A Written Reprimand Is Not Luggage, Said the Colleague

In 1983 a twenty-three-year-old started teaching singing at a school in Riga with an extended day, which meant the children stayed until late afternoon. One November afternoon she went home at the end of her lessons, leaving a group of second-years without anyone to take them on to where they were supposed to be.

The second-years filled the gap with noise, outside a colleague’s door. The colleague complained. The head issued a written reprimand.

She carried it everywhere. Into the staff room. Into lunch. Into the hall, where she played piano for the rhythmics lessons taught by an older colleague who had been running them for years: a march, a skip and a waltz.

The older colleague noticed the tempo before she noticed anything else. The march was fine. The skip was adequate. The waltz had gone heavy.

Thirty children in plimsolls went round the hall at the speed of a reprimand.

After the lesson the older teacher sat on the end of the piano bench and asked what had happened. The young one told her all of it. The colleague listened, then said, more or less: a reprimand is not a suitcase. You do not have to carry it around with you.

I have carried one for eleven years. It was not written. It was spoken, at a parents’ evening in Copenhagen, by a Year 2 teacher, who mentioned that the eldest was “a confident boy who could perhaps listen more, like his mother”.

Like his mother. I have taken those three words to four countries. They have been in every parents’ evening since. I listen so hard now that teachers become uneasy and check whether I am all right.

My husband has heard the story roughly two hundred times. Last week, while I was explaining it to a new friend in Brussels, he said quietly, “Suitcase,” and went to make tea.

The young Riga teacher’s story ends neatly. The next day she made sure her children got where they were going, and she never left a group again. She found her folder lighter. The waltz recovered.

Mine is still in progress. I have decided to put the three words down, as advised. I have written them on a card and put the card in a drawer.

The drawer is in the hall, by the front door. I check it before every parents’ evening, to make sure it is still there.