For the Girl in Row 5

It’s easy money.

Walk slowly, hands behind your back, checking no one is cheating.

Up and down the rows of desks, quietly handing out tissues, pens.

For a teacher of 5 year olds, exam invigilation with 16 year olds

is a breeze.

Some children look anxious, one girl is biting her nails hard,

another wrings her hands while looking around, her brow furrowed.

The lead teacher reads the rules in such ominous tone,

I wonder what his normal speaking voice sounds like.

“Write your full name and the centre number on your paper.

Any cheating and you will be disqualified. You may begin.”

Simultaneously, 120 teenagers pick up their pens and write.

It’s 1:15pm.  It will be a long two hours. 1:17pm, a boy raises his hand.

Already? I make my way to his desk, and he whispers for a tissue.

I walk back to the front, fetch the box of tissues, and return to offer him a couple.

I look at the clock again.  Only 1:18pm.

I stand still now and look up and down the rows in the vast room.

The children are focussed, some writing furtively, in deep concentration;

others hold a calculator, moving their lips as they read the question again, to be sure.

Then I see her.  Fifth row, 3^rd seat from the front.

She is sitting back, hands clasped in her lap.

Her paper is facedown on the desk.  She is looking around the room,

perhaps hopeful an adult will notice her, and witness her subtle rebellion.

I watch her for a moment.  Catching her gaze, she shoots me a defiant look.

What is she trying to say?  She can’t do it?  She hasn’t studied? She’s scared?

Or maybe she simply doesn’t give a shit about year 11 biology?

Suddenly, the room fades into the background and I feel compelled to run to the child.

“Come on, it’s okay,” I would say.  “I’ll help you,  please just have a try at your exam!”

Imagining her home, in this deprived part of town, I don’t want her to blow it.

Maybe her father is in prison? Or just gone?

Maybe she has an older sister who has raised her while their mother worked nights?

I have to do something.  It’s now 1:26pm.  She’s taken a bracelet off her wrist.

It’s a jelly bracelet, like a little girl might wear.  She’s cleaning the crevices with her nails.

I want to plead with her, beg her to give it a shot, tell her she can do it.

I want to save her, in this room, as all her peers make their best attempt at a pass.

I catch her eye again, and making sure none of the other teachers are watching me,

I mouth to her “Are you okay?”

She nods now, but doesn’t smile.

Out of somewhere, a wave of emotion rises up in my chest like a riptide.

Fearing I’m on the brink of tears, I turn away from the rows of children,

trying to ground myself.  “Breathe. Feel your feet on the floor….” I begin, silently.

I distract myself and begin reading a notice taped to the wall of the sports hall.

I see the words but I don’t take them in.  My mind is on regaining my composure.

Get a grip, I tell myself.

I take some soothing breaths, and slowly turn around again to face the desks.

I look at the girl in row 5, and she’s on the first page.

I feel a rush of fresh relief.

Her young fingers are curled around her pen, her head cocked to the side as she reads.

Another child raises their hand, and I approach.  She asks for a cup of water.

“Of course, darling.”  I whisper gently, before delivering it with a warm smile.

I look back at the girl in row 5, curious about where that sadness swelled from.

She glances up, perhaps feeling me watching her.  I smile now and she smiles back, weakly.

Then I understand what just happened. I was her.  At 16, I couldn’t focus on schoolwork.

I rarely knew the answers in exams.  Sometimes, I just wrote my name, and nothing else.

Near the end of the allocated exam time, an older male teacher approaches me.

His breath smells and he stands too close.  He comments on the tedium of invigilation.

I tell him I find the hardest part is watching children struggle, their anxiety palpable.

“If you had been teaching them all year, and they had paid no attention in class,” he replies,

“You’d have no sympathy for them now!” I try smiling politely, but I can’t make eye contact.

You don’t even know me, I think to myself, kids like us – me and the girl in row 5,

we are hiding more pain than you can imagine.

 

That’s why we skip your classes.

That’s why we come to exams unprepared.

That’s why we sit there feeling angry, disempowered, misunderstood.

 

We sit there feeling afraid.  Afraid because we couldn’t study,

because we have bigger things to worry about.

Like surviving.

We deserve every bit of sympathy available to us, damn it.

And I walk away from him, feeling full of admiration for the girl in row 5.

 

 

Photo by Erik Lucatero on Unsplash