The life of a visiting remedial teacher is a lonely one, we know. Five schools, an itinerant lifestyle and a snatch of what's going on everywhere but always gaps, gaps, gaps! "Did we not tell you?" and "Oh, you weren't here when we decided." And we are sympathetic, we know it's tough out there, but we just can't seem to, well, bond, really.
Instead of trilling "Oh, it's Helen!" we always seem to deflate when we spot her Fiesta pulling up outside on a Wednesday afternoon. Why? We can't pinpoint it exactly - it's a bit like indigestion . . . not bad enough for a Rennie but nagging all the same.
She bounces into our staffroom and we all mime the "Hiii" that invariably heralds her entrance. Grating or what? Never "Hello" or "How'ya" but the chirpy, Americanised salutation. And the bloody cheerfulness - who died and made her Mother Teresa?
If she slouched in and groaned "I'm banjaxed, any tea in the pot?" we'd grin and pull up a chair and beg for news from down the road. But, when we inquired recently if our neighbouring school, kindred spirits and allies in football training were taking a mid-term break, she sat, smug in her omniscience, and announced she never ever carried stories between schools. Oh, right, like we were asking you for their Tuairisc Scoile or something!
And, when we moan "Where do you start with Hilary? She told me that Cuchulainn caught the Salmon of Knowledge in the Nile," you don't need to be told that you really need to work on her comprehension skills. You'd prefer the others to moan along with you - a bit of mutual despairing, if you don't mind, thank you very much.
We're inclined to shoot from the hip. If Sean is a little on the lazy side, well, we say just that and never couch it in the likes of "his concentration is waning of late, he needs to find areas that will motivate him." So, her ways, though proper and undoubtedly correct, seem foreign in our rural academy. We oblige and listen, but it has to be said that it's alien to two old-timers like us.
Also, our parents are our peers in a lot of cases. We live beside them, reared our children together and never, ever patronise them. That's why we find it hard to hear them being described as country people or of a low educational standard, even if it's true. It cuts a bit near the bone, you see.
I know, I know, we're set in our ways, you protest, and we must be welcoming, open and receptive to innovation. When she talks knowingly about blends and individual phonics programmes, we should bow before the greater god of a remedial diploma and not sigh "As if . . ." while we gaze at our multiple classes and even more multiple reading groups and wonder why we didn't answer the call to the junior ex in the civil service back when we had the chance.
