It may very well be the "season of mists and mellow", but there is nothing mellow about the frenetic atmosphere of a staffroom or, if you prefer, teachers' room. In one well-known school the sign on the door says, "the professors' room". In early September this chamber resembles the war room of Dr Strangelove.
With Leaving Cert sighs and congratulations over, the scramble for territory in 2000-2001 is on. Old hands know how to colonise. Within seconds of admiring the new paint job they can be seen ruthlessly commandeering shelves, filing-cabinets and desk-tops by layering them with their files, books, bunches of precious photocopied material and overhead transparencies.
Meanwhile, the signals corps of the operations section is busy getting the year ahead booked and delivered to the Master Wall-Planner. Personal mobiles; the payphone; the only school extension land line and e-mail are overheating as teachers connect with group travel companies, theatres, historical and geographical sites. The atmosphere is pacey as the afternoon is scheduled for an in-service course in school discipline.
During the dying fall of the session, the tutor - a PhD in child development - entered reality zone when her wry tone betrayed that she knew the "whole-school" (current education buzzword) approach to discipline she had been advocating for the previous hour and a half was not going to be easy in "the Balkanised environment of the typical staffroom". I fancy I heard the history teacher murmur to the effect that the Balkans might not appreciate the metaphor.
Discipline is not a mere matter of innovative ideas for coping with uniform derogation, scant homework and poor punctuality, but for the creation and maintenance of a broad-based, positive humanist culture. The way towards implementing this culture sounds simple: have as few rules as possible. They must be also be reasonable and enforceable. Sanctions should be appropriate, known to all, and applied with justice.
The biggies - bullying, drugs and alcoholism - are matters of policy which are built in to the school plan and are under the stewardship of one person. The route ahead, one can predict, is marked with many meetings and halting sites. Indeed, halting sites and attitudes to non-nationals are subjects for the first meeting of the following week.
The last word on discipline is that matters of right and wrong are not the big issue. The new directive is, teachers should devise a strategy for agreement on what is right and wrong in a conflicted situation. Conflict must end in a win-win situation. Oh Solomon, where art thou now in our time of need!
