How Troublesome Were Godolphin's Teachers?

Having all received the odd conduct concern at least once in our time at Godolphin, the Unpublished Team found themselves wondering what would happen if the spotlight of shame suddenly swung from troublemaker to teacher…After all, we were all young once, right? As the Easter half term grows alarmingly close, we delved into the depths of staff rooms, offices, and even lessons, to obtain the inside scoop on exactly how troublesome our very own staff were. It must be stated that certain troublemaking antics regrettably had to be excluded from this account, but rest assured - the Godolphin staff body hides sufficiently scandalous skeletons beneath their various layers of workplace-attire. 

Without further ado, let’s dive in…

(NB: Unpublished does not encourage any copycat crimes. Don’t be that person.)

Dr Goodall

“Like…really not at all. I was the most nerdy…neeky…yeah.” 

A promising start to this article most definitely NOT provided by this particular History teacher. Dr Goodall then tried to vainly smother the laughs of her A Level Early Modern History class at her “neek”iness by suddenly declaring:

“Oh! I used to have all frees on a Monday, and I would come in for P1, and then…just go home.”

I think the uproar of sarcastic outrage emitted by said A Level class at the sheer extent of Dr Goodall’s scandalous behaviour is the only appropriate comment we can make here. Someone tell this rebel without a cause to tone it down! There’s only so much craziness Godolphin can handle, Dr Goodall. 

Ms Whitby 

Just when we thought Dr Goodall’s crimes couldn’t be outdone, Ms Whitby (who began to giggle before the question “How much of a troublemaker were you at school?” had even been asked) shamelessly stole the spotlight. Though she professed that “unsurprisingly, I was not a troublemaker at school”, this Chem icon/Netball star admitted she “got one detention…for wearing CONVERSE… when those were not allowed in our uniform policy.” 

In true manic-pixie-dream-girl style, who proclaims she is “not like other girls” because she would rather wear converse to her high school dance instead of heels, Miss Whitby’s blatant rebellion against fashion conventions surely sent similar shockwaves through the halls of her secondary school. 

“To be fair, that was quite rebellious of me.”

Mr Grimble

The elusive English teacher was caught just before the weekend, and professed that although he wasn’t “massively” a troublemaker during his time at school, he did “get into trouble with the head when I was in Sixth Form, because I thought I could argue my way out of a few things”. Anyone who has been taught by Mr Grimble will agree that he most definitely has a (somewhat lengthy) way with words…many detailed discussions on ‘Milton’s machiavellian machinations’ (literally a direct quote) serve as testimonies to his talent. However, things really started to get interesting when Mr Grimble revealed that:

“I did almost get into trouble for going under the school stage, in through the sort of bowels of the school building, in our 1984 cast boiler suits. And for making mulled wine in those big tea urns.” 

Quite the mix here. Where to begin - Boiler suits? The bowels of the school building? Tea urns? The only comment Mr Grimble could offer on his mulled-wine-tea-urn escapade is that it “could, in hindsight, have gone quite badly”, though he professed that it “was for a Christmas Carol concert” and therefore, quite justified. 

Upon being asked to expand on the “cast boiler suits” and his exploration of the underground catacombs of his school stage, the mulled-wine-fanatic-turned-intrepid-explorer explained that “we did 1984 on stage and we ordered, like, boiler suits for being in…oh, whatever its called…Oceania! (his inability to remember the setting of such a pivotal novel was actually rather disappointing, considering Mr Grimble is LitSoc’s most dedicated member) and they doubled up as pretty good dust-covers for going underneath the school stage and crawling around through the building”. 

Although the question of why anyone would want to go “crawling around” anywhere is still rather nebulous, we thanked Mr Grimble for his candour and bravely pursued our investigation. 

Ms Swann

Though it took some convincing and many comforting repetitions of the phrase “honesty is the best policy”, Ms Swann went above and beyond our humble expectations.

“I was quite disruptive in lessons, usually because I couldn’t quite keep a hat on it…I was caught… oh god, I really don’t know if I should be saying this…I was caught burning hair in the back of a French classroom.”

Yep. You read that right. Evidently Ms Swann has been putting Bunsen Burners to good use since day 1. Perhaps this Chem teacher could have pursued a promising and decidedly unique hairdressing career path, if only the “grim” smell of burning hair hadn’t been too much for her. 

Unpublished: “Why were you burning hair?” (a very valid question, we feel.)

Ms Swann: “ sigh Because I wasn’t concentrating on the lesson.”

Ms Moule 

“Well that’s quite a big question, because obviously I was there for like seven years.”

Nothing escapes the keen eye of this English teacher!

“I was pretty good… I think I was pretty terrified in year 7 - I went to a very large school and it was not as nice as this one, so I was pretty scared most of the time.” Though this does sound like the typical Yr 7 experience, sympathy for Ms Moule began to thin once she described herself as “a bit of a know-it-all” who “used to correct people’s grammar”. #SPAGlifeornolife. #Youdon’tchoosetheEnglishlifetheEnglishlifechoosesthee. 

“I DO have a old story about my school life - we used to have to leave our bags outside the science labs, and me and a few others, our bags went missing, and after an EPIC trek across the school we eventually found them inside a hedge totally emptied of all our contents and our valuables.”

Though we do sincerely appreciate Ms Moule’s “EPIC” tale, in which she was forced to “crawl into the hedge to get my French exercise book”, this does make it sound as though she was situated on the receiving end of schooltime troublemaking…however, this English teacher was anything but dejected, as she “did get my iPod back in the end.”  Glad to know the really important valuables remained safe - God forbid one should find themselves without an iPod at any point in the 2000s. But don’t worry, our bloodhound-like interviewers did actually manage to obtain an answer to our original question:

“The most daring thing I ever did was lowering our teacher's chair. When we got up for a presentation one of my friends would lower the teacher's chair, so that when he sat back down it would be a bit further than he expected, and he would always let out a shout of surprise which we found very funny….In sixth form in particular we just had a lot of silly jokes about our teachers. I wrote a vampire story about our school, which I actually thought was quite a good satire.”

We believe we speak on behalf of every Godolphin student when we say that this vampire story MUST at all costs be found. Upon being asked whether this satirical novella marked the beginning of her passion for English, Ms Moule simply laughed and replied: “No, I was already pretty into writing stuff!”. Just the thought of this literary masterpiece having a potentially supernaturally-themed brother has got us excited. Stay tuned for the release.

Mr Rees

“Ummm… I wouldn't say I was a troublemaker, I was probably one of those people who was around the troublemakers but managed to get myself out of that situation. (So you were a trouble-enabler?) Trouble-enabler - yeah.”

Tactful evasion of blame and/or responsibility here. Evidently, this Señor is well-versed in the ways of consequence-avoidance. Our growing suspicions that Mr Rees’ self-proclaimed title of ‘trouble-enabler’ was, in fact, incorrect, were confirmed when it was discovered that “I went to a boarding school…and I was the only one who wasn’t made a Prefect in the boarding house.” 

We don’t know about you, but this feels a lot closer to trouble-making territory than trouble-enabling. The only one? The eyebrow of scepticism has now been officially raised. 

“Umm…what was the question again?” Trademark signs of panic - beads of sweat and conveniently-timed memory loss.

“The only thing I can say is that…I was probably not expected to become a teacher when I was at school. I think I was ready to leave school before I left school….I think I was ready to leave school before school left me?”

We reckon the tongue-twisting and confused grammar has given us all the proof we need - Mr Rees was most definitely a troublemaker during his time at school. Whilst we were able to extract a small anecdote, the true extent of his antics will, for the moment, remain shrouded in mystery. 

“We were with host families, and then obviously you have to go to bed by 9pm…and we’d wait until the host families were asleep, and then we’d sneak out. And then go to the beach, in Malaga.”

Will such nocturnal outings occur during this year’s Spanish trip to Granada? Only time will tell. 

(To be clear: NO nocturnal outings should happen in Granada. This is called satire. Unpublished is NOT encouraging you to sneak out ANYWHERE in a foreign country. Remember the NB at the beginning of this article. Thanks.)

Anna

“When I give the girls more food?”

One word: Icon. The people’s princess. After specifying that examples of her raucous behaviour had to be from when she attended school, Anna proceeded to laugh (for quite the extended period of time).

“It’s been too many years for me to remember.”

A likely story. We know Anna definitely has some skeletons in her closet…However, our brave journalists were brutally prevented from unearthing said skeletons by a queue of bull-like Year 7s, impatiently pawing the ground at the sight of tuck treats. For the safety and well-being of all involved, we thought it best to abort our mission and take cover. We’ll get you next time, Anna. 

Mr Carroll

“So I was in a very, very, highly trouble-making form, I went to a State Boys Grammar School, and recently I have re-met our philosophy and religion teacher - who is a founder of a major leadership organisation, and who taught me in year 9, but also coached me football - He was saying that our class was the worst class he ever taught.”

Classic Mr-Carroll-waffle not massively appreciated, but bonus points for mentioning just how far back his love of “major leadership organisation” really runs. To think that this CYL coordinator was probably dreaming of fire escape plans and ‘no-bags’ signs from his days as a Year 9 philosophy student.  

Mr Carroll revealed that although he “broke quite a few windows playing football” (perhaps what sounds like rather poor aim is the real reason this Maths wizz is at Godolphin today instead of becoming a second Beckham…), he “never had a detention” - the reason for this being that “in a charming sort of way” he simply “got away with things”.

Not sure how we feel about the self-description as “charming”, but we won’t burst anyone’s bubble in this particular article…rock on, Mr Carrol. 

Mr Sumner

“I was a fairly oblivious GCSE child (weren’t we all?) and therefore mostly, as long as I could get away with doing something, I wasn't going to disrupt a lesson - I always felt it was a silly thing to do”

Echoes of Dr Goodall’s earlier neekiness here…Thankfully, Mr Sumner proved himself to be somewhat less boring than his office counterpart upon further questioning.

“But I was also a boarding school student, um, and…let me put it this way: Dr Ramsey, who is a very nice kind of colleague and a lovely person to have as my headmistress, was also my house master when I was at school. And…I hope she is more fond of me now as a colleague, than she was frustrated with me perhaps as a student of hers.”

Is there more to this Physics/Econ teacher than meets the eye? The suggestion of a shady background was eagerly pursued by our committed interviewers, whose burning questions received the ambiguous and slightly worrying answer: “No one was hurt…well, that’s not true…”

“No one suffered any lasting debilitation from their injuries, would be the safest way of putting it. And everything was fully consensual. They agreed…whether they should have agreed…I mean, well, they’re now a doctor so perhaps they had the mindsight of ‘whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger’. But no, I'm not going to give the details for fear of copycat crimes. I think we’ll leave it at that.”

Intriguing and simultaneously unsettling. Particularly confused by the reference to a “‘What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’ mindset.” We’d like to boast that the full story was actually revealed to us off-record, but we are inhibited from sharing it due to our hardcore oath to maintaining our journalistic integrity. Stay jealous xx

Ms James

“Umm.. well I have something but I can’t say it”

Very helpful Ms James, thank you.

“*heavy sigh*...The worst thing I can share…”

An inordinate amount of rather extensive thinking time followed, until our interviewer - spurred by the increasing degree of standing-and-waiting awkwardness - was forced to ask:

“Was Acapella club really that lit?”

Thus terminated the interview. Acapella is evidently never a laughing matter.

Mr Mussared

“I was a bit of a troublemaker, not shockingly, but there were a couple brain fades that I did.” 

Unsure as to what “brain fades” are exactly - we suspect some strange form of Australian lingo. Unfortunately urban dictionary was of no help.

“I would say one of my worst ones was as a kid in primary school and I drew all over my table with a couple friends. And it was covered in stuff. casual shrug I was drawing…I can’t remember what I was drawing actually.”

Sure, Mr Mussared. I doubt the imagination of a primary school boy could really stretch very far, but we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

“There’s probably worse than that, but I don’t think I can say.”

Somewhat of a disappointing ending, what with his declaration of being “not shockingly” a toublemaker. We will just have to believe him and his alleged reputation. Maybe ‘trouble’ has a different meaning down under. 

That’s all from us today. Our verdict? Too much mystery for our liking…perhaps one day the entire scandalous rap sheet of our staff will be revealed. Until then, we’ll just have to wait in suspense…

Also: too many goody-two-shoes for our liking. Do better. Stay troublesome xx

Xoxo

The Unpublished Team