Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 3; May 1999

STAFF ROOM CONFLICTS

By Jana Prochazkova from the Czech Republic

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In this article Jana Prochazkova gives her side of conflict with her head and how it spilled over her pupils lives. Much of what happens in classroom is governed by what happens in the staffroom. (Editor)

After I took part in a few workshops on drama education in ELT, I decided to prepare a performance for the Prague Class Acts Theatre Festival with a group of my pupils.

I choose a jazz chant fairy tale by Carolyn Graham and asked my headmistress for permission to rehearse the fairy tale with the whole class in some of my lessons. The head did not find practising the past simple in that way useful, so 14 children, fired with the idea rehearsed in their free time. Our headmistress was not interested in our work at all so it was a big surprise for all of us when she wanted to see our performance five days before the Festival. She cannot speak English so she took a teacher of English with her. What happened after we finished was like a bad dream. Without a word of praise, she began giving the pupils "pieces of advice":

"Radek (chicken) a chicken cannot snore while sleeping, it must go peep, peep. Why do you have the stupid napkin? Do you want to put yourself down?"

"Michal, (a cock, sun and tree) your sun is like an ugly monster. And your face! The sun must smile and shine in this way! (she showed us a model of rising sun modern in my youth in the mid-twentieth century.) "No, you cannot be a sun especially with so terrible a hair-style. And the cock? Have you ever seen a cock? The proud bird? You expressed nothing of the bird's personality. And why were you behaving like a drunk man while standing on the chair? Oh, it was a tree! Do you know trees give us oxygen? You must not laugh at trees. You must stand like a candle with your hands aiming upwards to emphasize the importance of the tree!"

"Darina, why do you have so proud a face? Actually, you always have it which is not good!"

"David, are you really sure a hungry fox does what you did?"

"Children, you should have caps on your heads to emphasise you are a good team. You know, to express childrens´ love for the piece of clothes."

And so on. She did not let us say anything. She finished with: "You can never be winners with anything like this" and she left without greeting.

The things mentioned above happend on Tuesday. On Wednesday I had a day off and when I was going to school on Thursday, I met some children from our theatre group. They were unhappy and told me what happened a day before. The headmistress and three teachers rehearsed the performance according to their wishes. They changed some parts, replaced Michal by Adela as to the sun and by Lukas as to the tree, David as a fox was not allowed to snore and the napkin was forbidden, and all children were to bring caps and T-shirts of the same colour.

The children found the changed fairy tale boring and were disappointed that their own ideas were called stupid. They wished to do our own work.

I had "a chat" with my headmistress. I was angry, unpolite and open. She said she would go to Prague to see our performance.

On Friday me and my pupils went to Prague and had three "rehearsals" instead of a nice evening.

On Saturday morning all of us were sleepy, tired and depressed. Fortunately, native speakers run some workshops which were fun and after I told my colleagues what had happenned, all of them were on our side trying to encourage us somehow. We began hoping the headmistress would not come.

She appeared twenty minutes before the Festival was to start. I told her we would do our own performance. She looked at me and said nothing.

I was sitting in the first row during the performance being moved and impressed by the courage of those eleven and twelve year old pupils who had never done anything like that before and in spite of everything were doing their work well.

When the first part of the Festlival was over, the headmistress said we were the best of all. I told her we were not. The group of six and seven year old children from Brno was best. All of us agreed on the fact except my headmistress. She said they had short texts and were just moving. (As I said she cannot speak English at all.)

The Class Acts Theatre Festival has never been a competition. All of us were winners and all of us know the length of the text has nothing to do with the magic of poetry, drama education and theatre. Except our headmistress.

Two month ago we went to Prague for the second time. The headmistress wanted us to show her our new performance. The pupils refused to do that and then some of them were ill so they could not do it anyway. The headmistress did not believe the children had been ill and when we were leaving for Prague early in the morning, she did not forget to say several bad words to all of us.

I told my headmistress I was going to leave the school. She did not want me to do that saying she always loved me and respected my work.

It was difficult to leave the kids but we agreed on rehearsals in my house next year. If they do not change their decision, we will go to Prague once again. Free and looking forward to the nice people.