Bad Teacher

I never thought that I would be sitting in front of my computer, at the age of 36, typing my first ever blog post (something that I have been wanting to do for roughly a decade) as a teacher.  This was never my plan A but in the absence of any plans at all I sort of fell into it and now, well, now it feels like it’s where I’m meant to be.  For the moment anyway. So I’m going to go ahead and talk to you about what my life is like as an English teacher, which I must admit is pretty great a lot of the time.  For any of you who know me well you will know how strange that sounds given that I basically hate rules and even more than that I hate people telling me what to do. Plus in many ways I am essentially still a teenager in the body of a grown woman myself or at least some of my outfit choices would suggest it.  So before I make my escape from teaching I’m going to share some of my stories with you. Some of the stories from my classroom, from my beloved school, in the heart of East London. My classroom with a view.

Now, don’t be fooled into thinking that I love my job all of the time, just because I said it was pretty great a lot of the time.  Yes, it undeniably has its ups (gloriously long holidays and handsome colleagues) but I would approximate that I also spend at least an hour a day questioning my life choices (usually somewhere along the 24 stops of the district line that I sit on every morning to take me from one side of London to the other).  And I think this probably comes from my own experience of school.  You see, my school experience was far from ideal. I spent 5 years in a highly academic, highly competitive, pretty joyless and uninspiring all girls secondary school. And what the school lacked in vibrancy I attempted to make up for in my disruptive behaviour. Whilst I was never blatantly defiant or directly rude, now as a teacher myself it is easy to see how frustrating I must have been to teach.  But what attending that school did teach me was this. I certainly do not want to be the kind of teacher that I tormented throughout my school days! I also don’t want to be the kind of teacher that can never switch off from their job, one who can rarely keep their eyes open past 10pm on a school night without spending the whole of the next day longing to race home and get into bed. I don’t want to be that teacher who goes out with their colleagues and ends up spending all night talking about school kids.  And god forbid I turn into the kind of teacher who leaves the pub after lunch on a Sunday to go home and mark books - not happening. But unfortunately, as any of you who are reading this and are teachers will attest to, all of what I have just described sort of just comes with the territory. But you get used to it and actually the part that really makes this job is the amazing, inspiring young people that you get to know and cherish so dearly. And you gradually learn to deal with the rest.  And so this blog, my first blog, is dedicated to them. To all my young friends who pass through my East London classroom, with, I might add, the best view in London, this is for you.