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The battlefield of players were increasing and was up to no good; it was close to the final whistle (or should I say bell), and the scores were level which meant staying on for extra time; staying behind to complete work which wasn't completed before the main deadline. Sometimes the battleground (aka classroom) felt more like the ground for boxing or wrestling, never mind football. I always did my work and never misbehaved, but because I was a member of my own class, I had to stay behind as well if the majority was doing something that they shouldn't have been doing, or doing something that they should have been doing. Names and ticks beside them went up on the blackboard; my own name was never up on there for I did stay on the right side of the fence. Was detention just six lessons in the school day for the price of five?
Someone misbehaves or talks when they should be quiet: the teacher gives them a "warning look" as the 1993 school rules stated. If they did it again, they were "named and shamed" with their name on their blackboard for all to see. If it continued, they had one tick against their name, denoting a ten minute detention. A second tick meant 20 minutes staying behind, and three ticks meant half an hour, and a fourth one meant being sent to a special classroom for those who misbehave in class and breach the school rules. In this "special" room, a log of various pupils; date and time; the initials of the teaching staff and all the other details are written inside there. A member of teaching staff (giving up at least one free period on their timetable) is there on guard if you happen to be send to this so-called special room, and if you are unlucky that day, it could be one of the assertive senior members of staff, or even one of the Deputy Heads (which I thankfully got on with). One problem was that the detention room was also the support room, and when I came along for support in a lesson, some thought that I had been misbehaving and was sent there as a result! I was glad when just before I "took voluntary leave" due to personal reasons, the school had relocated the support room to another room in the school so that pervious room was for those who had been sent there as before.
Detention was the Extra Time and even the penalty shoot-out of the classroom; literally at the end of the day we had to come back and copy four pages from a textbook, but at least it wasn't "write 'I must not...' 200 times", wasting ink and paper in the process, and probably only doing 174 of them; more "I must nots" than "I musts". The school payphone near the main foyer entrance was mostly there for pupils to ring their parents to say that they were in detention; they would be at least half and hour late; record the CITV programme, and keep the dinner in the oven until they come back home. During December and January they went home in the dark as well. Watch out for new teachers; student teachers; supply teachers, soft "Phil Scott" teachers and the like. And also watch out for the final lesson of the afternoon with the normal teacher absent, and this was most likely to be towards the end of the week such as a Thursday or a Friday afternoon; this was the time of the week when the kids were most likely to play up due to being restless and want a challenge.
It was happened with my form in the second year (Year 8); for our English lessons during the spring term; we had a young female student teacher taking us for English; so young that she looked only a couple of years older than myself and one or two members of our form even commented on that. Our regular English teacher had a few free period on his timetable to catch up with the Guardian in the staff room. We mostly read from a 300 page novel of the "Stig of the Dump" variety in class and did writing in alternative lessons. Around a quarter of the class (mostly the boys), mostly didn't do as they were told, or did things that they weren't told to do - our form teacher, who would have eventually heard about it within the next 24 hours, referred to the incident as bring "lack of co-operation". Eventually, a class detention was called for after school. At 3.35 pm (the time that the final bell of the school day usually went), only four people out of thirty arrived for the detention, and all the troublemakers who caused all this had skipped this and gone home or went ahead with what they were planning to do anyway. Our student teacher only lasted one term as planned, but I did see her visit the school after her stint teaching us had ended.
It was all about discipline: making sure that the troops fell into line immediately. Either do as you are told and the work in the lesson and have fun after school, or swap them around and do the work later after school, a la Grange Hill's 1983 Referendum into flexi-time - it was up to the pupils; they were in the driving seat. It's a quarter to four; the cleaners want to come in to sweep and mop the floor, but they can't as a class has misbehaved and is in detention in there! Not only did they play up the teacher, but they are doing the same to the janitor staff as well. But then again, what about the after-school clubs being held at the same time, used in rooms that needed to be seen to by the cleaners? No, as someone who was straight as an arrow, I didn't mind detention; the family wasn't exactly going to report me missing just because I wasn't going to arrive home on time, and the teachers often had to stay back to arrange extra curricular activities as well. I had been at school for over six hours; another hour or so it's going to leave me exhausted.
Teaching using the D-word as a weapon to make pupils behave themselves often did the trick; the bribery or even blackmail to behave, do good work, and hope that there could be a award for this at end of the educational tunnel. Just like how the P-word - police - usually does when one is the victim of a crime. Also, the member of staff who was actually taking the detention; usually a Department Head or even a Deputy Head; the more senior the staff member, the more serious it seemed to me. Not to mention - a faculty detention, especially a - shock horror - Mathematics, Science and Technology faculty detention, led by a staff member who was, shall we say, slightly eccentric and seemed to ironically take a joke if he was in a good mood on a good day, but was generally not easy to get on with from personal experience a la Maurice Bronson and Ant Jones circa 1986. Detention provided so many "out of the frying pan" moments in education. Those who got detention for truanting, ironically prompting the pupils to miss it by playing truant yet again.
It's interesting looking at school rules seen on school websites, and the sanctions process with regards to detentions, and how some pupils can easily build a portfolio of detentions without even realising that they had done so sometimes, quite often chalking up (if you excuse the pun) several in one day. Missing a class detention leading to a Head of Subject or Head of Faculty detention, which led to a Deputy Head detention and so on. This Mount Everest of bad behaviour and misdemeanours eventually became "permanent exclusion" if one was the Sir Edmund Hilliary of rulebreakers. The bigger hole you deep, the more likely you are tp bury yourself with. Of course, we never had to write "I must not go to detention" 200 times - I wonder who would have done that? Looking through my rose-tinted spectacles (and I did used to wear them back then, sans the rose-tinted parts), detention wasn't that bad back in the day, or was it? I think that it was just who was taking it on that day. You decide...
Someone misbehaves or talks when they should be quiet: the teacher gives them a "warning look" as the 1993 school rules stated. If they did it again, they were "named and shamed" with their name on their blackboard for all to see. If it continued, they had one tick against their name, denoting a ten minute detention. A second tick meant 20 minutes staying behind, and three ticks meant half an hour, and a fourth one meant being sent to a special classroom for those who misbehave in class and breach the school rules. In this "special" room, a log of various pupils; date and time; the initials of the teaching staff and all the other details are written inside there. A member of teaching staff (giving up at least one free period on their timetable) is there on guard if you happen to be send to this so-called special room, and if you are unlucky that day, it could be one of the assertive senior members of staff, or even one of the Deputy Heads (which I thankfully got on with). One problem was that the detention room was also the support room, and when I came along for support in a lesson, some thought that I had been misbehaving and was sent there as a result! I was glad when just before I "took voluntary leave" due to personal reasons, the school had relocated the support room to another room in the school so that pervious room was for those who had been sent there as before.
Detention was the Extra Time and even the penalty shoot-out of the classroom; literally at the end of the day we had to come back and copy four pages from a textbook, but at least it wasn't "write 'I must not...' 200 times", wasting ink and paper in the process, and probably only doing 174 of them; more "I must nots" than "I musts". The school payphone near the main foyer entrance was mostly there for pupils to ring their parents to say that they were in detention; they would be at least half and hour late; record the CITV programme, and keep the dinner in the oven until they come back home. During December and January they went home in the dark as well. Watch out for new teachers; student teachers; supply teachers, soft "Phil Scott" teachers and the like. And also watch out for the final lesson of the afternoon with the normal teacher absent, and this was most likely to be towards the end of the week such as a Thursday or a Friday afternoon; this was the time of the week when the kids were most likely to play up due to being restless and want a challenge.
It was happened with my form in the second year (Year 8); for our English lessons during the spring term; we had a young female student teacher taking us for English; so young that she looked only a couple of years older than myself and one or two members of our form even commented on that. Our regular English teacher had a few free period on his timetable to catch up with the Guardian in the staff room. We mostly read from a 300 page novel of the "Stig of the Dump" variety in class and did writing in alternative lessons. Around a quarter of the class (mostly the boys), mostly didn't do as they were told, or did things that they weren't told to do - our form teacher, who would have eventually heard about it within the next 24 hours, referred to the incident as bring "lack of co-operation". Eventually, a class detention was called for after school. At 3.35 pm (the time that the final bell of the school day usually went), only four people out of thirty arrived for the detention, and all the troublemakers who caused all this had skipped this and gone home or went ahead with what they were planning to do anyway. Our student teacher only lasted one term as planned, but I did see her visit the school after her stint teaching us had ended.
It was all about discipline: making sure that the troops fell into line immediately. Either do as you are told and the work in the lesson and have fun after school, or swap them around and do the work later after school, a la Grange Hill's 1983 Referendum into flexi-time - it was up to the pupils; they were in the driving seat. It's a quarter to four; the cleaners want to come in to sweep and mop the floor, but they can't as a class has misbehaved and is in detention in there! Not only did they play up the teacher, but they are doing the same to the janitor staff as well. But then again, what about the after-school clubs being held at the same time, used in rooms that needed to be seen to by the cleaners? No, as someone who was straight as an arrow, I didn't mind detention; the family wasn't exactly going to report me missing just because I wasn't going to arrive home on time, and the teachers often had to stay back to arrange extra curricular activities as well. I had been at school for over six hours; another hour or so it's going to leave me exhausted.
Teaching using the D-word as a weapon to make pupils behave themselves often did the trick; the bribery or even blackmail to behave, do good work, and hope that there could be a award for this at end of the educational tunnel. Just like how the P-word - police - usually does when one is the victim of a crime. Also, the member of staff who was actually taking the detention; usually a Department Head or even a Deputy Head; the more senior the staff member, the more serious it seemed to me. Not to mention - a faculty detention, especially a - shock horror - Mathematics, Science and Technology faculty detention, led by a staff member who was, shall we say, slightly eccentric and seemed to ironically take a joke if he was in a good mood on a good day, but was generally not easy to get on with from personal experience a la Maurice Bronson and Ant Jones circa 1986. Detention provided so many "out of the frying pan" moments in education. Those who got detention for truanting, ironically prompting the pupils to miss it by playing truant yet again.
It's interesting looking at school rules seen on school websites, and the sanctions process with regards to detentions, and how some pupils can easily build a portfolio of detentions without even realising that they had done so sometimes, quite often chalking up (if you excuse the pun) several in one day. Missing a class detention leading to a Head of Subject or Head of Faculty detention, which led to a Deputy Head detention and so on. This Mount Everest of bad behaviour and misdemeanours eventually became "permanent exclusion" if one was the Sir Edmund Hilliary of rulebreakers. The bigger hole you deep, the more likely you are tp bury yourself with. Of course, we never had to write "I must not go to detention" 200 times - I wonder who would have done that? Looking through my rose-tinted spectacles (and I did used to wear them back then, sans the rose-tinted parts), detention wasn't that bad back in the day, or was it? I think that it was just who was taking it on that day. You decide...
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