The Waffle House on the Pier - Tilly Tennant Page 0,32
doing other very important things and couldn’t come and help her unless the head gave them explicit instructions to drop those other things. When Sadie enquired what other things they were, the list included updating the noticeboard and weighing out cake ingredients for a cookery lesson later in the day. Hardly pressing, Sadie thought, though she knew better than to say so. The last thing she wanted was to turn the teaching assistants against her as well as the kids. As for explicit instructions from the head to help Sadie instead, nobody had been given any yet, and, as the clock counted the minutes towards the start of the first lesson, it looked unlikely that it was ever going to happen.
The noise level was deafening as Sadie walked into the classroom and barely a child was sitting at their own desk ready to start work. As she waited expectantly for them to notice she was there and for the pandemonium to die down, not one person so much as looked her way. She cleared her throat.
Still nothing.
‘Good morning!’ she called.
The noise levels seemed only to increase, and none of it included a ‘Good morning’ in return.
‘Class!’ Sadie yelled.
A few pupils now looked her way. One or two even returned to their own seats voluntarily. But most of them simply went back to what they’d been doing before she’d walked in.
‘Seats! Now!’ Sadie roared.
She looked around the class, almost surprised herself at the assertiveness that had come from nowhere. Maybe she could do this after all. Maybe it had only taken a crisis to show that she did have the mettle to teach. There were many other expressions of genuine surprise in the room too, and perhaps they’d all suddenly realised that they’d got Sadie wrong. The noise stopped dead and everyone took their places to start the lesson.
So, all she’d needed was some backbone and a loud voice. It was just a shame, Sadie reflected ruefully, that it had taken a minor car crash and whiplash to make it happen.
‘I think we were looking at Hitler’s rise to power last week, weren’t we?’ she asked the class.
‘No!’ someone shouted from the back.
‘That was a rhetorical question,’ Sadie said. ‘I know we were looking at Hitler’s rise to power last week because I was here teaching it.’
‘Why did you ask then?’
Sadie ignored the jibe. They were still trying, but they weren’t going to get the better of her, not this time. ‘Turn to page eighty-five in your textbooks.’
‘We don’t have textbooks, Miss,’ a girl said. Sadie looked at her.
‘Why not? The school provides them. Where are they?’
‘In the cupboard, Miss.’
‘And you can’t go and get them because…?
Sadie instantly realised her mistake, but it was too late to do anything about it. The room was filled with the sounds of chairs scraping the floor and a stampede to the cupboard, accompanied by jostling, banter, threats and bickering – all interspersed with a healthy serving of swearwords. She should have instructed the girl who’d pointed out their lack of books to go and get them all from the cupboard to hand out but she hadn’t been quick enough. Now, she was faced with yet more chaos.
‘Quickly now!’ she called, feeling the control she’d had only moments ago slipping away again. ‘No messing; get your books back to your desk and open to page eighty-five or we won’t have time to do anything!’
There was a barely perceptible pause as that statement seemed to collectively sink in, and in that nanosecond Sadie realised she’d made another fatal error. If there was one win-win result for the kids in that room, it was to run out of time to read about Hitler’s rise to power. And as she’d feared, her words only meant it now took twice as long for everyone to return to their seats and look remotely ready to learn. If having your head on your desk, or gazing out of the window, or sniggering behind your hands with the occupant of the neighbouring desk counted as being ready to learn, that is.
There was the briefest silence, a lull into false security during which Sadie readied herself to begin the lesson proper, and then a hand shot up.
‘Yes?’ Sadie looked at the boy.
‘Can I go to the toilet, Miss?’
His request was followed by stifled giggles on the row of desks behind him. It was a red flag to Sadie.