Popular teacher Miss Rusty’s book charts her story

Stop Don't Read This tells the story of her dismissal from Calder High and the aftermath as well as the fictional account that led to the chain of events
  
  

Leonora Rustamova
Leonora Rustamova at her home in Huddersfield this weekend. Photograph: Photograph for the Observer by Steve Doherty/Guzelian Photograph: Photograph for the Observer by Steve Doherty/Guzelian

Dedicated teacher Leonora Rustamova has no regrets about the extraordinary events of the last two years. Working with the most severely disaffected students at a school in West Yorkshire, she wrote a novel especially for them.

Although it was a fictional account, rather inevitably the novel contained passages about drugs, smoking and truancy - as these were elements of the characters' lives that the students could identify with.

The book was erroneously posted on a self-publishing site without password protection, so was open for all to view. This simple mistake cost the popular teacher at Calder High in Mytholmroyd, her job, just over two years ago.

Such was the stress of events she says last year she was in a very dark place, following a breakdown.

Now the novel is being published and is wrapped in a memoir detailing the furore it caused at the time.

The students - Greg, Christie, Travis, Billie and Martin - collectively known as The Commie Boys will receive a share of the profits from the book.

Stop Don't Read This tells the story of five boys who break into school to delete CCTV footage as it shows them misbehaving. During the break-in they find a gang hiding drugs and tell the police.

The group were described to her as overtly racist, violent and misogynistic and were a pack who hunt like a pack.

During her first encounter in a school corridor in July they told her: "We've got you for English in September and we're going to break you."

When Rustamova began teaching the group, on a special alternative education programme, they refused to participate initially. They sat in front of her spraying deodorant on their arms and setting fire to it.

But, gradually, she was able to engage them and encourage them to write about their lives.

She began writing a chapter for them each week and would read it out on Friday with a caveat - if they had not been excluded that week.

When she was suspended after 11 years working at the school, a Facebook group was set up in support and pupils held demonstrations outside the school. She says she felt "terrible" for the five boys whom she had begun to engage.

She was dismissed in May 2009 for reckless disregard for confidentiality and child safeguarding issues.

The parents of the Commie Boys supported Miss Rusty - as she was known - and continue to do so.

She says the whole point of the book was using their name so they would feel valued. Her dismissal, she says, had a terrible effect on them.

An appeal against dismissal rejected her claim for unfair dismissal by a majority of just two to one in March this year.

The school's headteacher, Stephen Ball, had initially regarded the project as a triumph, praising her superb work. Once the book was uploaded she was called into the headteacher's office and escorted off the school premises.

Some colleagues were discussing in the staff room calling in on her for a cup of tea. They were taken to one side and warned not to contact her "under no circumstances."

Rustamova says an awful lot of her colleagues were sympathetic but were warned to keep out of it.

She says there had never been a suspension at the school in its history. "It was not exactly like Waterloo Road," she says of the school.

Despite the setback when she was dismissed, four out of the five Commie Boys finished school and one gained a B in English, while the others achieved higher exam results than predicted.

Rustamova is waiting to find out when her case will be heard by the General Teaching Council for England.

Whatever the outcome, she does not want to go back into a state school now. The Independent Safeguarding Authority is not investigating.

Rustamova remains upbeat. Had the events not happened, she muses, the book may not have been published, and writing the memoir proved cathartic and kept her sane.

Publication has been very positive for the boys, who are now 19. "It is frustrating being outside the system because there is so much that can be done for marginalised kids," she adds. "It is their book, it was their idea to write it and
it is something which they are fiercely proud of. I think it has broadened their perspective on life."

In March, she lost her appeal against dismissal but on a majority verdict in which she was strongly backed by the judge chairing the employment tribunal.

In a minority view, employment judge Burton, chairing the tribunal, said the headteacher's apparent shift in attitude was "troubling" and that there was evidence of a lack of objectivity in the panel of governors who approved disciplinary action against Rustamova.

Stop Don't Read This by Leonora Rustamova is published by Bluemoose Books.

 

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