“Morning Bev, how are you?” I say before I’ve even managed to squeeze through the library doors.
“Morning love. Fine thanks, how's it going with you?”
It isn’t long before new members of staff discover the library at Langdon. Most mornings, post the rush of pale-faced students urging their homework to print faster, come the teachers wearing similarly anxious expressions.
Bev, Langdon’s longest serving librarian, makes sure neither gets away with being cheeky.
“You can’t come in here at all hours and expect it to be free” Bev reminds a member of staff as he apologetically reverses back out the doors.
But it’s not just the printer that keeps staff and students alike coming back to the library. Nor is it really, as you might rationally expect, the stock of books.
In a period of transition, the school library is mostly in storage or being ordered in. What remains is an eclectic display of old, new, and barely famous literature squeezed into four steel rows of shelves.
“It is what it is at the moment. It’s a work in progress” Bev says with a shrug of her shoulders. We sit enclosed in a circular desk space, in the centre of the room. Windows line three of the four walls of the room; from here you can keep watch on almost all of school life.
Set behind the main reception and nestled between the main school buildings, astro-turf and lunch hall, it’s fair to say that the library rests at the heart of Langdon.
Not quite a classroom, nor an office, as Bev explained, “It’s got its own identity”. Which its kept despite having moved all over the school. I suspect it’s Bev rather than library that has kept students and staff coming back.
“most people know me, it goes in one ear and comes out the other, safer sometimes not to remember things. But the important things you do remember. Most people come in, get it over with and it’s done and dusted.”
She’s been here 29 years. Born and raised in Hackney and at first a dinner lady, the chance to help a disabled student around the school led Bev to finally transition to behind the library desk, from where she’s watched patiently as all manner of life, and it turns out death, has unfolded.
“We’ve had teachers die. We’ve had students die. You see all sorts of life and death.”
“Even been to a couple of weddings of students who’ve been here.”
You can’t doubt that Bev finds it hard to make enemies.
Tucked, treasured, away behind her computer screen are pictures of her children and two grandchildren, twin boys. But for Bev, her maternal instinct has spread far wider, nurturing the last three decades of Langdon students.
“I think a school is a family in a sense, because I like to treat the kids the way mine were treated at school, try and help them when you can. Don’t know everything there gonna ask, but you try.”
The comparison sticks with me. Navigating different schools, students and senior leadership teams over the past few months, it’s fair to say that, much like families, schools are socially complex and occasionally infuriating. At the same time, they are also as selfless, nurturing and filled with unconditional support and care for students.
“It just takes one kid to say thank you and it makes all the agro of the year elevens worth it. One thank you says it all really”
It’s the same for Shuma, Langdon’s second longest serving librarian (although there are only the two of them).
“They feel like your own, you feel responsible for them, you want them to do well. My friends call me sad and they say it’s just a job and they’re not even your kids, you know.”
Shuma’s in her late twenties, bought up in East London she sees a lot of herself in the kids she works with.
“I wasn’t very good at school. I think that’s why I relate a lot to the kids as well. I liked school, I was good at it. I could bunk school, do a test and still do quite good. I don’t think I appreciated education until I went to Uni”
Always immaculately dressed, she has a patience with the students that reflects her upbringing as one of ten siblings.
“What you grow up around is what you take in” She explains, grateful for her parent’s liberal ideals and a reason why she’s come to love East Ham’s multi-culturalism. Because of this she’s keen to move back.
“It sounds stupid. But I’d want to live here. It feels like home. I want to raise kids how I grew up”
For Bev, looking back, her own family life was very different from the one her parents led.
Her father, travelled all over the country working as an electrician, building pylons just like the one at the edge of the school playing field in front of us.
She hadn’t wanted kids and had only told her parents she was getting married the week before the wedding.
“I wouldn’t change a thing now. I mean you’re just young and idealistic ain’t yeh and you think you know everything as a teenager. And as you get older you realise you don’t know everything and you never will.”
Shuma definitely believes she couldn’t have predicted ending up at Langdon.
“If you’d told me when I was at school that I’d me working in Langdon in the library. We had Miss Thompson, I’d be miss Thompson. I’d never had believed it, so sometimes you can’t plan everything, but education is so important.”
Over the afternoon of our conversations, lessons from school are limited and love for learning is something they both came to later.
Catching glimpses of classes held in the library over the years Bev admits that “it makes you think: ‘oh I wish I had listened a little bit more when I was at school.’”
“My husband always says to me, you’re a mind of useless information. I went, yep, it comes in handy at quiz nights.”
For Shuma she often wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t dropped out of college: “but I think that was my right time.”
Anxiety and pressure for schools to guide their students down the right paths, raise attainment and reach potential, ensuring that everyone has the right to pursue their passion are so dependent on the individual.
“I do think, you know, you can be with the wrong crowd. Not that they’re bad people now. But you’re interested in different things” Shuma admits.
Early that week we watch from behind the library desk as a boy wander over from the car park, moving his shoulders back and forth to over exaggerate his strides, slowing his walk so that he lags a couple of paces behind his father.
"He's a difficult one. Still I try to treat them all the same. Got to see the best in people" Bev says sagely.
“But I think with everybody, if you’re feeling a little bit down, it doesn’t hurt to be kind to someone, does it?”
There’s no real question about it. Rather it’s that kind of rhetorical discipline that emphasises that it’s not really about the books in this library, but the people.
All puns aside, this is a relatively novel idea as education skates down the precarious path of data driven bureaucracy. And perhaps why this library remains a sanctuary for staff and students alike.
“Morning love. Fine thanks, how's it going with you?”
It isn’t long before new members of staff discover the library at Langdon. Most mornings, post the rush of pale-faced students urging their homework to print faster, come the teachers wearing similarly anxious expressions.
Bev, Langdon’s longest serving librarian, makes sure neither gets away with being cheeky.
“You can’t come in here at all hours and expect it to be free” Bev reminds a member of staff as he apologetically reverses back out the doors.
But it’s not just the printer that keeps staff and students alike coming back to the library. Nor is it really, as you might rationally expect, the stock of books.
In a period of transition, the school library is mostly in storage or being ordered in. What remains is an eclectic display of old, new, and barely famous literature squeezed into four steel rows of shelves.
“It is what it is at the moment. It’s a work in progress” Bev says with a shrug of her shoulders. We sit enclosed in a circular desk space, in the centre of the room. Windows line three of the four walls of the room; from here you can keep watch on almost all of school life.
Set behind the main reception and nestled between the main school buildings, astro-turf and lunch hall, it’s fair to say that the library rests at the heart of Langdon.
Not quite a classroom, nor an office, as Bev explained, “It’s got its own identity”. Which its kept despite having moved all over the school. I suspect it’s Bev rather than library that has kept students and staff coming back.
“most people know me, it goes in one ear and comes out the other, safer sometimes not to remember things. But the important things you do remember. Most people come in, get it over with and it’s done and dusted.”
She’s been here 29 years. Born and raised in Hackney and at first a dinner lady, the chance to help a disabled student around the school led Bev to finally transition to behind the library desk, from where she’s watched patiently as all manner of life, and it turns out death, has unfolded.
“We’ve had teachers die. We’ve had students die. You see all sorts of life and death.”
“Even been to a couple of weddings of students who’ve been here.”
You can’t doubt that Bev finds it hard to make enemies.
Tucked, treasured, away behind her computer screen are pictures of her children and two grandchildren, twin boys. But for Bev, her maternal instinct has spread far wider, nurturing the last three decades of Langdon students.
“I think a school is a family in a sense, because I like to treat the kids the way mine were treated at school, try and help them when you can. Don’t know everything there gonna ask, but you try.”
The comparison sticks with me. Navigating different schools, students and senior leadership teams over the past few months, it’s fair to say that, much like families, schools are socially complex and occasionally infuriating. At the same time, they are also as selfless, nurturing and filled with unconditional support and care for students.
“It just takes one kid to say thank you and it makes all the agro of the year elevens worth it. One thank you says it all really”
It’s the same for Shuma, Langdon’s second longest serving librarian (although there are only the two of them).
“They feel like your own, you feel responsible for them, you want them to do well. My friends call me sad and they say it’s just a job and they’re not even your kids, you know.”
Shuma’s in her late twenties, bought up in East London she sees a lot of herself in the kids she works with.
“I wasn’t very good at school. I think that’s why I relate a lot to the kids as well. I liked school, I was good at it. I could bunk school, do a test and still do quite good. I don’t think I appreciated education until I went to Uni”
Always immaculately dressed, she has a patience with the students that reflects her upbringing as one of ten siblings.
“What you grow up around is what you take in” She explains, grateful for her parent’s liberal ideals and a reason why she’s come to love East Ham’s multi-culturalism. Because of this she’s keen to move back.
“It sounds stupid. But I’d want to live here. It feels like home. I want to raise kids how I grew up”
For Bev, looking back, her own family life was very different from the one her parents led.
Her father, travelled all over the country working as an electrician, building pylons just like the one at the edge of the school playing field in front of us.
She hadn’t wanted kids and had only told her parents she was getting married the week before the wedding.
“I wouldn’t change a thing now. I mean you’re just young and idealistic ain’t yeh and you think you know everything as a teenager. And as you get older you realise you don’t know everything and you never will.”
Shuma definitely believes she couldn’t have predicted ending up at Langdon.
“If you’d told me when I was at school that I’d me working in Langdon in the library. We had Miss Thompson, I’d be miss Thompson. I’d never had believed it, so sometimes you can’t plan everything, but education is so important.”
Over the afternoon of our conversations, lessons from school are limited and love for learning is something they both came to later.
Catching glimpses of classes held in the library over the years Bev admits that “it makes you think: ‘oh I wish I had listened a little bit more when I was at school.’”
“My husband always says to me, you’re a mind of useless information. I went, yep, it comes in handy at quiz nights.”
For Shuma she often wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t dropped out of college: “but I think that was my right time.”
Anxiety and pressure for schools to guide their students down the right paths, raise attainment and reach potential, ensuring that everyone has the right to pursue their passion are so dependent on the individual.
“I do think, you know, you can be with the wrong crowd. Not that they’re bad people now. But you’re interested in different things” Shuma admits.
Early that week we watch from behind the library desk as a boy wander over from the car park, moving his shoulders back and forth to over exaggerate his strides, slowing his walk so that he lags a couple of paces behind his father.
"He's a difficult one. Still I try to treat them all the same. Got to see the best in people" Bev says sagely.
“But I think with everybody, if you’re feeling a little bit down, it doesn’t hurt to be kind to someone, does it?”
There’s no real question about it. Rather it’s that kind of rhetorical discipline that emphasises that it’s not really about the books in this library, but the people.
All puns aside, this is a relatively novel idea as education skates down the precarious path of data driven bureaucracy. And perhaps why this library remains a sanctuary for staff and students alike.