Attack

Being in charge is usually more fun than onerous. When it becomes onerous it is a form of hell. For much of the time, time is a fexible feast. I could make up my own timetable, wander into any room, and, for purposes afterwards justified, chat with staff or pupils. Litter picking (how they all laughed), catching smokers, eating early lunches, planning self aggrandizing INSET days, or whatever. Leading offers freedoms.

But the impressively strong force of gravity asserts control at all times, and feet need to be planted firmly onto stained industrially cheap carpeting at key times. Even though most of the Y11s are bigger than me. M certainly was.

'M has lit a fire in the stairwell and he won't go home. And he won't listen to anyone.' Of course he won't. He's waiting to see what the person in charge will do, just like everyone else. It's not about me, it's about me in my leadership jacket. The moleskin one with the scuff marks.

So I collected my best fixed and inexpressive face, the above mentioned jacket, and went to look for him.

He was easy to find. He looked like he wanted to find an excuse to punch someone. I'm good at reading people like that.

When I viewed the CCTV afterwards I was surprised at how small and passive I seemed. Like prey. But the police declared the footage good enough to stand up in court.

I faced M in an inconsequential corridor. 'You know what you've done. Cut your losses and go home now.'

He said, 'Are you denying me an education?' He really did. They often do when in the wrong. Knowing your rights is important when cornered. In my head I replied, 'Seeing as how you tried to deny us a fucking building to work in, you big twat, yes I am.' What I actually said was, 'Yes, I am sending you home.'

Team Teach, amongst many things, teaches you to stand firmly side-on to a potential assailant (or 'young person in crisis', to use the terminology allocated) ready to meet an opposing force with an asserttive buffer. I forgot that, allowing M to slam me into the door frame conveniently placed behind me. That lead to twelve months of MRI, physio, painkillers and x-rays, but it is true that I could have stood better. Thank you, whoever pointed that out.

I backed away and a number of staff got between him and me. Clearly, anything I did from now on was going to irk M, if not turn him murderous, so I calmly announced that I was moving completely away, adding, with only the merest hint of a smile, that he would still have to go home, though. This, in the terminology, is called 'fresh face'.

So he broke away from the staff, found me (to be fair, I hadn't got very far, as I didn't want to suffer the indignity of appearing to hurry), and punched me. Notice how I predicted that.

I sat contemplatively in a nearby office whilst his mother, who had been phoned earlier, and various staff endeavoured to coax him down to the car-park. Unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

But I didn't want to call the police yet. The police have their own ways of dealing with things, which generally involves escalating a confrontation to eleventy-stupid. Call me a woolly-minded liberal if you like, but I prefer de-escalation. Besides which, the police would give an excuse for several other EBD teenagers to engage in some hilarious showing off and baiting for the benefit of more timorous peers. I would have done the same at sixteen.

Still, I reflected on all this when he broke away once again, found me, and threw a metal bin at my head.

Readers may be thinking that the fact that M was subsequently arrested, charged with assault, did reparation, was banned from site, and given strict bail conditions amounted to just deserts for such dangerous criminal behaviour.

But then M, with all his own mental health problems, ended up homeless, living hand to mouth in a hostel, with hardly any qualifications to his name (he is, of course, very bright) and fewer prospects than a Lib Dem MP.

Where will he be in ten year's time?