Crossroads · Wed Jan 16, 23:24 by Eleri Straker
Before Christmas I gave my lovely yr 11 group and essay to do over the holidays. The title of this opus was to be “Crossroads.”
I wanted the students to think about their own lives, so I told them that they could either write a story about literal crossroads or to think of crossroads as a metaphor for something significant that had affected their lives. I wanted the thinkers of the class to follow the metaphor route so I spent a lesson telling them a story about how a particular series of events formed a crossroads in my own life that made me think differently about things. I then left them to it.
Gradually over the first few days of term the work began to trickle in, but owing to the immense pressure of yr 13 A level moderation I didn’t look at them immediately. Then yesterday I read a story by one of the sweetest natured boys in the group.
It was a story about a young boy who loved to dance. It was his whole life.
“Uh oh,” I thought, “Billy Elliot rip-off.”
But as I read, I realised that this wasn’t that story at all. Yes, there were similarities. But the insidious kind of bullying inflicted on the protagonist by his ‘friends’ was far too real to be fiction. As I read, I knew that I was reading something very special. I struggled to read the story. Not because it was badly written, quite the opposite in fact. It was the gut – wrenching honesty that stopped me. It was intensely painful to read.
A colleague, seeing me repeatedly put down the essay and sigh, asked me what the problem was. I told her that I was sure that what I was reading wasn’t fiction. She asked how I could be so sure so I explained that the kind of honesty in the work couldn’t be faked and that my instincts told me that it was real.
In the next lesson, I gave my student his work back and said quietly to him, “Real?” He nodded and said that he’d changed the names to “protect the innocent (!)” and that it was drama, not dance.
I asked him if things were better now and he smiled reassuringly and the girl sitting next to him linked her arm through his and said, “Of course, he’s got us now…”
I went back to my desk and watched him as he chatted happily to his friend, who I could hear was telling him how great he was. I had to swallow hard as I opened my register.
When he stood, later in the lesson to make a presentation to the class (more of this later), and held his colleagues’ in the palm of his hand, I knew that this boy had done more than beat the bullies, he’d conquered his demons and won
