colours and nature
2003-06-20 || 4:31 p.m.

So today was the day that my class did their assembly. We'd worked hard on it all week despite the fact that we only got in the hall to practice twice due to the leaver's play rehearsals. I've two very shy boys in my class. One just never talks and the other is always talking; but both of them are shy. Both of them also wrote wonderful poems that I really wanted them to read at the assembly. On Monday when they first read them aloud to the class you couldn't hear a word they said. The quiet one was inaudible and the noisy one read at the speed of a train. By Thursday, with the help of a microphone, if you concentrated hard you could hear what they were saying. And anyfuckingway, its the fact that they were going to read at all that matters. For both of them, to read in front of the whole school is a big, big deal.

And so to today.

Nicholas the noisy shy boy read quite slowly at first. Then he sped up and yes, honestly, the ending would have been a mystery to anyone. But he fucking read it and read it in front of over 200 other people.

What an achievement.

So I beamed a big smile at him.

And then I saw Maria's face. She was tutting, shaking her head and giving me the foulest look I've ever seen. And so I got that icy cold feeling you get when you just know the shit is going to explode in your face in a while.

But I kept smiling at my kids because they are worth a million of her any day.

And after it was over and with the kids still in the hall, she says in her puffed up adder, ugly nature way. 'Ms Vincent, a point for future development - get your children to read slowly and clearly, Nicholas was appalling'.

I just said to her, 'do you know how hard he has worked to read that in front of the school today?'

Bitch.

and then as the kids went out to break I went to the staff room in tears.

And she came in and I didn't care that she heard me. I was so fucking angry. And so she followed me out and lurked outside the loo.

Fuck off.

But she didn't. And then she said, then she fucking said

'I wouldn't have said it, if I'd have known it was going to upset you!'

TALK ABOUT MISS THE POINT.

YOU SHOULDN'T SAY THINGS LIKE THAT ANYWAY.

FUCK YOU.

I just gave her my 'youhavenoideawhetheri'mactuallyawitch' stare and told her I had no desire to talk to her and left her fuming in the corridor.

And next Wednesday I'm going to give both Nicholas and Richard certificates for their achievements in reading in public and I'm going to explain to the whole school how some of us may find it easy but for some of us it can be very hard indeed and how brave indeed they are.