It was many years ago, the sort of many 
years ago when documentation meant 
a handshake and trust was something 
you handed out freely, like biscuits in a 
staffroom.
Many years ago, when my beard was still 
black, I travelled to Maryland in the USA 
to visit a friend who was also a teacher. 
Due to different term dates they still had to 
work for the first few days of my holiday. 
On my second day they asked if I fancied 
visiting their school and I happily agreed. 
This was no ordinary school though it 
was a school where the most disruptive 
students from across Baltimore were 
bussed in on the traditional American 
yellow school buses to attend a variety 
of different vocational courses. Like HGS 
a very selective school, just with a very 
different basis for their selection criteria.
I enjoyed my day at the school. During one 
of my friend’s lessons they arranged for two 
students to give me a tour of the school, 
two charming girls who came from their 
regular school to study health and beauty 
here. Before I knew what was going on they 
had me sat in the beauty studio having my 
hair cut and the only manicure and pedicure 
I’ve ever had in my life.
On the third day of my visit, over 
breakfast, my friend mentioned, in the 
tone of someone more used to 
asking another person to pass 
the salt, that they were short-
staffed at school.
“Do you fancy coming in 
again?” he asked. And as the 
previous day had been quite 
enjoyable, I agreed
On our arrival at school, we were greeted 
by the Principal who was very pleased 
to see me and thanked me for coming. 
There was no office, no sitting down, no 
mention of identity verification. Just a firm 
handshake and a level of gratitude usually 
reserved for organ donors. 
“Thanks for helping us out today”. he said.
It was said with such certainty that it felt 
impolite to ask follow-up questions. Not 
that there was time. And so in that moment 
I had agreed to become a fully operational 
member of staff in an American school. 
Within minutes I found myself standing in 
front of a classroom and being looked at 
by approximately 20 children who seemed 
as surprised to see me as I was to see 
them. There had been no safeguarding 
checks, no briefing, no guidance beyond 
a vague indication of what Maths topic I 
might teach (and even that seemed more 
like a suggestion than a requirement). I 
spent the first few minutes establishing the 
basics - names, expectations, and the fact 
that I was, despite all available evidence, 
a legitimate adult in the room with some 
understanding of Maths and of teaching. 
My English accent helped. It lent me an 
authority I had not necessarily earned but 
was happy to borrow.
“Where are you from?” one girl asked.
“England,” I said.
“Will you marry me?” was 
her next question
This was met with a level 
of interest normally given 
to unusual animals. For a 
while, the lesson became 
less about the planned content and more 
about me saying words like “aluminium” 
and being asked to repeat them, as if I were 
a sort of linguistic exhibit. It bought time, if 
nothing else, and I managed to find some 
board markers in a drawer along with a 
Casio -fx calculator. Now I felt ready, so my 
Maths lesson was about to begin. There 
was even a moment when briefly it felt like 
actual learning might be more interesting to 
them than my Englishness.
By my second lesson I had realised that 
no one was coming to check on me. No 
senior leader appeared at the door with a 
clipboard; no helpful Head of Department 
came to help, or at least to check I was still 
alive. For all practical purposes, I had been 
installed and then politely forgotten about. 
No alarms were triggered. No incidents 
required escalation, partly because I didn’t 
know how to escalate anything even 
if something had happened. All things 
considered it was turning out to be a 
successful day.
At lunch, a few staff members spoke with 
me in the corridor and the staff room with 
the easy acceptance of someone who 
assumes you belong because you appear 
to. No one asked who I was again. The 
system, such as it was, had absorbed me 
completely. I even had an argument in the 
staffroom with a teacher who firmly believed 
that owning an automatic pistol was a basic 
human right. The Principal reappeared 
as I was preparing to leave, thanked me 
again with the same sincerity, and that was 
that. No paperwork, no feedback form, 
no suggestion that this had been anything 
other than entirely normal.
Coming to America
Looking back, it felt less like a formal experience and more like I had briefly stepped into an alternative version of education where the barriers 
to entry were low and trust was high. Possibly too high. It’s hard not to contrast the U.S. school I visited with with present day schools, where 
safeguarding is rightly a structured and rigorous process involving checks, training, and systems designed to protect everyone involved. 
Looking back there was something quietly absurd about the whole episode: the speed of it, the simplicity, the sheer confidence that by simply 
saying ‘I am a teacher’ I was regarded and accepted as a fully-fledged qualified teacher.
I had gone to America for a visit. I left realising why there are so many problems in American schools.
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