I’m teaching a boy named Drayton. He’s from a typical Coventry family. I should know. I went to school in ‘Cov’. It seems like only the day before yesterday I was hopping the fence with Drayton’s older brother to go to KFC. But that was ten years ago. These days, Drayton orders an Uber Eats to be delivered through the palisade bars of the steel fence. And I’m the one in authority who is supposed to be reining him in.
‘Easy, Bossman. What we doing today?’ is how he addresses me as he enters my classroom.
‘Now, now, Drayton. It’s Sir, to you,’ I say.
‘Yeah, dat’s calm, innit.’ Which means that’s OK with him.
He asks me for a pen, then a pencil and finally a ruler as he does his work. I’m half expecting to hear ‘Got any tunes, boss?’ from his seat at the back.
The clashes of my wild years have given me an invaluable insight into dealing with disruptive characters
I’m a next-level geography teacher.
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