Bonhomie is me

The police don’t do it but headteachers and politicians do. Whilst we all pound the beat on our respective patches, the real law enforcers discreetly keep their distance, striding purposefully on with an expression that conveys decisiveness. You never catch them asking everyone what their state of health is as they walk by.

Aloofness might be a characteristic to get some training on. Does it come only with helmet wearing and a chunky mobile or can anyone do it? In contrast, I go around enquiring how it’s going of everyone I meet. I’m programmed, like soap powder in a washing machine, to inject brightness. Even on the most miserable of days, bonhomie is me.

‘All well?’ I cheerily ask a senior colleague at the end of a particularly difficult week. I soon realise it was a mistake. For there are times when optimism, that essential characteristic in school leaders, can look like naivety, lack of awareness or even folly.

He’s thinking: ‘What’s the head got to be so cheerful about? He can’t know the half of what’s going on or he’d be having a nervous breakdown in his office.’ And I’m thinking: ‘The leadership manual tells me I must be relentlessly positive in the face of all adversity.’ So the smile stays fixed. The Captain of the Titanic would have been proud of me.

The teacher had just finished bus duty and all was far from well. A day of truanting and possible substance abuse from a couple of boys had led to unavoidable confrontation. It may have been the mood-enhancing quality of the substance, the start of the weekend, or perhaps the ‘broken society’ but the response from the students to a polite request was loud, personal and laced with sexual innuendo of an exotic variety. The other youngsters and some parents listening must have thought they were at the premiere of an adults only film.

I sigh in sympathy, switch off the smile and replace it with a determined expression that’s supposed to convey weighty assurance of firm action. I’m signalling that they won’t get away with it. Consequences will follow as surely as the school bells ring on the hour. Fixed term exclusion is my conclusion. But with it comes the time-consuming, energy-sapping paraphernalia of phone calls, letters, meetings and support plans. And any thought of a quick after-school getaway vanishes as the process has to be started straightaway.

Who’s being punished here, I wonder, as we wait for the first parent to answer. Will it be an abusive complaint that it’s our fault for letting him leave the site or an understanding apology? Once, on such an occasion, a parent told me he was on his way to sort me out, casually adding that he was bringing his gun. Fortunately, by the time I’d been coaxed out of the locked store cupboard where I’d taken up residence, my deputy had got through to the police to be told the gunman had handed himself in.

Calls made, I feel in control again. There may be horror stories now on the street of indiscipline and extraordinary rudeness at the secondary school, but I’m sticking with unremitting optimism. It’s a mantra to memorise, like those lines teachers used to set their pupils as punishment. And it’s Friday night, after all. So you won’t catch me kicking the wall or screaming in protest, though I might give the Jacuzzi at my local health club some stick later. And I may just practise an aloof smile, ready for the next crisis.