Mr C = Mr G?

I’m trying out a new coffee shop today. It’s not as trendy as my usual hangouts – but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With trendiness comes young customers – and large groups of noisy young people are not always conducive to the creative process.

I am trying to design a poster for the production. I do this every year – it never gets used – but it’s a thing I do. It’s very Mr G – which is VERY worrying.

For those of you who don’t know Mr G he is a fictional teacher from an Australian comedy series called Summer Heights High. It was a mock fly on the wall documentary looking at a single term in a state school. It was cringing, awkward, lacked all semblance of political correctness – and it was scarily near the truth. Well the truth as I see it working in state schools over here.

The creator, a man called Chris Lilley took on three parts in the show. An at risk year 8 boy called Jonah Takalua. He was hugely disruptive in class, made his teachers’ lives hell, but had an obsessive love of break dancing and shone with tear jerking enthusiasm when praised. I have known many Jonah’s in my time and I have to say that I felt a little shame when watching the discouraged teachers dealing with him in the entirely wrong way – for I too felt the frustration and irritation that they showed. At times I too did the completely wrong thing by my Jonahs. In my mind Jonah was the star of Summer Heights High. Lilley’s characterisation was spot on.

Character number two was Ja’mie King. A female private school exchange student who quickly took control of the popular set and set about controlling everything in a way that suited her extreme narcissism. Her manipulating ways are all too common in education – and not always confined to the pupils.

The final character was Mr G. A man who made me crawl into the foetal position on a weekly basis. His megalomania knew no bounds. David Brent from the Office would have cringed watching this man. And the worst thing about it, the thing that made me cry inside, was the fact that I saw so much of myself in him. He was a drama teacher who felt he was God’s gift to the school, and performing arts in general. He used the pupils in acts of self promotion that seemed so ridiculous, yet were not that far from reality – I was reminded of things I used to do in the pursuit of popularity. He went overboard at every opportunity designing professional looking posters for everything – from auditions to parking space signs to pie in the sky Performing Arts centres. Teachers that I have worked with will smile and be reminded of the times I spent creating logos, posters, everything… well, everything that didn’t really matter.

Watching Summer Heights High made me convinced I was going to change – I was going to concentrate on the things that mattered in education. I was going to focus on the needs of the pupils and throw out all the unnecessary window dressing – well, I’ll get right onto that as soon as I finish making this poster.