spinning pins

Pupils are very perceptive - nothing get past past them. Whichever school I go to my pupils very quickly suss out my various quirks.

1) I hate having the top button of my shirt done - it’s not a fashion thing; I just don’t like the constrictive sensation of something round my neck. The pupils have to have theirs buttoned as part of their uniform so I do make the effort to set an example - but if it’s still in place come 11:15 I’ve done well. I’ve heard of pupils actually taking sweepstakes on when I reach for that button.

2) I have to bend down to get through doors. For some reason this causes them great mirth. Especially in the corridors where there is a fire door every 15 yards or so. On particularly long stretches they get to see me bend four or five times - and it never fails to amuse them.

3) I’m a fiddler. I don’t mean I play violin. I hate having nothing to do with my hands. Even when I’m teaching I’ll invariably reach for something to move around in my fingers. One class decided they wanted to see how far this would go and began placing different objects on my desk each morning. They started off small with pens and rulers, then they went a bit stranger with lipstick tubes, and then it got gradually bigger. I was standing at the front of a classroom unravelling a wire coat hanger before I finally caught on.

4) This may be related to number three - but I am the teacher who spins drawing pins (thumb tacks) on their point. Now, when I’m bored, if there’s a pin or two around, I’ll wind it up and let it go. The younger kids appear fascinated by this - especially when I get one spinning so well that it stands upright and appears to be almost motionless, balancing magically on its tip. I claim it’s educational - all about centrifugal forces etc etc. They always want to know how to do it. At one school I had about twelve pupils spending their breaktime in the playground seeing who could spin a pin the longest (my record is six minutes)

When I say they all appear fascinated that may be a little misleading. A lot of them appear fascinated - the rest all, probably accurately, see it as a sign of a misspent youth.

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.

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.

bout'ye

I may be something of an anitisocial loner but working with hundreds of people everyday I find I'm getting quite good at speed-evaluating them. I make rapid judgements on the way they look as they approach, lightning appraisals from the way they greet me - eye contact, handshake etc- breakneck conclusions from their voice, I analysis the way they talk to others, the way they stand, where they stand... I'm a people watcher - it's what I do.

Generally I get on well with the rest of the staff wherever I work. I may not always fit in but my polite helpfulness (no, really) generally gets me away without making too many enemies. But there's one thing I take pride in - I like to think I know them more than they know me. As I cast my gaze around the staffroom I categorise each of them and work out what they have for breakfast, what type of car they drive, what soaps they watch, what they would do if they were given ultimate power...

But there is one man I cannot work out. I always seem to arrive to work at the same time, I pass him three or four times in the corridors and we eat lunch together. Everytime we meet, in whatever capacity, his side of the conversation is identical.

"Hi Sam, What's the craic? Keep er' lit boy"

No matter if we passed one another two minutes before he says the exact same thing. And he looks at me as if expecting a reply. He awaits my answer with interest.

At first I tried to come up with something erudite and original each time but, I have to tell you, after a few months I began to struggle. Now I manage something between a grumble and a murmur that I can tell, by his eyes, he finds disappointing.

I've watched a lot of 'Cheers'. If he asked 'What's up?' or 'What'cha up to?' or 'What's new?' or 'What's the story?' or 'How's the world been treating you?' I'd have any number of Norm-isms to fire off (the temperature under my collar; my ideal weight if I were eleven feet tall; terrorists, Sam they've taken over my stomach they're demanding beer; the Bobbsey twins go to the brewery... let's cut to the happy ending; like it caught me in bed with its wife - just for the record)

But how do you respond to "Keep er lit boy."

All answers welcome. I need all the help I can get.

I am so SO sorry

I was thinking of changing the title of this blog to ‘Thoughts of a Substitute Teacher (TOAST)’ but to be honest being a substitute teacher commands so little respect that I doubt you’d bother listening to me long enough to actually read the explanation. You’d be plotting how you could put a drawing pin on my seat, or how you could get every mobile phone in the room to go off at exactly the same moment, or how you could persuade me that your regular teacher allows you to watch videos and eat popcorn in class all the time.

Maybe it would help if we changed the name. Substitute teacher sounds like someone who you bring on when the science teacher gets injured in a nasty challenge down the left wing. Maybe we should call them ‘guest teachers.’

I have to apologise to sub teachers everywhere. As a pupil I mocked you, I showed you no respect and I took advantage of your temporary status by pushing classroom boundaries to the limit at every opportunity. As a teacher I belittled your standing and possibly contributed to your hardships by not leaving enough work to cover a Friday afternoon double period. Covering the odd class for an absent colleague every now and again gave me the false impression that yours was a pressure-free existence, void of challenge or purpose. My opinions have changed dramatically.

For the past few months I have been a substitute teacher and I don’t believe I have done a more difficult job in my life. Standing in front of a group of thirty kids, none of whom you know, a group of kids who are determined to push you as far as they can, a group of kids whose names include (apparently) David Beckham, Mickey Mouse, Cevin(sic) Costner and Cesc Fabregas… Standing there knowing that you have to gainfully employ them despite the fact that you don’t know what topic/unit of work they’re doing, what work they’ve already done and in what ability range they lie. Of course there’s no point in asking them what they’ve done so far:

Miss always reads to us from Autotrader, and then sends us down to the off license for some WKD Blue.We don’t have any textbooks. We watch Jeremy Kyle and make notes on lie detectors and their use in the discovery of whether or not some woman’s husband has been sleeping with her sister for three years. Notes? No, sorry, don’t know what they are – but we do a lot of word searches and colouring in.

So, here it is – my open letter of apology to substitute teachers everywhere. Yours is not an easy lot. You have skills I didn’t know existed and deserve every bit as much respect, if not more, than regular teachers. I have had my eyes opened with crowbars and offer my most humble apology – I am truly, truly sorry.

and the award for least likely to succeed goes to...

The award for the greatest similarity to a celebrity. This was an award I was given at a formal evening at the end of my first year at UUC. The final year drama students were having a last hurrah and had invited me along to the event because I had acted with many of them in a few plays through the year. I would have been flattered had the celebrity in question not been the Jolly Green Giant. Needless to say I smiled wryly as I picked up the certificate and, truth be told, I was actually a little flattered that the final years had accepted me enough to be able to make me the butt of a joke.

Spoof award ceremonies have been part of the education system for years. For as long as the authorities have been handing out awards for academic achievment the anti-authoritarians have been performing parodies. One the highlights of my school's formals are the annual awards like the 007 award for best use of hair gel or the Jordan award for classy dressing.

These are only really funny if the recipient of the "honour" is able to accept the joke in the manner it is offered, and if it comes from a group of their peers who are happy to take as well as give; otherwise it can just be plain nasty.

So imagine getting two separate awards: The Sir Clowns-a-Lot Award (fairly tame) and the Most Likely Not to have Children Award (bit of a edge). Next I want you to imagine that you are ten years old when you are given these awards. Finally I want you to imagine that these were handed out, not by good humoured friends, but by your teachers. This happened to a sixth grade pupil in Indianapolis recently. Matt Porter was given these awards at the end of the last term and his parents weren't too amused:

Words cut deeper than any knife could. They hurt. When you hurt a child like that, you not only hurt him mentally, but it does hurt physically because you withdraw within yourself. That is what Matthew has done.

Matt's stepfather, Joseph Sims

I think their anger is understandable. No one wants their child to be undermined like this at such an early age - and to have that done by his teachers is a bit rough to say the least. I know that I am a sarcastic sod at times, and I know that I use quite a lot of banter in my lessons - but I make a point of only doing it with pupils who understand the nature with which it is intended. If a pupil struggles to get my humour I make a point not to use that with them and try a different approach. It's called being flexible.

The teachers in this sad tale appear to have been, at best, naive. They also, obviously, felt that they were entitled to impose their sense of humour on their pupils. They were, it could be suggested, a little bit stupid to actually sign the certificates. Having said all that I think it may have been blown a little out of proportion. A thought that I feel is backed up by the news that Matt's mother not only asked for an apology from the teachers involved but also insists that her son is in serious need of counseling because of the event. Comments like that would have the Daily Mail journos writing articles about how our elders managed to fight two world wars, land on the moon and survive on gruel while we seem to need counseling if we trip over our shoe laces. It also does nothing to further the cause of those of us who want to stamp out bullying in schools - from pupils and teachers.

the consummate professional

Teaching is a unique profession. Having said that, like other professions, teachers have to behave in a certain way even when they're not in school. We are expected to set an example to those around us. Take me for example - when I do something wrong my first concern is that no one who knows I'm a teacher witnessed it. Well, maybe not my first concern but it's up there.

Take a situation, for example, where a teacher is out shopping for groceries. There I was in Coleraine ASDA looking at some computer game reviews in their magazine section when I spotted a couple of my pupils entering with their parents. Conscious of the fact that it would never do for me to be seen to be promoting video games (when my job requires that I promote reading, reading and more reading) I immediately dropped the magazine and stealthily made my way to the fiction shelf of the book section. The consummate professional. The professional who quickly grabs the nearest hardback when he hears the whisper behind him,"Mum, that's my teacher, Mr C!"

The professional who tries a quick turn and flash of his professional smile only for the book he was holding to wrench itself free of his grasp and enlist a dozen or so followers from other shelves on its slow motion journey to the ground. The professional who, in trying to catch at least some of the falling books trips on his own feet and goes sprawling into the pile on the floor.

I try a little one sided smile as if this happens all the time

"He's the special needs teacher."

"Figures."

Always the dignified professional.