Teachers of the UK, what is one thing you have experienced whilst teaching that you will never forget?

9 comments

1. Hello, I’m not a teacher

2. I trained to teach languages but I knew I wasn’t going to take it past PGCE because the suffocating curriculum was already killing me. Teaching kids to recite stock phrases like “I like maths because it is fun” and “Last year I went to France. Next year I will go to Poland.” Soul destroying.

   Anyway I had to do this final project as part of my PGCE and you could go off piste a bit, I had a group of year 9’s, summer term and I was basically told – you can do anything with them for a few weeks. So I did a “fuck the National Curriculum” writing project (didn’t call it that formally, funnily enough)

   Gave the kids a crash course in using a dictionary, what a verb is, what a tense is, gave them a huge chart of conjugated verbs.

   And then I just said, we’re making our own magazines. You can write about whatever you want, it just has to be in French. It doesn’t need to be correct, it just needs to be in French. If they asked me for help, I’d help but I’d steer them back to their dictionary and verb grid as it was supposed to come from them.

   I actually started crying when I got some of the magazines back. They had put so much effort into it, obviously it wasn’t all perfect but French people would have got it. They had written their first extended prose in another language that wasn’t fed to them in stock phrases. It just shows how different language learning could be in this country if we trusted kids to learn by adventuring and getting it wrong.

   And sadly reinforced my decision to quit as I would never be able to do anything like that again.

3. Ex teacher here – when I was head of year 7 a parent told me I was racist against white students (I’m white) because they’d heard I had a Polish wife (I didn’t). I still think about it.

4. I teach adults. When I was fairly new to teaching I had a lady who cried in her first three lessons as she had such a bad time at school. She said her teacher would shout at her and belittle her in class. After assessing her and her abilities I quickly discovered that she was actually quite good and advised her to try the level above and convinced her that I thought she could do it. Well she did and I then I cried.

5. I’m a supply teacher.

   (Nutrition) A Y11 boy put his hand up & asked me what my favourite category of porn was.

   (Set 5 Biology) A traveller boy improvised a rap about photosynthesis.

   I met the daughter of my English teacher (saw her distinct surname on the register, saw the resemblance).

   Being suspended for a day (I was completely cleared of any wrongdoing), I can’t go into details but it was to do with my search history on school laptop. Again, I emphasize I was completely innocent & found to be completely innocent (but I can totally see why it was very suspicious out of context).

6. When I was training, I couldn’t drive, so I would have to take two bus trips to the school every day, both ways.

   The second bus always had a kid on from the school. It ended up that he was in my Year 8 class.

   Because the journey was long, what started off as just “hi Miss” turned into full on conversations. His name was Bradley.

   He told me he was in foster care, and all about his life. He would tell me how he wished he was back with his mum and dad, but they hadn’t been able to take care of him. How the foster carers were nice enough, but they weren’t like his real parents. How he knew he was different to their “proper kids” (as he called them) because at Christmas he’d always get generic stuff like Lynx or trainers, while the “proper kids” always got something really personal and meaningful.

   I was having a rubbish time at the school, but Bradley was always there in the morning to cheer me up. Of course I never let him know that! Because he was vulnerable, I was really cautious about our conversations, so I didn’t say much back – just let him know about other adults in the school he could talk to, and tried to listen to him when he wanted to talk. Normal friendly stuff.

   Anyway, I was at that school for about six months. And on the last day I got the bus, I explained to Bradley that the placement was done and I’d be going off to another school, so we wouldn’t see each other anymore.

   He looked absolutely heartbroken, and I cursed myself for letting him get attached to another adult who was going to leave him. But he just said “I wish you’d told me, so I could have brought you a present!”

   And as he got off the bus, he patted down his pockets to see if he had anything of value to give me, eventually coming up with a pen. A normal biro. And he offered it out to me, and said “there you go Miss – to say thanks for listening…”

   It was such a little gesture, but it showed that just being there had meant a lot to him.

   I still think about him sometimes. That was about 10 years ago so he’ll probably be about 22 now. I hope you’re doing alright Bradley.

7. A kid I was teaching told me I look like an ugly Paul Scholes.

8. Other teachers being absolute dickheads. Wisely, I left that vocation. It was shit.

9. At an SEN school. Year 9 student said his first word. We had to take turns in the Prep Room to compose ourselves. We were looking at effect of exercise on body. I asked him how he felt and he said hot!