Bullies
Bullies are cruel,
Bullies cause pain,
physical or mental
I feel are both the same.
Stick and stones they say
will break my bones
but names will never hurt me.
I am not so sure about these lines
Physical pain can leave a colourful bruise
but will fade
Mental pain goes far deeper
the bruises are within
not seen but cause damage just the same.
This hurt can be hidden,
the pain is well masked.
Cruel taunting with words, tone of voice
can though, sadly remain.
So, with these relentless bullies on and on at me every day and the gaps in my knowledge due, now looking back, to mounting stress on top of my dyslexia which was of course as yet undiagnosed and completely not mentioned. I just could not learn, the way I was meant to learn.
How then can a child achieve when there are so many gaps in their knowledge and learning. These gaps do need to be filled, ideally of course they need not be there. The way surely needs to be made clear for a seamless journey of learning, retention, consolidation and application.
If my teaching had been better and more suited to meet my needs from the very first day of primary school then I may just have had a chance to learn. But this was simply and sadly just not the case for me. The expectation was theoretically at least simple, a child was taught, a child learned, that was it. What more was there?
There was no teaching or training in the use of a multi-sensory curriculum, a curriculum where learning was cumulative and well-structured, a curriculum with opportunity to overlearn, to re-visit and to retain; then of course to consolidate and apply. Things have moved on a little with far more multi-sensory and explorative opportunities for the early years in primary school but it is only a little. All too soon and all too quickly opportunities for multisensory learning start to disappear from year one onwards.
A good and what should be an inspiring and very pleasurable area of the curriculum is music. Sadly, far more evident in 1970’s high schools than today due to cuts in education and the teaching of the arts. I went with my grade one violin to join the orchestra. I had passed my grade one examination and remember getting 18 out of 18 for my oral section and the examiners comment of ‘excellent’, I still have the certificate! So, I had and still do have a very good ear for music and despite struggling to read music and understand the symbolic and numerical aspects, I could hold melodies easily.
I therefore so desperately wanted to play with the first violins who carried the melody. Remember when I use to enjoy all those hand clapping rhymes and singing games outside in the playground of my primary school? Well, this was surely an opportunity to extend this knowledge and the ability I had to carry a melody and to retain it and play it back with seemingly little effort.
But no, I was put a few rows back with the second violins who had to play intermittently. This relied so heavily on maths and timing that I ended up being all over the place and really not knowing what on earth I was doing. This fact did not go unnoticed by my mum and dad who attend a concert where the orchestra played. Mum delighted in telling me that her and dad knew where I was sitting as I was the only violin whose bow was going in the opposite direction!
Why did I not get a chance to play to my strength, why didn’t that awful music teacher not see that in me…because she never bothered to look or to find out my capabilities, she had not bothered to find out which areas of my grade one I had excelled in. It was done purely as a result of what grade you had accomplished!
Just give me a chance
Just give me a chance
a chance to play
the melody the tune that I know.
I would love to sit with the first violins
as I can follow the melody by ear.
But no,
I was put a few rows back
amongst the second violins
who merely
just played
every now and again
with no tune to follow or
melody to sing in ones
head to help keep track,
I was simply put
behind the rest
and had to sit near the back.
This was a sin
an injustice
a wrong
as a child
with such a good ear for music
should really have been given
the chance to shine,
the chance to show
what they can do
and the chance to enjoy it too.
Due to my dad changing churches, at the age of 14 I had to move to a new house and although just over seven miles away, it meant a change from living in a Leicestershire village to living in Leicester city and with that, came a change of school.
On the one hand I was incredibly pleased to be leaving the sinful secondary school, which had been so very difficult for me. I was also extremely pleased to be able to leave my two main bullies behind and all my bullying teachers. But on the other hand, the thought of starting somewhere new again at that age, with all that being a teenager brings, was somewhat daunting and I was certainly not prepared for its lasting and damaging impact!
Once out of the, looking back now, comfortable and brand new, small secondary school, I found myself yet again, trying to fit in. I was completely lost in an enormously big, tired old building which taught over 600 children…and me. As I had not done the moving up with everyone else from the local primary schools, I was very much on my own. I did not know a single person, child or adult and of course I desperately tried to find the right people to hang around with. I was not looking for lifelong friendship I just wanted to find some sense of security and I would have settled for a very mild feeling of acceptance.
So, who did I go for, I went for those children that seemed most scary as I surely needed them on my side. Sayings like ‘Better the devil you know’ and as previously sadly already used, ‘Keep your enemies close’ could not be more prominent here. I bumbled along for a while just bravely accepting my fate and inevitably it did not take long for me to end up in trouble. Trouble in my primary and secondary schools seemed to be among complete insignificance compared to what faced me now at this new and monstrous school.
As I desperately felt that I needed to fit in, I also felt the desperate need to show off, to be accepted, to act the clown, the fool, trying to be a comedian so people would laugh and think me funny. It was a plan, but one that was certainly ill-fated.
This of course just landed me in repeated detentions. I had to stand outside the staffroom door at break times and lunch times for a week on more than one occasion. So, there I stood, in line with a couple of hard character’s far more well known for difficult and disruptive behaviour than I was. Part of me did feel a misguided sense of relief, relief that I may be becoming accepted, ok accepted as a bad girl, but it was acceptance.
This acceptance was mirrored once again in the teachers who one by one began to show me what an absolute problem I was becoming. The problem that I was to each and every one of them as yet again they each turned against me.
Not one member of staff was prepared to see beyond my behaviour, look for reasons, yes reasons in plural as there was surely more than one. Look at why I might be presenting in this way. If any of the teachers had of course ever bothered to look closer, they may have found something to work with. They may have found something to nurture, to encourage, to build up. But why flog a dead horse, hey that ship sailed long ago and we will just put up with her, shout at her, make her feel completely inferior and worthless, we will just do our job.
Not the happiest of photographs, despite me being next to a friend, but this is me at the age of between 14 and 16.
There is always a reason for behaviour
Why does he do what he does?
gosh she drives me mad,
why is there always one
and why is it always my class?
Well maybe you need to
turn things around,
Maybe,
just maybe it’s you.
Maybe you need
to give it some thought
as to why you do things like you do.
O.K. you’ve always done it that way,
tradition, it’s just what we do.
Well here’s a thought
oh teacher dear,
see what the child may need,
see it through dyslexic eyes,
and think then how you may reach,
out to the child who misses the point,
cause she loses her place on the board,
out to the child ‘cause she heard what you said,
but can’t remember a single word.
For until you change,
see things the way
of a dyslexic learner
my friend,
there is no hope for the child in your class
that will never quite reach the end.
With expectations so high,
the same for all,
how then will they achieve?
For the dyslexic learner
who sits in your class
is the one
in which you need to believe.
