So here it is…

Merry Christmas – you made it! Definitely time for a beverage of your choice¹.

So, how was the last week for you? Did you have to keep students engaged up to today? Did you decorate your classroom? Give out Christmas cards to everyone in your tutor group²? Play carols during tutor time? Or maybe ‘Fairytale of New York’ with changed lyrics³?

You’ve done a Christmas Carol concert (possibly), Christmas lunch⁴, house competitions, secret Santa and eaten enough mince pies and shortbread to make a child version of you very, very jealous and it’s still not over yet. Now you have extended time with your tutor group to survive.

This is usually at the end of the day, killing time until the afternoon registers tick over into the time that means every student has been registered twice in the day so the school’s attendance figures don’t get hit by early closing. But god forbid you take your kid out of school early to get a cheaper holiday…

Extended tutor time is great fun if you have a great group of students and enjoy their company. It’s like scooping your eyes out with a spoon and no anaesthetic if not. I used to do a quiz on Fridays with my tutor group – questions like ‘what’s your favourite film?’, ‘favourite book⁵‘, ‘favourite song’ etc. One year, I asked what they were getting for Christmas.

The answers were illuminating and depressing. From the kid who was getting a pair of wellies that cost more than £250⁶ to the kids who didn’t want to say as they were probably getting nothing, or uniform or clothes. I’d intended it to be a nice end of term, but the disparity of students experience really upset me. I don’t want to get all maudlin here – there’ll be enough time for that when I’ve eaten my bodyweight in cheese and drunk enough beer to make Oliver Reed slightly jealous.

So, instead, I’ll give you a snapshot of how my previous school ended the term.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Singing Competition.

Lots of schools operate a house system, where students from all years are put into ‘houses’ which have some spurious link to the school or the local area. Ours were named after people like Drake, and when we changed them to birds of prey, the resulting outcry really revealed the casual racism that still exists in Britain. But I digress again, back to the competition.

So, the Heads of House are tasked earlier on in the term to pick a song that their house is going to sing on the penultimate day of term. These are usually themed in some way, and don’t have to be about Christmas. Over the years, the competition has morphed into choreographed routines, props and costumes (usually sumo-suits) with students belting out the song at the top of their voices. Tune? That’s optional compared to volume…

Whilst the judges deliberate who has won, the staff gather in the center of the hall and sing a Christmas song⁷. Then the judges announce the winners and they get to sign again, making it a bit of a poisoned chalice. Usually, we have underrun at this point, so have to do some impromptu karaoke to get to dismissal time.

Now, if this all sounds hideous to you, it all sounded ten times worse than that to me…

But then…

Something actually brilliant happens. It is absolutely glorious. Six hundred and fifty people all singing songs together is actually brilliant and ends up being really emotional. I  dreaded it every year, but always ended up loving it⁸. If you want a perfect distillation as to why working with kids is brilliant, things like this are it. It really is wonderful⁹.

Until next year.

Footnotes

1. Tea, obviously during term time, but now it’s time for something a little more daring. Perhaps a caffeinated tea after 4 pm. ↩︎
2. Including those who don’t celebrate Christmas, like I did one year. D’oh! ↩︎
3. Even the Pogues have denounced their original version, so jog on if you’re going to do the ‘politically correct’ faux outrage on this one. ↩︎
4. Usually extended, showing how much of a lie ‘every second counts’ is ↩︎
5. Always entertaining with teenagers this one. When did it become cool to not only not read, but boast about it? Wearing your ignorance as a badge of honour is not the flex you think it is… ↩︎
6. Seriously? They’re wellies, for fuck’s sake. ↩︎
7. Last Christmas by Wham was always popular, especially as it then Whamageddoned everyone in the room. ↩︎
8. Well, maybe not the staff singing bit, as despite my Welsh heritage, I cannot sing at all. ↩︎
9. I resisted the urge for a famous Christmas saying here. Can you tell? ↩︎