it and was bemused to see the parish priest in the driver’s seat. He frowned in confusion through the stench of oil and diesel that permeated the air.

His mother had been on first name terms with the priest, but Barry had been ambivalent, hostile even. Now, standing just yards away, he could not recall his name. The priest stared straight ahead with a steely look in his eye.

Barry heard faint cheers rising from the pub across the road. Inside he imagined crowds thronging the bar. Men slapping each other on the back. Women popping the corks on cheap champagne and dousing the merry crowd.

Muffled conversation could be heard from inside the car. The priest in conversation. A female voice. Barry toyed with the frayed edges of his woollen jumper and crouched instinctively.

Something about the woman’s tone told him that to startle the priest at this time would be best avoided.

He peered through the half-light as the car’s engine shuddered to a halt, the whirring craneflies disappearing. Barry watched as the car door opened and a black shoe stepped out.

He heard the jingle of a keyring as the priest raised himself from the driver’s seat and stretched to full height. A shadow moved along the hedge. Its owner was slightly crouched and walking unsteadily, clinging to a burger with two hands as he made his way past.

The priest moved in the man’s direction, gliding like wax down the side of a lit candle. Barry stood now, watching the cleric coast his way through the sea of cars, the sound of idling engines drowning out the crunch of his footsteps on loose stone.

The burger-toting shadow staggered his way around the corner and into the nearby estate. For a moment Barry thought the priest would follow, but he veered to the right without hesitation and into the pub.

He suddenly yearned for absolution.

9 People You Will Meet at Teacher CPD Courses

Continued Professional Development courses are becoming like hen’s teeth, but when you do get out on one, you experience the unmistakable rush of being somewhere you didn’t quite expect to be when you entered the teaching profession.

The giddiness of a late start. The placebo feeling of playing truant from work. The dressed down approach, even the tired old jokes about finishing at 6pm create an aura of otherworldliness.

Your companions for the day sit dotted around the room. Among them are the familiar characters you will encounter at every teaching course.

The Tutor

Usually stood at the front of the room, quietly becoming more disgruntled at the non-compliance of the data projector, is the tutor or facilitator of the day’s session.

Generally a former teacher who has traded the rat race of marking and monitoring for a life of presentation and mandatory evaluations, they are ultra-sensitive to the disdainful stare of the overworked and sceptical teachers in front of them.

The tutor will chat casually with the first few people who arrive before anxiously skating around the room ensuring everyone has the relevant hard copies of all the resources and keeping a rigorous eye on the whereabouts of the sign-in sheet.

Throughout the day, particularly after lunch, the tutor will tread the fine line between teacher and tutor, fighting the urge to clap a rhythm in order to bring the room to attention in favour of the more sedate and mannerly “Okay folks”.

Will always tell the group that this has been their most enjoyable session ever.

The Chatterbox

This particular attendee rips up the class contract in spectacular fashion the minute they leave the confines of their day-to-day environment. Released from its shackles, the Chatterbox displays the kind of behaviour that would no doubt draw their ire if it occurred in their classroom.

With the Tutor in mid-flow, the Chatterbox can often be heard to speak at full volume to their colleagues about a subject that holds little relevance to the session. Maybe Johnny from Year 3 is giving them a hard time and this is the perfect time to find out what he was like last year from his previous teacher, or perhaps there is a pressing need to ask if they have their reports completed.

The Chatterbox will often draw unsuspecting accomplices into their web of ill-manners, resulting in the understated “Okay folks”.

The bane of the Tutor’s life.

The Peacock

It’s generally accepted that sharing classroom practice is a positive thing. It allows others an insight into what worked for your class and where you could learn from them.

The Peacock, however, has no interest in what you have been doing in your classroom. They will listen with an agonised look on their face before the sounds that your mouth was making have ceased and then, with an ambiguous ‘Yeah’, they will flash their proverbial feathers.

“Well, what I do in my class is…” generally begins the Peacock’s narcissistic babble as they mount a verbal pedestal.

Their testimony is usually a very normal concept presented as if they had scrawled the answer on Professor Gerald Lambeau’s blackboard. When it comes to a close, the nods of agreement are accompanied by pained looks from all who witnessed it.

Often the last to leave as they seek affirmation from the Tutor.

The Latent Listener

This attendee has only the patience or the concentration span for certain parts of the day. They begin the morning jaded by the inane traffic chat and customary scramble for the sign-in sheet and their input to the early pre-amble is limited.

At various times throughout the day, they will enter the conversation, delivering a fairly lucid point before fading back into apparent indifference, only to arrive again at crucial junctures throughout the day.

Although outwardly unengaged, the Latent Listener is taking everything in, possibly filtering in their head what they can offer that might be new information to those in any way interested. Or maybe they genuinely just can’t be bothered.

Often irked into action by their arch-nemesis, The Peacock.

The Permanency Parrot (NI Specific)

In the current political and financial mire that passes for NI often means that a large percentage of those actually present at a training course are not, contrary to popular belief, in permanent employment.

What they love more than anything is to be reminded of this fact by every passer-by they encounter. In a phenomenon seemingly unique to the teaching profession, we seem obsessed with a drive for permanency that in any other line of work would be treated with bewilderment.

The Permanency Parrot simply repeats this well-meant enquiry because they have heard others do it. 

The Militant

Heavily unionised and wound-up, the Militant usually gets their speak in early in the day’s session. They might begin with a thinly-veiled assault on ‘The Board’ for the lack of sub cover available for CPD sessions, or they could be provoked into verbal action at the mere mention of industrial action.

Their input will be met with either nodding approval or with a shooting look, depending on the persuasion of the respondent. The Tutor is now shifting nervously, reluctant to allow The Militant to take over proceedings but equally keen not to be seen as a scab.

The Militant pulls back, his point suitably made. He may reiterate at timely intervals throughout the day.

The Moaning Myrtle

Teaching is a stressful occupation. Opportunities for professional development are shoehorned in among the myriad of other spinning plates in the teacher’s incessant to-do list. They are even more rare given the fact we have a poorly developed budget and a proudly vacuous government.

But here you are, out for the day. There’s even sub cover AND a free lunch. You have a nice relaxed rising that morning, registration isn’t until 9:30 and you’ve had time for a coffee on your way in. You’re even in your jeans and if you were any more laid back and refreshed you’d be horizontal.

Within minutes of taking your seat your good mood is dampened by that most effective of mood-killers; The Moaning Myrtle.

Myrtle usually presents with folded arms and a face like a well-caned posterior. Steam shoots out their ears as they renounce how much harder it is to leave work for your class. Their brow rises as they bemoan the extra work they’ll have to do to get caught up and wonder if the course is going to be worth it.

The lunch is never any good. They send too many people on the courses. Power Points are boring and sure we have the slides anyway. Do not engage.

They will digress to complaints about having to do duties, how industrial action is making things harder, how the helpless downtrodden educators have no recourse. The fact that everyone else in the room has similar issues doesn’t seem to register.

Will always be first down for lunch.

Question Quigley

It’s 3:30pm. The session has already run over time and the Tutor’s pleas for attention have become louder and more irritable. The evaluations have still to be completed, but it looks like finish line is in sight. The Tutor prepares for their token request for enquiries.

“Any questions folks?”

Furtive looks shoot around the room. Invisible daggers are drawn. The coast looks clear as the Tutor even begins to hand out the evaluation sheets. We’ll be home and hosed within minutes.

“Actually, I have a question.”

A voice from the back of the room penetrates the giddy quitting time optimism. A rumble of ill-concealed discontent rises like a stormy tide. The Tutor pauses, forcing a smile.

You know the rest.

The Hungover One

Whatever it is about the late start, the slight relinquishing of pedagogical duty for the day, or the nostalgic yearning for a university hall, there is always one person who will rekindle the old flame and go on the absolute rip the night before a course.

They’ll either arrive ridiculously early so as not to arouse suspicion or try and sneak in late. Either way, their groggy demeanour and unwillingness to raise their head too high is a dead giveaway. Or breathe, they often don’t want to do that either.

They make frequent trips to the toilet as the Tutor smiles knowingly. They’ve seen this before. These may be regurgitative trips or simply a quick breather in a cooler, less intense environment but a stringent don’t ask-don’t tell policy is strictly adhered to.

Depending on how severe their symptoms are, they may lapse into the role of the Latent Listener, but this may be an optimistic assessment.

May sacrifice the free lunch for a half-hour lie down in the car.

***

Whether you meet any of these characters or not, one thing is for certain.

Someone, at some point, will make a joke about coffee being available.

You’ll all chuckle dutifully.

Plus ça change.