Two More Great Moments in Teaching.

Right, you remember the Mr Miyagi story? For people of a certain generation these two will be almost as good.

1) Sitting in our prep room, getting a physics experiment ready... Look up at bookshelf. Eye falls on random book. The author is JR Hartley. Yes. J....R... Hartley!!

Okay, so it isn't the piece d'resistance, the one and only, the rarer-than-rare Fly Fishing, but hell, it was a special moment for me. An actual book by the star of arguably the second best advert ever made. And don't even think about trying to tell me JR Hartley is not a real person. I'm nowhere near mentally stable enough to be hearing shit like that, 'kay?

2) Other great moment in teaching. They make me teach PSHE. or PSE, or PSHCE, or some shit like that. I'm not even sure. I think it stands for... nah, I don't even know. Anyway, I teach this on a Friday afternoon, and, of course, I never relax for a moment in my quest to deliver the best PSHCFSHHYHSE lesson I can, but I must admit that sometimes I fall short of my ideals and both the kids and I suffer.

Anyway, today we are learning about... Wait, cut that sentence short. Today (well, it was months ago, but I am writing in a certain style, so cut me some slack?). Anyway, today we are engaged in a discussion about the future careers of some of my pupils when I ask one boy (let's call him Cedric. Not because that is anything like his name, but because I think it would be funny), when I ask Cedric, what he wants to be when he is an adult (if I let him get that far).

"Footballer," he says.

"How fucking original," think I. "So," I say, patiently, "What if you don't make it as a footballer? Not everyone does, you know!"

"Oh, I will!" he says. He's good, I'll grant you, but he's not got snapped up by Arsechester or Chelski yet, so he's not solid glod (Is that a typo, or a deliberate play on words, suggesting that although footballers are wealthy, they can't even spell? You'll never know.) yet.

"But what if, " I begin, setting myself up for the perfect scenario, but never dreaming it might really fall into place, "What if," I'm getting excited, by the way. Not a lot, but just enough to get my heart beating a tiny bit faster, "What if, when you grow up," (Anyone see where this is going?) ..."What if, when you grow up, you're only good enough to play for Accrington Stanley?"

Now, at this point, I already feel like it was worth coming to work that day. It is not worth writing about in a blog yet, but it is a pretty good feeling to squeeze that line in anywhere. But it gets better. Oh yes it does. Now, some girls are annoying. Some are lovely. Some are annoying, but redeem themselves so utterly with one perfect moment in their lives that you'll forgive them anything for the rest of their natural lives. It is at this point Claire (See, I'll not even give her a duff name in something she'll never even read.) decides to interrupt with the perfect interruption. She actually said, and this is why I'll love her forever, "Accrington Stanley? 'Oo are theeey?" And I'll swear to any god you love, she said it in a Scouse accent, despite being a Hackney girl. And the best part was, she wasn't just copying the advert you and I all know and love, she was just asking!

At this point, I know I've not got long. With microseconds to spare, I manage to squeeze out, in an equally Scouse accent, "Egzackly!" Immediately after, I collapse the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter and spend the next five minutes rocking around unable to control my own body, let alone actually speak, and confusing the fuck out of pupils who, up to this point, were probably reasonably sure I was sane. My class file out of the room when the bell goes, but I am still unable to speak. Over the weekend, I gradually recover.

So, to go with the Mr Miyagi moment and the JR Hartley moment, I also have the Accrington Stanley moment. A genuine, unrehearsed reconstruction of the 1980s milk ad!

State Sanctioned Torture

Lots of things are different in teaching. For example, how many other careers inflict state-sanctioned torture on their workforce? Here he goes, I hear you cry, exaggerating again. Well I’m not. Where else will they make you sit in staff meetings of seventy-plus people? I’ve been an engineer. Meetings had seven to eight people, tops. I’ve worked in HR in the Civil Service (A profession of noteworthy dullness) and even they had meetings of a maximum of nine or ten of us. So why, in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (look it up), do schools inflict intentional brain damage on us and then dress it up as “a whole school staff meeting”? I mean, by god, I know we do it to the kids, but why the hell do we do it to ourselves? Sure, we’re teachers, we signed up to be mean to kids, and an assembly is as good a way as any other of torturing the little bastards, but when we do it to ourselves, doesn’t that just count as weird?

Then again, maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way? We don’t really do it to ourselves, do we? Is it a Head Teacher thing, maybe? In that case, I’m going to the UN and calling Cruel-and-Unusual on her ass. Seriously, give me my orange jumpsuit, burlap head-sack, and get me the frak out of the next whole school staff meeting. I’m begging you, George, come get me. I’m a dangerous dissident.

And worse, why is it that they always sign up the most boring person they can find to speak at these things? I could do a better job, and I generally repeat everything I say in at least three different ways before moving on to my next point. I find it hard to move on with what I’m saying without rephrasing things a couple of times. I like to build in some redundancy just in case people don’t get me the first time. I think it is important to reinforce everything important that I say (or, to save time, just everything. After all, I don’t waste my breath, or even my typing, or writing, or even mumbling, on irrelevancies).

Huh, where was I? I got carried away with my own self-referential humour about how I like to repeat myself until people hav…

Damnit!

Right, anyway, where do they find these people? Do they take out Ads in the TES?? Wanted: Boring Fucker to send large comprehensive school teaching staff to sleep. Must provide own tedious PowerPoint of dull (and probably fictional) data and graphs. Speech impediment a plus, but not essential?

Actually, one of the rare occasions when these things become bearable is when the person has a cool problem with talking. A lisp, whilst not fun for the poor bastard standing there, can be a source of enormouth amuthement for the rowdy element thitting at the back. A st-st-stutter should not be poked fun at in every day life, but if some g-g-gittoid is trying to make me cry because my brains are dribbling out of my sodding ears, why the hell shouldn’t I try to cling to sanity with my mental fingernails by hanging on to whatever scrap of malice allows me to keep believing I am the one in charge and they don’t really hold my continued sanity in the palm of their hand? Trouble is, not enough of them have a lisp, but an alarmingly high percentage of these people have a more serious problem. I ask you, do they train these fuckers to talk in a monotone voice before they let them have an Assistant Head Teacher job? Is the ability to speak without inflection, change of pace or any fucking emphasis whatsoever a prerequisite for a consultancy job in teacher INSET? Stephen-Computer-Voice-Bloody-Hawking speaks with more emotion!! And god bless the man, before he even deal swith having a computer instead of a voice, he has to get over the serious disability of being a genius physicist. I have to ask, if that guy can get over those humps and avoid people falling asleep in front of him, shouldn’t teachers be able to manage it? Christ, it is not like teachers don’t get enough practise at talking. It is what they do, after all, Every. Sodding. Day.

What makes it worse is that some people bloody help them. Some people even try to trump them. In fact, you have the whole spectrum of reactions to these people. You’ll have fantastic people who’ll actively campaign before the start, warning anyone that questions will not be tolerated, and may back this up with violence, or even, gasp, evil stares. Then you’ve got the silent mouse, and above them, people who’ll ask valid questions that are relevant to everyone. Then we reach the annoying ones. Okay, all of you, seriously now, listen to me, right now. If you are one of these people, here is a warning: She already said she can hang around at the end for individual questions. I swear to God (even though he doesn’t exist) that I will knock you the fuck out if you waste my time asking a question so specific that I’m not even sure it applies to you, you pedantic FUCK! Seriously, you are wasting our fucking time. And why, why, why do you have to wait until it is time to leave before doing this to us? Is it your way of getting back at the world because you were bullied at school?? And seriously, to the last group of people, if you want to deliver your own lecture about how this has all come back round to where we were in the Seventies before Thatcher ruined it all, hire out the local Church Hall, get a slide show in, and prepare for a lonely evening sipping weak lemon drink, because no-one fucking cares!!!

Who wants my suggestion? And what the fuck do I care who wants my opinion anyway? I am the one writing this thing. If not, sod off, and if you have your own opinion, write your own rant, you whinging, moany bastard.

Set every fucker in the room up with electroshock devices. Everyone in the room is hooked up, and everyone gets a controller. The more people are hitting the Zap button, the stronger the shock. Bore us too much and we will shock you. Keep doing it, and we will fucking kill you. If you can survive having everyone in the room press the Zapper at once, you deserve your time in the limelight; I salute you.