Introduction

My presence as I enter the classroom is barely acknowledged.

The students continue their private conversations with backs turned to the stranger, not bothering to hush their voices. Some slouch in chairs tilted on two legs, testing to see how aggressive an incline they can manage; the loud thud of teenager against wall indicating the loss of balance. Another group have started a war, hurling pages of debris at one another while their work books lay emaciated, growing thinner and thinner with each reload of paper.

I weave my way through the sea of premature hormones and assume my most confident posture at the helm of the room. No one takes notice. I am after all, merely a substitute and the students have been conditioned to expect a blissful reprieve from the strict standards, drudgery and rigid laws upheld by their regular teachers. Regardless, they should settle eventually – or so I was told at University.

Leaving the notional position of authority, I begin restlessly pacing the room and glaring at the more obnoxious individual renegades. I hope that this penetrating stare alone forces their compliance. But the perpetrators only meet my eyes for a second before returning to their roles in the anarchic orchestra. A handful of choice words surface in my mind; “disrespectful”, “arrogant”, “rude” and “entitled” amongst them.

I recruit the next weapon in my arsenal – my voice – opting for civil discourse and asking politely for the cohorts attention. It does not come. I try a second and third time, each attempt louder than the last until my vocal chords strain with the effort. Only to be drowned out in the cacophony of other noises.

The disarray in the classroom multiplies and with it, my frustration and angst. Despite my attempts to remain calm and measured, I am loosing control. Not that I ever had it in the first place. Even the polite, reliable students have joined the rebellion.

My physiology reacts, panicked; a quickening of the pulse and a shortening of breath. The adolescence sense this too, feeding off it. The clock tells me that 52 minutes remain until the symphonic toll of the school bell saves me.

Standing in front of the rambunctious adolescences’, I am desperately out of place. Unable to change the unfurling chaos, I am forced to change myself…