from page to stage

“Some things are just designed to be read aloud I guess.”

That was a comment from one of my year 12s earlier. And it was one of several events which restored my faith in Literature this week – well, maybe ‘restored’ is the wrong word; maybe ‘reaffirmed.’

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Don’t tell anyone but I’m a sucker for a good sonnet. Even one as popular as #18 - Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day. Normally I try to forgo the popular choice in favour of a path less trod but I like this one.
Of course I got the usual groans when I handed out copies to my year 12 literature class. They tell me they’re not Shakespeare fans. They tell me that they find his language a barrier rather than a selling point. They tell me he is rammed down their throats so much that they can hardly breathe and they feel under undue pressure – that if they don’t like the bard they believe they are seen as lesser beings. I try to understand, but I can’t empathise. After they read through this particular poem, making first impression annotations, their mood was no better.
“It’s gay!” announced one of my more vocal girls. “If some lad said something like that to me I’d finish with him there and then.” There was general murmured approval and so she continued, “I’d worry greatly about his sexuality.”
“Because he writes poetry?”
“Because he wrote a poem about a type of love that doesn’t exist. It’s sickly sweet and unrealistic”
I found it hard to argue against that – so instead I took them through the poem a bit at a time and looked at the mechanics – I find this an uninspiring task but it has to be done. And finally, as a parting gesture I read it aloud – well, I didn’t read it; I recited it. Eye contact makes a big difference you know. I gave it everything. I put my all in to it. I gie ‘er Dixie.
I’m not going to tell you I am a good reader, I am under no illusion that my public speaking is anything other than average; but twelve lines in I paused, looked them in the eye, and read the last couple of lines,
As long as men can breath, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, [dramatic gesture towards the poem projected on the wall behind me]
And this, gives life to thee.
Then silence. Everyone was looking at me - it was unnerving. The silence seemed to last an age. Then a collective exhale. They were rapt. I think I may even have heard a slight "awww" coming from one of the rugby players sitting at the back of the room.
Of course it was all ruined when I pointed out it was written to a young man and the rest of the lesson descended into a debate about whether Shakespeare was gay or not. Well at least I had them for a moment.
Do they love Shakespeare now? Not even a bit. But they enjoyed that one little bit of Shakespeare. I think it helps when you understand that he understands us. Wow that last sentence was pretentious – superb!

who'll crack first?

I was chatting with my form class today. They’re an amiable bunch of 17 year olds, and I get on well with them. We don't tend to get into too many deep and meaningful conversations - usually.

We discussed the formal for a while today. It had taken place the night before and I was surprised to see so many of the class actually make it to school. I hadn't been invited, something I make a point of bringing up at every possible chance.

One kid hadn't gone to the formal. I remember when I was his age I didn't go to my formal either - I went with a friend to a Bob Dylan concert. I was keen to know if he had come up with a worthy alternative to spending the night wearing rented evening wear eating a luke warm meal and bouncing about a crowded dance floor trying to seduce something in a dress before the lights came up.

"I went to a meeting."
"a meeting?"
"a religious meeting. I'm a Jehovah's Witness."

I already knew he was. I had a form pointing out that he would refuse blood in a medical emergency locked in my filing cabinet and we'd already had a discussion on how his pacifism and my pacifism were actually as far removed as pacifism and war mongering. I came out of that one wondering how I had gone from being a wooly liberal pacifist into a war loving fascist in three easy steps. He has a way of turning everything I say into something wholly contradictory. I admire that.

Usually my discussions with my lower sixth pupils end after 5 sentences, so I prepared to move on to the next topic – but he hadn’t finished,

“Are you religious sir?”
“As a matter of fact I am.”
“I respect that.”

It struck me that he hadn’t asked the nature of my religiousosity. Normally that would be an important part of that question. But to him it didn’t matter if I was a Presbyterian, a Cistercian Monk, a Muslim or a Discordian. All that mattered was that I was religious (and he respected that) and that I was wrong (which he obvious didn’t respect.)

“It won’t stop me trying to convert you though.” He said with a slight edge and a knowing smile.
“I’d be disappointed if it did.” I replied with, hopefully, a similar edge and an even knowinger smile.

And so the challenge is set – the gauntlet thrown. I don’t have long in this school so we’re under pressure. He to turn me into a Restorationist, Millenialist, Adventist door knocker – and I to turn him into Calvinistic Reformationalist. Anyone else sense an impending stalemate?

a lane

what next?

As I type this around 15,000 primary school pupils are sitting the final paper of the last leven plus exams in Northern Ireland. The test that will determine which secondary school they attend. Despite the fact that most of the rest of Britain scrapped this form of selection over a decade ago we have held on firmly and proud. And now we let go.

I should be happy. I hate that sham of an exam; that overblown IQ test. Some will suggest that it is a fair system, a mertitocracy of sorts. Poor and rich are assessed on equal ground. 'Life is a series of tests' they will tell you, 'the quicker people learn to deal with stress rather than avoid it the better.'
I, myself, have managed to avoid stress most of my working life (mainly by avoiding working maybe) and I hate the idea of the eleven plus. Who wants to be branded a failure before they even reach their teens? And meritocracy? How does that explain the huge class imbalance we have in our schools?

So I should be happy - but I'm not. At time of going to press our Assembly, the people we intrusted with running our wee country, have yet to agree on what should replace the 11+. I have yet to decide what I think should replace the 11+. Parents of year 6 pupils, who have no idea what their children will be facing in twelve short months time, are asking teachers for answers - we don't have any.

While there is no official plan in place for a replacement a dangerous vacuum has been created. Schools are taking it into their own hands to create selection processes. I find that faintly terrifying. The school where I currently work have decided, along with 29 other Grammars, to form their own 'Association of Quality Education.' This association will produce their own assessment papers. Let's face it - they're creating their very own eleven plus.

Meantime all those 10 year old year 6 kids are being batted around in a game of politics. Their uncertainities are being used as canon fodder with which the DUP and Sinn Fein are battering each other. And that can only be viewed as wrong on so many levels.

the beginning, revisited

It will mean very little to you I'm sure but it's finally done. Six months ago I accidentally hit delete and lost this blog.

So what, you may say. Well, you're actually right. In the grand scheme of things it's hardly life changing. All around us wars are being fought or are on the verge of being fought; countries are in recession; people are losing their jobs - and I'm worried that I lost two years of trivial, introspective monologue.

But it really annoyed me. Sure life would have gone on. Some may even suggest that the enforced clean slate could be seen in a positive light. Just yesterday I was having a conversation with someone about how I prefer to create new stories rather than revelling in the nostalgia that keeping a blog or a journal allows.

I believe that - but I was still a little annoyed that it had gone. And so I was relieved that I found a way of rebuilding it. In much the same way as a historian records every stone in a building before removing them one by one, transporting them, and rebuilding again in a new location - actually not really like that at all but we'll go with the allusion anyway, it sounds grand - I replaced each entry.

And now it is done. I uploaded entry #1 just a couple of minutes ago. They are there, where they are meant to be. Not that I intend to sit and read them again anyway - but it's nice knowing they're there.

inspirational?

How did you end up where you are today?

I don't mean transportation. I mean doing what you're doing with your life. I only ask because I'm beginning to think I may have had the wrong idea.

Talking to people in the staff room here I get the impression that good teachers breed good teachers. So many of the staff here seem to have been inspired by a superhuman teacher from their childhood - someone who made such a difference to their lives that they had no option but to pay it forward and enter the pedagogy business.

My high school English teacher, who for some reason assigned me the role of Portia in The Merchant of Venice when we read it aloud in class -- it was the first time I'd ever done anything remotely like acting, and I thought, hmmmmm...

Megan Mullally

Then I started to think about acting, sports and music awards. How often have I heard someone get up and thank their high school music/drama/chemistry teacher who told them they could reach for the stars when no one else believed in them. It seems the world would have been a much less talented place had there not been some superb confidence builders in the teaching profession. It’s something I always say with a smile when a pupil thanks me for putting up with them for a term or helping them through something they find particularly challenging, “Just remember me when you’re making your acceptance speech.” I say it half jokingly.

When I was in sixth grade, I had a science teacher named Mrs. Walton. She’d had my older brother, Durran, in her class the year before. Durran is as smart as they come, the kind of student that every teach­er loved. I idolized him. One day she gave us a test. I’d studied as hard as I could, but got a mediocre grade—nowhere near what Durran had probably scored. My eyes filled with tears.
Mrs. Walton came up to me.
“You’ll do better next time,” she said.
I shook my head. “I’ll never be like Durran,” I said.
She shook her head, then said softly, “No, you don’t have to be like Durran. You just have to be the best Shaun the world’s ever seen.”
Those words clicked in my head. That’s been my goal ever since.
Shaun Alexander, Seattle Seahawks

But me, why did I become a teacher? Was it because I was inspired by one of my teachers. Well, here’s the problem. I despised my English teacher. Looking back I realise that is a bit of an overreaction – she was never that bad to me – but let’s just say she and I never really saw eye to eye. I remember at one point she decided to instigate a new rule that if someone forgot a book or a pen or a homework they would have a mark put beside their name. If someone got three marks beside their name they would be given an after school detention. I was in detention two days later. Three marks, two days.

I will readily admit that most of the issues she and I had were of my creation. I rubbed her the wrong way. I was lazy. I was, at times, insolent – lots of times. I lied to her, I skipped class, I never handed in any work on time. Looking back I can understand why I was never her pupil of the month. But what I never understood was why she didn’t get my writing. In the five years that she taught me English I never achieved a mark higher than a C. It could be an end of year exam, a piece of creative writing, a detailed critique of a Philip Larkin poem or a haiku – nothing I did was ever worthy of an A or a B.

Right in the middle of my time at secondary school I had two years with another teacher. My GCSE years. Suddenly the world changed. In two years I never once got anything lower than an A for anything. I was the best in the class – the teacher loved what I wrote and regularly told me how she looked forward to reading the next piece. The world of English became a brighter place. So much so that I felt confident of taking English Literature on as one of my post 16 specialties. And with it my previous teacher. And with her my previous grades.

D,D,D,C,D,D,C . The frustrating thing is that I can’t claim she was marking me unfairly. I had a second teacher at the same time who was giving me similar grades. Between them I was predicted a slim pass in my A Level English Lit. I was predicted an E and told that they were being generous; told that I had made a bad choice when picking subjects. How did I do? Well, I’m not going to say I aced the exam – but a decade later I am teaching A Level English Literature to pupils of my own after completing an English Literature degree. You don’t do that with an E.

Teachers are often the people who inspire us the most. I know I wouldn't be where I am today without my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Duncan. She so believed in me, and for the first time, made me embrace the idea of learning. I learned to love learning because of Mrs. Duncan.

Oprah Winfrey

So I find it difficult to give her any credit when I think on how I got where I am. I know she is owed some – I learned a lot from her, even picked up her hatred of words such as ‘hard’ or ‘nice’. There is no doubt she had an effect on me – but my inspiration? No. Although having just read back a couple of paragraphs maybe I did have an inspirational English teacher after all. Maybe my preoccupation with the negative has overcast the positive effect of my GCSE teacher. So when I get up to make my acceptance speech, you know, when I win that Academy Award/Man Booker Award/Tony; Mrs Doherty – this is for you.

is this even possible?

We were discussing discursive essays. I want them to write about something that matters to them. Well, maybe I'm too lazy to come up with a range of titles and got them to do it for me. No, I refuse the guilt - it's their job to come up with the ideas and that's what they were doing.

Anyway as I was making my way round the classroom in a surreptitious manner (well, as surreptitiously as someone 6'5" tall can be) I observed their progress. They were doing pretty well. There were some imaginative topics along with the old chestnuts. But as I was skulking about I was struck motionless by a comment from a sixteen year old girl who I've come to admire for her ability to come out with randomimity. She and a partner were discussing the evils of the Internet,

I love YouTube. I would completely marry it. If YouTube were human I would marry it. Do you have to marry a human? Can you marry non humans? Is that even possible do you think? We should look into that.

I asked her what she meant but I'm afraid to say that my mind went off into its own little world as she replied. I had images of the ceremony joining human and web site in a lifelong partnership. The bride dressed in a beatiful white A line gown with a halter neck, the groom clad in badly shot cell mobile phone footage of young men performing jackass stunts. I pictured the speeches - they were a little disappointing as quality had to be reduced to fit space. And the happy couple's first dance as husband and wife - mesmorising and romantic; except for the fact that the dancing and the music were just that little bit out of synch. At least the wedding video took care of itself.

All of this took place in my mind during the time I should have been listening intently to what she had to say. I immediately felt bad that I hadn't given her the attention she deserved - from experience I would guess that her explaination would have been even more bizarre than my daydream.

yesterday

Yesterday I went for a walk. Several walks in fact. I’d just spent a few days in Dublin with a friend. I love Dublin, as cities go it’s one of the good ‘uns. It’s busy in right way – energetic and vibrant. Eating great Moroccan food served by beautiful Romanians in the Irish capital with a wonderful friend visiting from Wales; watching Italian cinema surrounded by film lovers of indeterminate nationality… It was a joy. But after a time, even a short time, in a city I long for the crowded emptiness of the countryside. And so I set out for a walk - four walks in fact.

Walk 1: The beach. Ballycastle is an odd little town perched on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. I walked the length of the beach there, and marvelled at the fact that on a gloriously clear day I virtually had the place to myself. Besides a young family flying a kite and a middle aged man collecting pebbles (why?) I was completely alone. Besides the huge growl of ocean colliding with land, and the cry of a thousand gulls, it was silent. Apparently I was the only person in the country not out trying on costumes or making final adjustments to their pumpkins – well, one of six people anyway.
I used to teach in Ballycastle. I miss it. The combination of the craic I had with my pupils and the inspirational view from the windows of the ocean made my classroom a joyous place to be.

I love the sea – I miss it intensely when I leave for any amount of time. Yesterday I stayed till my face was bright with exposure and my mind was clear of… well, just clear. My afternoon was spent breathing in the fresh air and watching the sea batter rocks and gently caress the sand.

Walk 2: The moors. I moved on south to the heather covered hills leading to the majestic Glens of Antrim. My feet, already sharing my shoes with sand from Ballycastle Strand, became itchy with broken off bits of the course heather. I remember hiking up here when I was a teenage member of the Boys’ Brigade. Back then I cursed the spongy sensation of the ground beneath my feet. It seemed to force that little bit more effort out of every step. Of course back then I was carrying my own weight of tent, clothes, emergency food and pot noodles on my back. Today I was able to walk where I wanted, when I wanted, and if anything the whole experience lifted a weight off my back.

Loughareema, the vanishing lake, was clearly not vanished today. I have a vague recollection of hearing about researchers dying the water in an attempt to discover to whence the water vanished. I can’t remember if they came to any conclusions or indeed whether I made the whole thing up in my astonishingly flexible memory.
To me it makes no difference. The magic of the place does not lie in the water level.

Walk 3: The pastures. North Antrim has some extraordinarily fertile land. I don’t know whether this area, a few miles inland, could be described as such or not – but it is beautiful. My father worked in this area for the Department of Agriculture for years. He has many crazy tales of the characters he met in the course of his career. I wonder if characters like those are still being created or whether they are a dying breed like the smallholdings they cared for. I stopped to have a long conversation with a rather erudite sheep. His opinions of Sarah Palin were intriguing though I think his fear of Polar Bears may have clouded his judgement slightly.

Walk 4: The Town. After all that fresh air my body ached for toxins. The only way to satisfy it was to go somewhere with car exhaust fumes and freely available caffeine. And so I made my way to the nearest town – Ballymena. In many ways this is a typical Northern Irish town – its divided population and sporadic sectarianism are in direct contrast with the hospitality and friendliness of those you met there. Sons of this little town include Timothy Eaton (of Eaton Center fame – where I first discovered the delights of Calvin Klein Contradiction for men) and Liam Neeson (who seems equally at home as Scottish Warrior or a Jedi Warrior)
The streets were oddly empty today. Vaguely reminiscent of the beach I found myself sharing the area only with some police officers. Police officers with torches, checking every dark corner and grating; police officers on bikes, police officers in cars, police officers with dogs, police officers with big guns – lots of police officers with guns. I tried to work out what was going but was at a complete loss. It was surely an overreaction for the Halloween festivities that evening. I found out much later that there was to be a homecoming parade for our local regiment, the Royal Irish Regiment. They have done tours in Iraq and have only just returned from Afghanistan. The tight security was because of anticipated republican protests and a fear that things could turn nasty.
As it turns out everything passed off relatively peacefully.

I was glad.

I have my own opinions about how valid the various wars involving our soldiers are – but I was mortified that a homecoming parade could be hijacked either by Irish Republicans opposed to everything that the British Army stands for, or by Loyalists eager to turn the situation into a reason for Catholic bashing. Such an event should be removed completely from politics. If that’s possible. Such an event should be about the relief of family and friends that their loved ones have returned, remembrance and mourning those who have not returned. Such an event should be about the human beings that have risked everything – not for the politics that put them in that position.
Tensions are still apparent in this little country of ours. There are still people on both sides spoiling for a fight. Sad to say there are still people here who miss the troubles. But maybe things are slowly changing. And as fewer people have strong memories of that, the darkest part of Ulster’s history, maybe they will find things to share rather than searching for things to fuel the feud.

And there's no denying - it's a beautiful wee country and it shouldn't be spoilt by the people that live there.