Staffroom Trouble

Monday morning finds our intrepid hero, The Educator, refreshed, happy and full of fantastic ideas after a fruitful weekend. The week ahead looked exciting; activities planned for the students to think and learn, ready to unleash on his classes.

Whistling a tune only he could recognise, The Educator reached the staffroom door and paused unsure of whether to enter or not. He reached out his hand and laughed at himself for his hesitation before pushing open the door he entered the inner sanctum. The moment he did he wished he hadn’t – something was amiss. Instead of turning around he carried on in, his sensory powers jangling in alarm. He felt vertiginous for a fleeting moment, his vision swimming in and out of focus. Fearing he might fall over, he held onto the coffee machine as the weight of everyone’s thoughts and emotions hit him like a battering ram, threatening to overwhelm him.

His colleagues paused for a moment and glanced at him quizzically, fearfully even, before engaging in their animated conversations once more. The Educator tried to clear his mind enough to think and desperately attempted to recall the tune he was humming just seconds earlier, but this peaceful state of being was gone. Shattered. He reached for a coffee cup, hoping that a shot of caffeine might relax him, but the combined consciousness and dark mood of the staff room hit him again. He attempted to put the cup in the machine, but his shaking hands dropped the cup which clattered to the floor.

A kaleidoscope of emotions swirled around him as images of unhappy and underwhelmed humans blasted him with their negative rays of emotion.

POW! A heavy blow to the solar plexus took his breath away as the image of a pile of unmarked examination papers hit him hard.

SMACK! A flurry of rabbit punches in his kidneys made him double over as reports of unruly children underperforming in Maths and Science brought tears to his eyes.

BOOM! Slaps to both cheeks made him cry out as a potential meeting with headmaster loomed for someone in the next half an hour.

These blows were seriously weakening The Educator and he looked around desperately for the perpetrator of this heinous act of black hattery. Edward de Bono would have been seriously impressed to see his theory of the human brain being utilised to such devastating effect! The Educator forced himself to be calm and began to deflect back all the negativity, searching, all the while searching.

And there, sitting amidst all her colleagues, was the villain. She sat back, arms folded and watched as the chaos she had caused with her negativity, lack of enthusiasm and hatred of all things educational had permeating around the room. She smiled slightly as the Educator caught her eye and then she froze. Her smile turned to a grimace and she stood up abruptly. The game was up.

The Educator shook his head and humming his earlier tune once again summoned up all his De Bono hat powers and blasted her with green, blue, red, yellow and white bolts of positive energy. She screamed and writhed in agony as positive emptions, alien to this so called teacher’s psyche swept over her. The Educator swept his hand over the room and all the black thoughts that had pervaded the other teachers’ thoughts left them and turned back on her. Her hair stood on end as her feet left the floor and without warning she exploded into shower of violet flower petals.  

The Educator picked up his coffee cup from the floor and began to brew his java as his befuddled colleagues gathered their thoughts and thanked him as they left the room. He smiled to himself and took an explorative sip of his coffee as he viewed the pile of petals that was the remains of the History teacher. The Headmaster murmured a good morning as he entered the room, before following the Educators gaze. He tutted slightly and then spoke, “For heaven sake Educator, please stop vaporising the staff. It’s costing me a fortune in supply teachers!"

“Sorry Headmaster.” Chuckled Educator as he left the room to unleash a grammar lesson with a difference on an unsuspecting Year 7 class.