Sinking ship

A year on and nothing has changed.  It has been the worst working year of my life. The school is held in the grip of a downward spiral which is taking everything and everyone with it.  Pupils are leaving in droves.  Ofsted have been due since September and SLT have been whipping the staff into submission ever since.  Loyal, hard-working teachers are persecuted to breaking point. We are not allowed to voice our true opinions, because they do not matter.  I have to ask people's permission to speak to them at all.  If we do venture an opinion, we are told we are at best wrong and at worst liars.  Pupils are excluded for selling drugs.  Some of them lie down in the corridors and scream.  I understand the impulse completely. 

Is this a dagger?

Before Christmas, I directed a school production of Macbeth.  Not just any old school production of Macbeth.  Macbeth The Musical, which both deliberately and inevitably became Macbeth The Pantomime.  I enlisted the help of two young Performing Arts graduates and my actor/director/writer friend whose business is comedy.  For many weeks Year 7 and 8 pupils and I met in various inhospitable classrooms to rehearse scenes in a language which was largely foreign to them with a level of commitment and focus which was very definitely foreign to them.  We tackled singing, dancing, physical theatre, even acting.  Several times I wanted to leave the country.  But in the end, the children gave it their all and the show was a great success.  We had come a very long way and what we achieved was remarkable.

Back at school in the torrential and rain and howling gales of January 2012, I am once more reduced to data inputting, photocopying and being discussed by my heads of department as though I am chattle.  I've been directing children's shows for years.  I have a degree in English and Drama, published works to my name and a literary agent.  A school theatre trip to London is planned for next month, including a visit to The Globe, but I am not allowed to go.  No one has fought my corner.

Stabbed in the back?

I think it is time to find another job.