The Learning Curve Read Online Free PDF Page A

soon become a habit. She liked feeling tidy and formal. Even on the first morning of a new year, when every teacher had a vital one hour to meet and greet their new children before the first assembly, she assumed the ponytail-and-glasses position. It gave the children the correct impression of her. These were children who had only ever seen her in assembly, sometimes on lunch or break duty, but never in the classroom. They thought she was strict and poker-facedall the time. This way when she was fun and kind they got a nice surprise. In fact, the truth was that during the first term she found it an effort not to call each one ‘sweetheart’ and ‘my love’, sometimes even ‘darling’, which seemed to trip off her tongue as soon as she looked at a child. But if a teacher did that too early, children could smell weakness and even the nicest child could not help abusing that. No, children had to smell authority when they saw a teacher. And then, slowly, during the term, the teacher should allow them small sniffs of someone who was on their side, as if they’d just caught the whiff of freshly cut grass on a summer breeze. Nicky knew what she was doing and it started with scraping her hair up in a ponytail and putting on her glasses.
    Year 6’s classroom was at the end of the top corridor of the school. The view was right over the playground. Nicky, or Miss Hobbs, now stood at the door, holding it open for her new class to file in past her. Thirty nervy ten- and eleven-year-olds did so, overcome by the newness of everything.
    ‘Sit anywhere for now,’ she said. ‘We’ll sort out the seating later. We have much more important things to do first.’
    She watched as each child exhibited more about themselves than if she’d installed a two-way mirror in their bedrooms. Every class had its own complex hierarchy, and watching children seat themselves was the easiest way to discover it. Thirty children ran to the five desks of six seats, racing to sit next to their best friends and far away from their enemies. She watched kids overpower weaker classmates with brute force, personality, or just plain cruelty; she watched girls hold hands, secure each other seats and hug themselves with glee as they watched the rest of the class race round them. She saw a crush in a boy’s hopeful upturnedeyes as he watched an Amazonian ten-year-old girl, and a play at hatred between a sparring boy and girl who had found themselves sitting back-to-back on different tables in the middle of the room. She waited until everyone had sat down before speaking quietly enough for them to have to be silent to hear her properly. And then she gave them all a beatific smile and said the magic words.
    ‘Hello! I’m Miss Hobbs and I want to know all about you.’
    This always generated an excited murmur. They all had blank pieces of paper ready and waiting for them on their tables and she asked them to write Ten Amazing Things About Myself, to be read out to everyone. She observed them as they did this, some squirming with excitement, others slowly sucking their pencils as they pondered, and again, picked up more about them than if she’d interrogated them for hours. Finally, they’d finished and, one by one, they stood up and read out their Ten Amazing Things. Before she knew it, the hour was up, it was time for assembly and her kids adored her. It worked every time. She hadn’t been soft and she hadn’t shouted; she’d just shown genuine interest in them. By the time the new Year 6 went to assembly, they would have defended their new teacher almost to the death.
    Year 5 had not been quite so lucky. Mr Pattison was a tough teacher with his eye on top management, and he sometimes had a tendency to treat his class like lower management rather than children. His habit was to spend his first hour explaining what was required of his new team in their new job. Silence was big on the agenda, synchronised standing whenever he entered the classroom came in a