露西•凱拉韋：凌晨3點在一身冷汗中驚醒後，返回倫敦東區這所綜合學校的教室，讓我既有理由擔憂，也有理由精神振奮。
全文共1592個詞，by Lucy Kellaway
A queue of 14-year-olds has formed outside my classroom. There is no teacher inside because I have forgotten I’m meant to be teaching Year 10 first period. Late and panicking, I hurry to greet my students but can’t remember their names and don’t recognise their changed faces behind their masks. With no lesson prepared I stand rooted to the front of the class — as the government has instructed all teachers to do — and start singing (badly) the songs from the musical Hamilton. At this point, the principal walks into my classroom and asks what the hell I think I’m doing.
一隊14歲的孩子排在我的教室外面。裡面沒老師，因為我忘了我是來給10年級的學生上第一節課的。我遲到了，還慌慌張張的，我急急忙忙和學生們打招呼，但想不起他們的名字，認不出口罩後面誰是誰。沒備課的我紋絲不動地站在教室前方——就像政府指示所有老師要做的那樣——開始（難聽地）唱起音樂劇《漢密爾頓》(Hamilton)中的歌曲。就在這時，校長走進了教室，問我到底在幹什麼。
At the beginning of every school term I have anxiety dreams about being unprepared for my classes but never have the dreams been as vivid or as bad as this time. Before the first day back I wake in a sweat at 3am and arrive at school to find my colleagues have been suffering similar night-time tortures. If returning to school after a gap of nearly six months is this stressful for us, what will it be like for the children?
每學期開始時，我都會做些關於自己沒備課的噩夢，但從沒像這次這麼生動或糟糕過。返校前一天，我凌晨3點就在一身冷汗中驚醒了，到了學校，發現同事們也做了類似的噩夢。如果時隔近六個月後重返學校對我們這些教師壓力這麼大，那對孩子們又會如何呢？
Photo credit: Getty Images
The first day turns out to be a relative doddle, as it’s teachers only. I arrive at the red-brick building and let myself in with a pass I last used on March 20. It still works. Reception looks identical. Upstairs in the maths office there is my desk. There are my colleagues, and the principal — all are exactly as they were.
結果，第一天相對輕鬆，因為只有教師到校準備。我來到紅磚教學樓，用門禁卡進了樓，上回用它還是在3月20日。門禁卡還管用。前臺看起來沒什麼變化。樓上的數學教研室有我的桌子。同事們，還有校長，都在——而且跟以前一模一樣。
Not everything is the same of course, but the new guidelines seem manageable enough. There is a new timetable with staggered starts and breaks so the year groups can be in 「bubbles」. Every desk must be disinfected between lessons. All of us are issued with a visor and told it is 「advisable」 to put it on if we need to leave the front of the class to write in a student’s planner.
當然，不是一切都沒變，但是新的指引似乎可以應付。有一份新的課程表，各年級錯開上課與下課時間，讓每個年級呆在各自的「氣泡」中。每張課桌都必須在課間進行消毒。學校給每個教師發了一個面罩，並建議我們「最好戴上」——如果我們需要離開教室前面，在某個學生的記事簿上寫點什麼。
Photo credit: Getty Images
For the students, the school year starts in stages. First come the little Year 7s in their enormous new blazers and their badly tied ties. They seem pretty anxious, but the new kids always are at this east London comprehensive as it is one of the strictest schools in the country. The awesome display of discipline in the hall first thing is the same as in previous years — only with the added novelty that the member of staff in charge of retying the most wayward neckwear makes a point of sanitising his hands before he touches each quaking 11-year-old and putting on a stretchy black face mask that makes him look like a cat burglar.
對學生來說，本學年是分階段開始的。首先返校的是7年級的小傢伙們，他們穿著偏大的新校服，打著糟糕的領帶。他們看上去很焦慮，但在倫敦東區的這所綜合學校(comprehensive school)，新生看上去總是焦慮的，因為這是全英最嚴格的學校之一。開學伊始在學校禮堂舉辦的令人敬畏的紀律展示和往年一樣——只是增加了一點新鮮感：負責將那些最不像樣的領帶重新系好的工作人員，在給每個顫抖的11歲孩子重新系領帶之前，都會特意用消毒液先給自己的雙手消毒，還戴著一個拉伸至最大的黑口罩，使他看起來像個飛賊。
The next day the older year groups pour through the school gates, buzzing with excitement. I have no difficulty recognising my students, even though some of them have grown so much that instead of looking up at me they now have to bend their heads to meet my eye. I spot a boy who was last seen back in March punching the air in delight at the school closing. He, along with half the students at the school, is on free school meals — suggesting his living quarters were not the most compendious place to be cooped up in — and, as with 40 per cent of his peers, has spent lockdown doing precisely no work at all.
第二天，高年級的學生們興奮地嚷嚷著湧入校門。我一下子就認出自己的學生，儘管他們中的一些長高了許多，以前他們要仰望我，現在卻不得不低下頭來才能與我對視。我注意到一個男孩，上次見到他是在3月，學校要停課時，他開心地向空中揮拳。他和學校裡一半的學生一樣，有資格享用免費校餐——似乎表明他家裡的居住條件並不好，不會適合長期居家抗疫——而且就像40%的同齡人一樣，他在封鎖期間什麼作業都沒做。
Photo credit: Getty Images
「Are you pleased to be back?」 I ask.
「高興回來嗎？」我問。
「Yes Miss,」 he replies swiftly. From the smile on his lips I think he means it.
「高興，老師。」他不假思索地回答。從他嘴角的微笑來看，我想這是他的真心話。
Many of the students have, like me, spent the night before in wakeful anxiety, but once through the gates found everything spookily normal. 「It’s just, like, school, yeah?」 as one student put it.
很多學生都像我一樣，在返校前一天晚上惴惴不安，可一旦邁進校門就發現一切正常得不可思議。「就像學校，不是嗎？」一個學生這樣說。
This, it occurs to me, is the beauty of routine. Its effect on us is so overwhelmingly powerful that it seems, for the first few days at least, to have trumped any trauma of lockdown. But even though I’m stuck by my students』 sangfroid, I’m not entirely deceived by it. I have just sat through a safeguarding session warning that any pupils with existing mental health problems are likely to be in worse shape than they were in March, and that others will have suffered from anxiety, self-harm, insomnia and abuse. I scan the face of one student I’m particularly worried about and ask how she is.
我意識到，這就是規律生活之美。它對我們的影響如此強大，以至於至少在最初幾天，它似乎戰勝了封鎖經歷留下的傷痕。但是，即便學生們的淡定給我留下深刻印象，我沒有完全被矇騙。我剛參加了一次兒童保護培訓，會上警告稱，本來就有精神健康問題的孩子，現在的狀態可能比3月時更糟，而其他孩子可能遭受焦慮、自我傷害、失眠和虐待的困擾。我端詳著一個我特別擔心的學生的臉，問她還好嗎。
Photo credit: Getty Images
「Good, Miss,」 she answers straight back.
「我還好，老師。」她直截了當地回答。
Just wait, warn more experienced colleagues. It is too early to see the problems. Give it a few weeks.
更有經驗的同事警告，等等看吧。現在可能看不出什麼問題。得觀察幾周。
As well as worrying about my students, I’m also worried I will have forgotten how to teach, so have planned my first lesson within an inch of its life. I know it’s going to be harder than usual teaching my Year 11 class — the gaps between them were wide enough anyway and now will be worse.
除了擔心我的學生，我還擔心自己會忘記怎麼授課，所以我精心計劃了我的第一堂課。我知道教11年級會比平時更難——這些孩子之間的差距本來就很大，現在只會更糟。
Photo credit: Getty Images
Third period on Monday finds the real me, unlike my dream self, in the playground on time to collect my Year 11 students from their line-up. I march them to the classroom where they each take a piece of tissue while I squirt disinfectant on their tables.
周一的第三節課揭示了真實的我，與夢中的我不同，我準時接手已在操場上排隊集合的11年級學生，然後帶著他們走向教室，讓他們每人拿一張紙巾，同時往他們的課桌上噴消毒液。
So far so good. I』ve planned some dead easy questions, starting with the almost insultingly basic 「What is GDP?」 to get them in the swing of things and give them some confidence. I set them to work and squint at their books from a safe distance.
到目前為止都還不錯。我準備了一些非常簡單的問題，從幾乎侮辱他們智商的基本常識問起：「什麼是GDP？」，以此讓他們進入狀態，同時給他們一些信心。我讓他們寫下答案，然後從安全距離偷瞄他們的練習本。
GDP is Gross Demand Production, writes a student who used to know this sort of thing. Other students do equally badly, which is more than disappointing given that they spent two whole months studying GDP last autumn. I would be in despair were it not for one thing. The students who gave wrong answers seem unusually keen to know the right ones and are eagerly writing them down in green pen.
一個以前知道這類事情的學生寫道，「GDP就是總需求產出」。其他學生同樣答得一塌糊塗，想到他們去年秋天花了整整兩個月學習GDP，這讓人格外失望。要不是因為一件事，我會產生絕望感：答錯了的學生似乎異常渴望知道正確答案，並急切地用綠色的筆把正確答案記了下來。
I ask the other teachers if they have noticed an unusual hunger for knowledge and they say they have. What is happening here? Is it that having been deprived of education for so long, the students now value it more?
我問其他老師是否注意到了一種對知識的異常渴望，他們說注意到了。這是怎麼回事？是不是因為有好久被剝奪教育機會，學生們現在更珍視這種機會了？
How long is this keenness going to last, I ask a senior colleague. Same for them as it is for us, he says. They』ll be flagging before half-term.
這種熱情能保持多久，我問一位資深同事。和我們一樣，他說。不到期中假(half-term)他們就會鬆懈下來。
The gaps are only one problem. A second is that, with half a year’s work to catch up on, as well as previous work forgotten, I am going to have to teach the rest of the course at breakneck speed to cover the syllabus before the exams next summer. I am clear about this: the best way I can help my students is by mounting the biggest spoon-feeding operation ever. They need to get good grades to get a decent start in life — for most of them, there are no safety nets.
差距只是一個問題。第二個問題是，由於有半年的教學內容要趕上，加上之前學過的都被他們忘了，我將不得不在明年夏天考試前以驚人速度教完教學大綱上剩下的內容。我在這一點上態度明確：我能幫助學生的最佳途徑就是進行有史以來最大規模的「填鴨式」教育。他們需要取得好成績才能有一個體面的人生開端——對他們中的大多數人來說，人生沒有安全保護網。
For their sakes I will slavishly teach to the exam, but my heart is heavy. Lockdown has made the government act as if GCSEs and A-levels were the point of education; it is as if they have forgotten that exams are merely proof that you』ve acquired some.
為了他們，我會刻板地教他們應試，但我的心情很沉重。封鎖使政府表現得就好像GCSE考試和A-Level考試成了教育的全部意義；他們似乎忘了，考試只不過證明你學到了一些東西。
But the saddest thing of all for a teacher of macroeconomics is that everything the textbook says about fiscal policy is now wrong. Most laughably it says that governments strive to balance their budgets.
但對於一位宏觀經濟學教師來說，最悲哀的莫過於教科書上關於財政政策的一切內容現在都是錯的。最可笑的是，書上說各國政府會努力平衡預算。
Towards the end of Monday’s lesson, I let slip that UK government debt has now risen above £2tn, and it’s not the end of the world because interest rates are so low money is virtually free.
周一快下課時，我順便說起，英國政府的債務目前已上升到2萬億英鎊以上，而這不是世界末日，因為利率這麼低，錢幾乎是免費的。
「Yes but Miss,」 one of my more average students pipes up. 「I’m not being funny, but what if interest rates go up, then won’t they have to pay back a massive amount of money?」
「是的，可是老師，」一個成績平平的學生突然插話說。「我不是在開玩笑，但如果利率上升了，難道他們就不用還一大筆錢麼？」
Were it not for social distancing and were it not for child protection rules that forbid that sort of thing, I would have hugged him. As it was I gave him an achievement point and hugged myself instead. There is a point in teaching. The children want to learn. It’s not easy, but at the precise moment of writing this, still on a high from being finally back at school, I think it may all work out just about OK in the end.
如果不是要保持社交距離，而且兒童保護條例禁止這麼做，我會擁抱他。面對現實，我只能給他一個績點，然後抱了抱我自己。教書是有意義的。孩子們想學習。這並不容易，但此時此刻，終於複課讓我精神振奮，我想最終也許一切都可以解決。
Lucy Kellaway is a co-founder of Now Teach and a former FT management columnist
露西•凱拉韋(Lucy Kellaway)是Now Teach聯合創始人，英國《金融時報》前管理專欄作家
本文2020年9月21日發布於FT中文網，英文原題為 Lucy Kellaway heads back to school — anxiously
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