http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/welcome-sunshine-to-the-charms-of-sunnyhill-high/2008/02/08/1202234170836.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1AS TWO of my students jumped out a third-storey window to escape a lunchtime detention, scaling the drain pipe to freedom, I knew I had finally seen it all.
And to think my teaching adventure had started with such grand hopes. After completing my Dip. Ed. in 2006, I set off for England, where supply teaching jobs are as plentiful as rainy days.
Assured by teaching agencies that conditions for migrant teachers in Britain were favourable, I left Australia believing that I'd soon be arriving in a teaching paradise - a place where students behave, where staff lend a hand, and where wages reflect the hard work teachers do.
After a week at my first school, I was ready to jump on the next plane back to Melbourne. Sure, I'd heard the horror stories about the English public school system before I left - but hey, I was a newly qualified teacher; I knew everything, had seen everything, and was ready for anything. Or so I thought.
Coiled razor wire topped the four-metre steel fences that surrounded Birmingham's Sunnyhill High School, my first UK placement. Two pepper spray-toting security guards manned the front gate, while a school maintenance worker applied greasy, black anti-climb paint to each steel picket as hoodie-clad students poured past into class.
My agency had promised a fairly good school compared with others in the area, and this proved to be true. But at the time I'd never seen anything like Sunnyhill High.
Thirty-five year nines pushed into a science lab that seated 26, every noisy comment punctuated by obscenities.
"Our last teacher had a nervous breakdown, sir," a boy sneered. "Bloody poof."
I tried desperately to settle the class but it was clear I had just boarded a runaway train, driven by teenage comedians.
"Ow old are you, sir? 18? I bet you ain't even got pubes!"
"Give us a Steve Irwin impersonation," another added. "He's funny as heck that geezer is!"
I watched in disbelief as one of the boys set alight a text book alight, realising my mere presence was adding fuel to the fire. With a burst of expletives, a late-comer inquired as to my identity.
At wits' end, I gave the offender a piece of my mind. I absolutely blew my top. I'd never raised my voice in a classroom before - I'd never had to - and the blast I gave the late-comer brought a stunned silence.
Dazed by my own outburst, I opened the class roll, taking my eyes off the students for a moment. A second later, a steel lab stool bounced off my desk and speared into the white board, where it hung like an abstract sculpture just inches from my head.
The late-comer grabbed his tie and lifted it over his head like a noose, raising his middle finger in silent protest while his peers cheered like lunatics.
After retreating to the staff room, through more security doors than the opening credits of Get Smart, I sought reassurance from the teaching co-ordinator, hoping at least for a sympathetic ear. "Is that all they did? Geez boy, last week they flooded the place and then set it alight in the same double period. You got off easy."
I'd love to say that things got better. That the full-time staff were more supportive, that the students were better behaved, that fewer large objects were heaved in my direction. Sadly, things only got worse.
At my next placement, I was asked to teach year 10s and 11s French for three weeks leading up to mid-year exams. It didn't seem to matter that I couldn't speak a word of French. Or that my only previous encounters with the language came through certain late night movies on SBS. I was handed a stack of Gerard Depardieu videos, and sent in to face the lions.
At another school, I reported a particularly concerning sexual advance from one of my female students to the year level co-ordinator. I was left agog when she responded with "Can you blame 'em love? You are a nice bit of crumpet after all" and a pinch on the bum.
Her casual reaction was matched later that day when the maths coordinator handed out a mere two-day suspension to the 15-year-old couple he caught in a compromising position on his desk during lunch time.
There were other behavioural highlights. Two girls started smoking in class: "Please sir, we're dying for a fag". At least they offered me one. There was a full-blown knife fight in geography, which followed an argument about whether or not Hitler wanted to invade Jerusalem and re-name it Germany Two.
There was the time my mobile was stolen from my back pocket in year seven English, and then offered back to me for 40 quid by a bloke on the bus.
And there was the case of the two year nines jumping out the third-storey window. This wasn't teaching; it wasn't even babysitting. The English public school system was playing a cruel joke, and I was the butt of it.
After three months of teaching shenanigans, I bailed out. Teaching had beaten me, and the students of Birmingham had seen off yet another naive supply teacher. I returned to the racetrack and to what I know best. At least horses can't throw lab stools.
Michael Sharkie is back in Melbourne - and in no hurry to return to the classroom.
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