Schools (a chainblog)
I have taught or been taught at seven schools, three in Manchester, one in Bedford, one in Bratislava, one in Birkenhead and one in South East London. Each of them has been very different.I don’t remember too much about my infants’ or primary schools, except that I was easily obsessed with things, such as nature and trains, especially steam trains. Some would say that little has changed. I remember going for a visit to what would be my secondary school and being fascinated by the metal working rooms and the generally huge nature of the school compared to the little primary I had been at, where everyone knew each other.
I was very lucky – when I was picked by the primary school to sit the entrance exam and I knew I wanted to go there, my Dad said that I would have to get a scholarship to get in because we were poor, and under the now sadly departed assisted places scheme I managed to do that. How much of my present rests solely on that piece of fortune? What would I be doing now if I had not got that scholarship? Fortunately I don’t need to know.
I met most of my best mates of the present just over twenty years ago in my first year form at that school. We had lots of happy times there, even including Latin. I never really felt like I achieved any more or less than I knew I would, not spectacular by the school’s standards, but good enough for someone with a bit of an inferiority complex.
It was only when I went to University that I began to realise that I was actually quite good at this subject, however I had got to this point. Let’s just say that the University I went to was untainted by any of the modern teaching methods to be discovered at school level. I suppose it’s something to do with the nature of Classics that anything to do with it is a bit backward and that really was a prime example. I had a lecturer whose jacket had built up a calcified stratum of chalk dust by years of neglect on his part. Don’t get me wrong, he knew his stuff, he just didn’t present it in a very accessible way. Perhaps he has been a bigger influence on my teaching than I first recognised….
It took me a while to work out what to do with myself after Uni. It was such an anticlimax getting to the end of the yellowbrick road and discovering that I had to find my own way from there. Why teaching? Well, to be honest, I drifted into it. I was anything but proactive, yet still found something I wanted to do.
I went to a University I had always wanted to go to for my PGCE and was rather disappointed that it was very different from my old schoolmates’ undergraduate courses. How stupid was I to expect that? So I did my main teaching practice in Bedford and I wasn’t very good. All of my significantly more illustrious colleagues seemed to be sure of their future in teaching, yet their certainty made me unsure of myself. I didn’t get a job. I was worried. What if I never got back into Classics? That would have sucked, especially seeing as I had finally realised that it was what I wanted to do. Typical!
More to follow.....
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