Special Teachers

It seems a little disloyal to my parents to highlight the weaknesses of an education which asked of them so much self-sacrifice and self-denial, but during my time at prep school, only one teacher stands out: John Gibson. The pastoral side of the school was second to none but there was no real intellectual excitement or tension. I felt an unspoken bond with JG who was as big standing up as he was lying down, always wore black and a severe man. As a result of which, the bond remained largely unspoken, but a teacher—especially one so into sport—being seen to be sharply critical, funny with an intellectual life of his own made a big impression on me. He taught Maths (and to this day I cannot help but feel it was the wrong subject), ran the tuck shop (a significant figure for any prep school boy) and coached sport, but he nurtured us as if his life depended on it. At the age of 10 I wasn’t really sure what was going on but knew that something was and I liked the smell of uncompromising contempt: he was often very cutting and brought a personal edge and combative partisanship into school with him every day (indeed, I seem to remember that he refused to take his half day which every other teacher took in order to open the tuck shop and coach sport). Heady stuff for an unresolved and uncouth boy from Yorkshire; sadly, JG died far too young, giving weight to the line, ‘only the good die young’. More importantly for my future as a teacher, I was taught History by an extraordinary man, an infamously bearded man. Still a dear friend and guru, he had a first-class degree from Oxford, partnered one of the Housemistresses of the girls’ boarding houses and is rumoured to have played semi-professional football between school and going to Jesus (how we loved the gossip). In his manner and his method, he zapped me with the real stuff: he made me THINK. I watched his every move. Here was a teacher and Housemaster, a model teacher of a kind, who played up to his caricature (beard, glasses, grunts, gestures, word choice, cackles). When he performed in House concerts we often mimicked him—not in open mockery; rather, in supporting affection for his dedication and commitment. For him that was an acceptable part of the game. What was unacceptable was not taking things seriously. Slacked and he savaged you. I approved of his expectation. He had an intellectual life of his own and it was plain for all to see. He talked not only History, but Literature (a huge Hardy fan), politics, current affairs, sport; he was a true renaissance man. He made us feel like we could be intellectuals, indeed, that we were already. His main purpose was to fascinate you in any number of pursuits, to capture your interest. If you took things seriously it bred confidence and thus fun in the process. If you became absorbed, as I did, you loved it—and very often this meant cerebral things. From him I developed the enduring belief that perception, the art of reading people, lies at the heart of a good historian, and indeed, a good teacher. Though he vigorously used to claim otherwise, he knew women too: brainless beauties were overrated! He was of course right. Intellectual compatibility was everything then I would always have something in my head and the beginnings of an interior life. His love of the vocation still burns in me and makes me want to be a Housemaster. BY the time I left school (in 2003) I was well on my way to becoming a teacher—not that I would have dreamt of admitting it to my friends.

Role models

Teachers often base their practice, consciously or unconsciously, on the models they best remember from their own school days. Or on the models they most value. I am no exception, except that I think my parents influenced me a great deal. Both police officers straight from leaving school at the age of 15/16, I saw what they put into the job and, as I grew up, I discovered what it took out of them (in my Dad’s case this resulted in his being ill in his early fifties: it was stress-related). Seldom did they talk about work per se, albeit they captivated me when they did, but every evening without fail we sat around the dinner table and talked. They were, and still are, loving and interested parents. There are areas in which they are uneducated (history, language, literature--neither had been as fortunate as me in terms of their schooling. This is written without a shred of criticism or embarrassment; it is simple fact); I suspect this is part of the reason they decided to send me to a fee-paying school. What’s important, though, is that they introduced me to so much of the real world which would otherwise have been closed to me. Though not teachers in the strictest sense, they encouraged sensitivity to emotion, concentration, absorption and a sense of wonder. I genuinely think that underpins everything.

More reflection

As the dust settles on the end of term, I’m still in end-of-the-year stock-taking mode, so, why am I bothering with this blog? Well…do I value thoughtfulness? (Yes.) Would I like to think of myself, or be described by others, as a thoughtful person, or a thoughtless person? (Easy choice.) It’s true that in some mechanical sense we’re all thinking all the time, but in my experience, as a teacher, the act of writing gives shape to thought, helps to generate thought, and allows me to have, once the first thoughts are down, second thoughts: elaborations, further questions, shifts in point of view. Thinking well isn’t something that ‘Just Happens’. Thinking well is a discipline which can be improved, like any other skill-based discipline, with practice and attention to process. Furthermore, it was only when I started teaching that I realised that I seldom thought for myself. While explaining things to my students, I faced the fact that I had not felt or thought as honestly as I could have. So, this is a means to reengage with my own intuitive truths. That’s one answer. Ever since I started Teach First I have kept a teaching journal (we had to). For the first two years I was pretty good but since joining my school my writing wasn’t sustainable. However, I do find it cathartic and helpful as a vehicle of thought. The presence (implied or actual) of an audience doesn’t really affect me too much; I am quite happy just to explore my thoughts which hopefully, somewhere along the line, have a point and a direction. So, now for something completely different…(I'm going to take a break from the curriculum dialogues and give my brain a little breathing room...)

Big question

Well, a big question for me, anyhow: what prompted my parents, police officers who (day and night) lived and breathed the local community, to send me not to the local school but to a small independent school in North Nottinghamshire? Yes, true, it was at least North Notts, but my parents were Yorkshire born and bred, and from a very different position from the public school tradition. Also, as far as I can recall, we did not know any people from public schools, apart from the family lawyer. I guess I have always reflected on the fact that a fee-paying independent school is hardly in tune with my family’s background. My parents are not snobbish and not in the least interested in the family going up-market. Perhaps my parents lived the social pressures in the local community and sensed that this was not what they wanted for their son. Certainly, the whole reason I have been as fortunate as I have is because my parents got me out of the failing state schools (and they were failing state schools in the 1990s) of South Yorkshire. I have no doubt that this has been the key to my life. For a long time, and though during my time at University it often elicited gasps of horror from my dad, I was not comfortable with this. I reflexively dismissed private schools as elitist: a cause of inequality; institutions so pernicious that they should be abolished (and this is one of the major reasons I did Teach First, which I think probably encouraged my already half-formed distaste for a certain kind of public school self-satisfaction). I have, before now, found that politically incorrect, but I feel certain that most of the kids in my neighbourhood back home had much more intelligence than me, but did not have the advantage of a good education. Due to the failure of the public schools central state model, they haven’t had the opportunity to develop their minds and study at University, for example. I wonder where I would be if I’d have gone to Doncaster Academy in its comprehensive heyday? Although I’m still (hypocritically) liable to take sideswipes at private schools, I am no longer quite so complacent in my thinking about the state education system in the UK. This is something Niall Ferguson talks about in his final Reith Lecture on civil society--he too, a beneficiary of private education. Ferguson’s thesis goes even further, arguing that it is not a case of the developing world, especially Asia, transforming themselves politically and economically; rather, it is due to the degeneration of Western institutions and their quality. He sees these are two quite separate phenomena. That is, he argues, it’s not because China is growing more rapidly that we are managing our affairs less well; rather, the biggest threat to Western civilisation is complacency. And, I have to say, regardless of Ferguson’s political and ideological position, he is right in warning against thinking that our schools, legal and political systems are fine.

Worth listening to… BBC - Radio 4 and 4 Extra Blog: Niall Ferguson: Reith Lecture pt.4 - Civil and Uncivil Societies

At this year's Edinburgh Festival...

End of the academic year

The school's grounds are empty now, apart from a few lets from the National Youth Orchestra Scotland, but these young people aren’t quite as rowdy as the boys at my school! Term is over. Those teachers that live on site are squirreled away in their homes starting to do what ‘normal’ people do in the ‘real’ world! Outside, where there are normally people in movement all day every day, the birds have more or less taken over. If only the summer sun would bake down on the empty fields; so far all we’ve had is rain and the Water of Leith looks like it might burst its banks at any moment. Over in the Memorial Hall, some girls from NYOS are rehearsing, and the sound is carrying over to my flat. The end of term was marked with a farewell dinner/dance for those staff who were perhaps reluctant to let go of the year, or who wanted the chance to say goodbye before heading off to do whatever it is that they will be doing this summer. This was great fun! I've always felt strange about the end of the year. The start of school is a pure pleasure, a fresh start, a time of anticipation and eagerness, a chance to renew ties and catch up. The end of the year is pretty awesome too, bringing closure and perhaps some sense of satisfaction, but it is also tinged with regret, both for being what it is (as opposed to what it might have been). I always think of Edith Piaf whenever I contemplate regret and her potent rolling ‘Rs’ in ‘Non, je ne regrette rien,’ that even Major Ewing would be proud of! And then, of course, there is the saying of goodbyes. I've never been good at saying goodbye. I tend to shuffle and mumble and feel like whatever words I can come up with are inadequate to the occasion. If I can find a plausible excuse for ducking out, I'm gone and would much rather pen something on a card. An esteemed colleague in my department tells me that the all-time mega-über-maximum-full-tilt goodbye lyric is ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ by Donne. It’s certainly artful and beautifully realized: As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, "The breath goes now," and some say, "No," So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of the earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we, by a love so much refined That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion. Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do; And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. Anyway, I’m going to say goodbye for a few days as Sophie and I are heading to New York for a few days’ exploring to celebrate the end of term…

Time for reflection

I occasionally ask my students, by way of taking stock, to complete a certain reflective exercise. And since I’m blogging again, I thought this was as good a time as ever to do it myself. It’s a reflection in the form of three questions: Where are you right now? Where are you trying to get to? and How are you going to get there? Where are you now? Well, I'm three years down the line. When I started, it was probably the most productive period in my writerly life. I started out wanting to reflect on my Teach First journey, my highs and lows and what I learnt along the way. Since then, I have even begun to try to find a way to make it work as a tool in my classes. And that has happened a little (see www.merchistonenglish.blogspot.com). I'm reading more than I ever have, but I'm reading differently. Aside from the marking, I tend to read tweets, headlines, ideas, RSS feeds, aphorisms; I have articles that people have recommended to me coming in by the dozens each day, but I'm having trouble even getting round to opening books. I've got a stack of brand new books waiting for me by my bed, and there are so many things going on in my head that I don't have time to get to them. At some point I'm going to have to take a deep breath, back off, make some decisions about boundaries, but perhaps tomorrow; it’s still fresh and exciting. Where are you trying to get to? I think this is an essential question for me, and I don't really have an answer for it yet. I'd like to be able to find a sustainable pattern. I've always run—I run first thing in the morning—light, dark, snow, hail, thunder—without fail. I run for about an hour, which is enough to have the desired effect and not so long that I'm really ever tempted to skip it. I'd like to be able to find the blogging equivalent of that rhythm. During my time on the Teach First programme I managed about three to four posts a month, but I don't think that's sustainable in my current role, given that I have other responsibilities as a teacher, a student, an assistant Housemaster, fiancé, friend etc etc. Plus I need to eat, sleep and I have a pile of coursework marking waiting for me, and I'd like to have them done before the weekend. So the time that I am spending doing this is time I'm spending not doing that and I’ve already found juggling those aforementioned responsibilities a challenge. I feel like I haven’t chewed the fat with some of my closest mates in too long…so, following on from the last post, I’m lowering the bar just slightly. How are you going to get there? Just one thought really: I want to use blogspot.com as a space to talk to myself, and to anyone else who is interested about whatever I want to talk about.