FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Corridor of Death
Ever wondered why some headteachers choose to enforce silent corridors? Perhaps they remember the 00s.
As an occasional extra, I plan to share slightly re-edited or updated versions of old blog posts, particularly when they seem topical. Following recent debates about schools with silent corridors, I have decided to share this October 2006 post.1It describes my experience of teaching on the worst part of a poorly managed corridor.
Things fall apart
The worst news in teaching seems to arrive at the most inconvenient times. Friday afternoon, while preparing for an imminent lesson with bottom-set year 10, is not a good time for anything. However, that was when my Head of Department at Stafford Grove School,2 Martha, decided to tell me I was changing classrooms.
This meant:
I would have to spend hours moving.
All the preparation of my room I had already done was a waste of time.
I would have to use a room with an incredibly inconvenient layout.
If I had thought I had a choice, I would have refused point-blank. I later found out that another member of the department had been asked to change classrooms and threatened to leave rather than move down the corridor. However, I accepted my lot.
I knew the corridor through the department was unruly. I had raised this at the very first department meeting of the year. In particular, I pointed out that:
The “one-way system” in the corridor was never obeyed or enforced.
The lights were constantly being switched off.
The corridor was being used by approximately half the school population during lesson changeovers.
Of course, my comments were ignored by Martha and by Claire, the Deputy Head, who was also at the meeting.
The centre cannot hold
It was only after I’d moved to the middle of the corridor that I learnt just how bad the situation was. Immediately, I discovered that my year 11 classes had no intention of going the correct way down the corridor and that at the end of the school day, children would congregate outside my classroom in front of the fire escape. A few weeks later, I discovered that the fire escape was the main method of entry to the building for pupils skipping classes and for former pupils sneaking onto the site to commit petty theft. I discovered this when another teacher left my door unlocked, and I returned to find my desk had been kicked in and every item of value removed from the drawers3 Consequently, I also learnt that although there were CCTV cameras at both ends of the corridor, none had a view of my room or the fire exit opposite it. Similarly, I would later learn that bolting the fire exit, to prevent students breaking the rules by entering the building through it, was a violation of health and safety rules. Because different year groups had lunch at different times, this guaranteed that during any lesson taught for one year group during another year group’s lunchtime ten or twenty kids would accumulate loudly in the corridor outside my classroom, waiting for whichever lessons would follow mine.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
However, the repeated disruption and the numerous incidents of theft and vandalism that my classroom was subjected to were not the worst part of being in the middle classroom in the Corridor of Death. The many inconveniences of the classroom itself, such as the seating arrangements that prevented students from being visible, and the Interactive Whiteboard that didn’t work, were also not the worst part. The true threat from the corridor was a simpler one: violence. Not long after moving rooms, I saw a couple of the most emotionally disturbed students attempting to go the wrong way down the corridor when it was at its most crowded. In the resulting scrimmage, a couple of more experienced members of staff took part in physically restraining the two students (to shouts of “you can’t do that”). A few weeks later, my efforts to dissuade my year 11s from taking a shortcut by going the wrong way down the corridor soon established that other people’s year 11s would just push past me. As the weeks went on, I realised pushing and shoving of teachers was commonplace in the corridor. One tall male pupil pushed a female teacher up against the wall and held her there. Teachers began hiding in their classrooms.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed
As always in teaching, the first rule of behaviour management applied: “Whatever is normal is acceptable”. The corridor became the place to cause chaos. At the bottom of the corridor, there was a door to the roof, and it wasn’t long until it was broken open. It then became my duty to remove students from the roof. The violence became so normal that I looked up the rules on using physical restraint and began weighing in, physically pushing kids out of the fire exit when safety and order required it (as ever to the cry of “you can’t do that”). One year ten boy started turning up after school, standing outside my classroom and pushing and shoving to get in. After the third incident in which he assaulted me, I managed to get him suspended. It turned out that nothing had been done about the previous two incidents – I had foolishly reported them using the school discipline system.
And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned
The assaults from this boy were a key part of my decision to leave the school. Once I had got a job elsewhere, I felt far happier to ignore the chaos outside my room. The school’s Senior Management Team (SMT) didn’t care – I’d seen the headteacher let kids walk the wrong way down the corridor – so why should I enforce the rules there? However, it was only a matter of time before SMT would notice the violence in the corridor and look for teachers to blame. I was eating my lunch in the department office when the Assistant Head turned up to say the noise in the corridor was interrupting his lesson. He suggested that two colleagues and I give up our lunch to take shifts patrolling the corridor. I pointed out that:
It was not our job.
We had lessons to prepare.
We were not being paid to organise lunch duties.
Every person who was paid to manage the department was safely hidden on the other side of the school, as they were every lunch break.
He left, and the following day Claire called me into her office to complain about my lack of cooperation.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity
I pointed out that I’d raised the problem of the corridor at the start of the year. Also, I explained that nobody patrolled it during my lessons. Additionally, I reminded Claire that I was not being paid to organise lunch duties. Somehow, her efforts to tell me off ended up with her agreeing to raise the issue of supervision of the corridor at the next Senior Management Team meeting. Of course, nothing will ever actually be done. But with me long gone, the Corridor of Death becomes the responsibility of the next generation of teachers in the maths department at Stafford Grove School. Curiously, they mainly seem to be supply teachers on temporary contracts.
I can’t imagine why the school can’t retain permanent staff.4
You can find the original version of this post here. But the new version is much better and shouldn’t have random ads appearing.
This was not the real name of the school, but I was an anonymous blogger at the time, so fake names made sense. I won’t reveal the name of the school even now. I will say that it was the school attended by Sam Elliott, The ASBO Teacher, and I would recommend his book (affiliate link).
Admittedly, that consisted only of chocolate bars and gel pens I’d been storing as bribes prizes for my form.
A couple of years later, after a change of headteacher, I returned to Stafford Grove School for a promotion and in the hope the school would improve. This was probably the single biggest mistake of my teaching career.