“Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.” JANE YOLEN

I wonder how I can begin to explain how much books and reading mean to me. So many people have said it all before me and have said it so much better than I ever could. I once read something written by W. Somerset Maugham in which he expounds that there is nothing admirable about admitting that you cannot go without reading:

'Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without: who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? And so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot.'                                                                   W Somerset Maugham

Admittedly not a terribly complimentary statement but there is an element of truth there – I have to be able to read and the printed word (even in electronic form) has always been, and will always be, a refuge for me: in essence a drug, and no less addictive than a hypodermic filled with opiates.

I have been reading since I first began to recognise the meanings of words. I was a bit of an introvert at school and added to that I was not allowed to go out at weekends (good Portuguese girl and all that) so I did not have many friends. How to fill the hours if not to read? No iPads, no cell phones, not even any talking on the phone – a big, black, clunky thing in the sitting room where the family gathered – and what was available on television was laughable. It was all black and white at the time and my sister and I weren’t allowed to watch many of the programmes (same reasons as for not being allowed to go out). Fun, fun, fun!

With reading there was a limitless access to material – school library and the library at the tennis club where my dad played every weekend – it was private, I could travel to places I had never been, and my social circle expanded exponentially. I loved it.

 I grew into the habit of taking my books with me wherever I went to the extent that my parents tried to ban me from doing when we visited family or friends – they said it was anti-social of me to go an read inside, and so it was and I simply didn’t care. This was one thing I would not allow to be taken from me so I hid the books under the car seat and as soon as was possible, I said I had a sore stomach and went to the bathroom and read there. Bliss!

So it is a no brainer what my favourite subject at school was … and because I was writing British exams (GCSE) there was a separate subject called English Literature where I studied not one novel and one Shakespeare along with some selected poetry, I was allowed to study ten more. And then after all that I was still given a piece of paper in recognition of me achievements. When I went to university it was even better: in my 1^st year English course we studied 22 books – the modern novel, Shakespeare, modern theatre, African literature, Victorian novels and the entire works of Blake and Yeats. Heaven indeed!

Small wonder then that I chose to teach English (after that initial disaster where I taught History for one year). And I have never tired of it. Imagine that, combining my two passions – reading and teaching – and doing them every day.

Many of my students are resistant to studying literature, poetry in particular – okay, I admit, most are reluctant – but that becomes a challenge: to see if I can make even one of them change their mind. And I often do and knowing that I have created a reader is an awesome feeling.  

 With the advent of the electronic reader the big debate began over which was the better - the printed word vs an actual book? I never really cared – words are words wherever they are written and so I have both and the best of both worlds. In fact I have two Kindle readers, the Kindle app on my iPad and on my other tablet, the Kindle app on my phone, and I have a wonderful collection of books in my study (hundreds) with which I will not part. Now I don’t need to hide books under the seat of my car – I can take as many books as I want wherever I go and read at every opportunity. You see, it is an addiction.

I seldom read fewer than three books a week: people often ask how I find the time but it’s not a question of finding the time to read, it is how I find the time to do anything else – it is all about priorities after all.

I have learnt more from books and from reading than I would ever have learnt in any other way. My insights into human nature, my ability to understand sub text and to read between the lines, my awareness of propaganda and when someone is trying to manipulate me, my insights into human nature – all learnt through reading.

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist and author and was responsible for making science popular, even with philistines like me. This extraordinary man of science wrote:

'What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object, made from a tree with flexible parts on which are printed lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.'

I wholeheartedly agree.

‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.’ JOHN DONNE

John Donne, he of metaphysical poetry fame and one time Dean of St Paul’s cathedral, wrote those sombre words in one of his most famous sermons. He was of course speaking of death but fear not those of you who have already envisaged the Grim Reaper, this post is not about that somewhat depressing subject.

I am rather referring to that bane of every teacher’s existence … the school bell. And for any of you who are not teachers you can have no idea of the impact those bells have on our lives. Bells dictate every moment of our working lives: not only do they announce the beginning and end of lessons, everything we do revolves around their ringing. When we can eat, when we can go to the toilet, when we have to go to meetings ... absolutely everything revolves around those bloody bells. Want to go to the bank? Hold on, is there enough time before the bell rings for the next lesson? Need to go to the doctor? Don’t be silly – the bell will ring long before you have time to get there and back. Many the time I have been in the middle of an interesting conversation and a much needed cup of coffee when the bell has rung and I have had to rush to class. Why not ignore it? Or risk being a few minutes late? Ah, therein lies the rub … I can’t! I insist that my students arrive on time – I cannot adopt double standards to suit my needs so, when that bell rings, I get up and I go.

With that persistent and ever present bell of course arises that looming spectre of time passing – just as Donne stated. And no, this post is still not about dying but I cannot help having a heightened sense of the fleeting nature of time (please excuse the clichés – brain numb through lack of sleep) every time a bell rings. Forget the joys of wedding bells, or the intrusive sound of alarm bells, or even the sonorous tinkling of those gorgeous harmony bells – bells loom large and ugly and ominous in my life. There are of course a multitude of other instances when bells are rung but I am afraid I have developed a bit of tunnel vision in this regard.

The reverse can be true of course and many an uncomfortable or tedious lesson has led to gratitude for being saved by the bell: I suspect however that it is the students who are most often grateful for that timely reprieve to end the tedium of drowning in a sea of blah! The ringing of that bell at the end of term is also a wondrous occasion – not only does it announce the start of that long awaited and well-deserved holiday, it also means that I won’t have to hear a bell for however long the holiday lasts!

Having taught for so long and with only two years remaining until my official retirement the ringing of the bells has assumed a different significance. Yes, for me school days will at last and once and for all be over and how do I feel about that? I suspect my feelings are the same as that of most people who face imminent retirement – relief that at last I will have the time to do whatever I feel like doing (and for me this means without the spectre of marking, reports and lesson prep) and a sense of anxiety regarding the implications of what that retirement means in terms of the passing of time. I know I won’t be bored when I retire – there is too much I still want to do before my body eventually gives up the ghost and declares enough – but that is the core of the matter isn’t it? When will my body decide that enough is enough?

I think back on all the hundreds of bells I have heard over the years – not only school bells: from those large hand held brass bells in the playground, to the bells in bell towers on Sundays summoning us to church, to the grating sirens of the pre-set electronic bells, to the bells rung on the stock exchange trading floors and their sounds become immaterial. At the end of the day we are all governed by bells and what they signify … that we cannot control the passage of time and that it holds us ever in its thrall.

In the words of Dr Seuss - 

“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?” ― TERRY PRATCHETT, Mort

I love Terry Pratchett books: they are absolutely insane and it takes a special kind of mind to think in such a bizarre manner and then to be able to express those thoughts for others to read. Terry Pratchett's death last year saddened me because the world has lost such a tremendous sense of humour. 

Let me explain: I am one of those irreverent people who believes that having a sense of humour is the most important quality a person can have. In my world there are no holy cows and I actively look for humour in any situation in which I find myself. Yes, this has created all sorts of problems for me, and I confess that sometimes the humour is based on cynicism and an acute awareness of the irony of human existence: sometimes the laughter is hollow, and often it is directed at me and how ridiculous I may appear but you know what, at the end of the day, I still laugh. 

As a teacher of adolescent boys I find a sense of humour to be essential: I have seen colleagues over the years creating dramatic productions over incidents so trivial they could have been dismissed with a well-timed joke or a laugh. Students soon understand they can undermine a teacher by saying the most outrageous things in the knowledge that they will be taken seriously. Over the years I have established relationships with my students through my ability to laugh with them - whether that laughter is directed at me or at a situation is immaterial - we laugh together.

And so when I saw the YouTube video of comedian Tim Minchin delivering a graduation speech at UWA (University of Western Australia - his alma mater) I knew I had to include it somewhere in this blog. I have shown it to all my senior classes and the boys loved it - and have learnt some important life lessons from it. Because of course that is the awesome by-product of humour - the lessons we learn whilst seemingly not doing so. It is those lessons we remember, and it is the relationships we forge through shared humour that tend to endure.

So I hope you enjoy Tim Minchin's nine bits of advice to those university graduates and that they resonate with you as they did with me. The speech is extremely funny and very profound.

‘There is only one sort of discipline, perfect discipline.’ GEORGE S. PATTON

I have been most fortunate (and extremely lucky I suspect - please note cunning use of tautology!) that I have never experienced any discipline problems with my classes. I have heard many stories over the years of teachers being intimidated by their students and once a teacher has acquired the reputation of being an easy pushover by one class, all the other classes climb on the bandwagon and it tends to become a free-for-all. I have been witness to many interventions to help such teachers from assertiveness training, to role play, to well-meaning advice and the offering of different strategies. But students are perceptive and instinctive beings and they know when someone is trying too hard and such assumed techniques are seldom effective as they are not natural to that person standing in front of the class.

So what does a teacher who struggles with discipline do? Well, I have seen some who conduct every lesson in shouting mode, constantly raising their voice above the noise of their students and hoping that someone will hear something about what is attempting to be taught. Such lessons are often punctuated with cries of “Sit down!” or “Keep quiet!” or “This is your last warning!” – all completely ineffectual. Students know when they are in control and they are merciless in dictating the rules when in such a class.

Then there others who seem completely impervious to any forms of noise or rowdy behaviour. Irrespective of the conduct of their students such teachers stand at the front of their class and burble ineffectually, seemingly totally unaware of what is happening all around them. I don’t know if this is a form of courage, or of resigning themselves to the inevitable, or even if they think that students behave in this manner in all their lessons.

And then there are the teachers who use fear, contempt and perhaps even intimidation as a form of controlling their classes: you will note that I have used the word control and not the word discipline – these are two very different concepts and I have met many teachers who either believe them to be the same, or who do not care as long as the class in front of them is quiet and appears to be co-operative. The fact the students are sullen and unresponsive and often resort to truculent behaviour seems to matter little as long as the teacher can conduct their lesson in relative peace and quiet. It is easy to control a group of people who all wear the same clothing, who follow the same rules for how they have their haircut and who are governed by the ringing of bells for their daily functioning. Such people, I might suggest, can be classified as bullies and in the words of Shay Mitchell ‘… bullying never has to do with you. It's the bully who's insecure.’ Students know this and whilst they may not be openly defiant the subversion simmers just under the surface.

 I believe that discipline is about respect. Students are not in class just to obey and they are not receptacles for copious amounts of data and facts that need to be learnt and regurgitated. Students have the right to question what they are doing and why they are doing it: this is not defiance or being rude – they simply want to know. Just as we want, and need, to know why we pay taxes and what they are for (in South Africa we know exactly why we pay tax and what use will be made of that money but that is best kept for another day!) in my first lesson at the start of the school year I introduce myself and tell students I have one rule and one rule only in my classroom – what applies to me, applies to them. I arrive to class on time; I am dressed neatly; I do not eat, drink, smoke, pick my nose or fart in class; the work I give my students is always presented on clean white paper and is always legible; I will always do my best to ensure I fulfil my obligations to them: the same rules of behaviour apply to them. My classroom is my space – I will keep it neat, clean, tidy and interesting out of respect for them and I expect them to do the same. If I were to enter a student’s home I would not swing on his parents’ furniture or scratch my name on the coffee table – my classroom furnishings may be ugly and functional but should be treated in like manner.

Having established the rule I give students the opportunity to ask questions or to look for clarity with anything they do not understand: I also ask them to consider carefully what I have said and if they feel that what I am asking is too demanding then they have the right to ask for a transfer to another class. I have never had a student who has asked to leave my class and likewise, I have never had a discipline problem.

Perhaps it has been good fortune and good luck … and perhaps it hasn’t.

“The past is always tense, the future perfect” ― ZADIE SMITH

In my first year of teaching I taught both English and History. At that stage I was happy to teach both as I loved both disciplines and had absolutely no idea of the intricacies of balancing two subjects with two separate sets of prep and horror of all horrors, THE MARKING!

Our HOD History was a well-meaning but officious woman who did classroom inspections to see just how well we communicated a love for the subject to our students. That such enthusiasm was measured by how we presented our classrooms and not by how we actually taught made me feel a little like one of those window dressers presenting the latest goods in a manner that would attract the most sales. My classroom was festooned with posters, maps, charts, battle plans and anything else vaguely historical I could find. Alas, to no avail. She walked in, pursed her lips, shook her head sadly and declared her disappointment that I had nothing displayed on the ceiling. It smacked of a royal command and so the next project I assigned my grade 8s was to build model World War I aeroplanes which I then proceeded to suspend above us, to all intents and purposes as though we were about to be strafed with enemy gunfire. My passion for teaching History was downed as quickly as those wood and paper constructions and I confess that it has never resurfaced. I suspect that this is not a bad thing as I was not a very interesting History teacher: the syllabus aside – just how do you make the Great Trek and the Boer Wars interesting? – I nearly droned myself to sleep, let alone my students.

My love of History remains but is now confined to reading the latest Paul Johnson or Anthony Beevor, the latter of whom must be considered one of the greatest historians of the modern era.

No, my true passion was the teaching of English and so it has remained. It felt as though it was a natural extension of me and that feeling has not diminished over time. There have been days when I have felt as though I have somehow beaten the system: I am paid for indulging what I love most and then am given school holidays to boot. My love for what I do is twofold: I love teaching, and I love Literature even more. The combination of the two is a heady experience.

But as with everything else, doing something you love does not make it less difficult and the teaching of English is fraught with problems – so many that to be quite honest I am not sure where to begin. First of all is the fact that the students I teach are all English first language speakers: when they sit at table and ask someone to pass the salt the request is understood – in other words, if I already speak the language, why on earth do I need to study it?

With the greater use of technology in the classroom this feeling of the pointlessness of studying English has grown exponentially of late  – spell checks and grammar checks seem to negate the need to learn essential language usage, in particular in its written form. After all, very few people actually write letters and use snail mail anymore – emails are quicker and far more convenient.

The fact that language has deteriorated seems unimportant to most students and they are not even aware that this has happened: television shows, online games, sms language and a diminished culture of reading have so infiltrated modern social contexts that poor language usage is not recognised or even seen to be problematic. I am by no means a purist and I recognise that languages evolve and change, adapting to lifestyles and cultures, and I welcome the flexibility regarding many of those outdated rules regarding the use of split infinitives and beginning a sentence with a conjunction but people, there is a limit!

 Communication is a gift and clear communication is vital as I believe that language is about two things and two things only – we use words to express what we think and what we feel: if our use of language is inadequate we allow our thoughts and feelings to be diminished and do not give them the importance they are due. When that happens people will ignore or disregard what we are saying and our words will grow ever less important. So it is not grammar for grammar's sake that matters - it is the ability to express ourselves clearly.

Descartes wrote ‘I think therefore I am’ – and if who I am is important to me then I believe I need the words to tell that to others, but mainly to be able to tell that to myself.

“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.” ― BOB MARLEY

I am extremely fortunate to receive the Marshall Memo.

For those of you who do not know, the Marshall Memo is a weekly round up of current important ideas and research in secondary school education. The information is garnered from research articles and educational publications from around the world and they provide insight into latest trends, as well as giving access to those ideas that have the potential to improve teaching, learning and leadership. My school pays for the subscription and I am extremely grateful both to the school and to Kim Marshall for this wonderful resource, and have hoarded every copy I have received over the years.

In the latest edition we were told about a graduation speech made at Harvard: the speech has gone viral and I thought it worth recording here as it embodies for me some of those extraordinary students I have been privileged to teach over the years. They have not all been Harvard graduates, or indeed graduates from any university, but their sheer enthusiasm and joy and belief in who they are and in what they intend to do and to be has always given me hope for the future. It also encapsulates so much of what I believe to be the role of education and of educators.

So here it is ... and thank you Donovan Livingston.

“Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin,
Is a great equalizer of the conditions of men.” – Horace Mann, 1848.

At the time of his remarks I couldn’t read — couldn’t write.
Any attempt to do so, punishable by death.
For generations we have known of knowledge’s infinite power.
Yet somehow, we’ve never questioned the keeper of the keys —
The guardians of information.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen more dividing and conquering
In this order of operations — a heinous miscalculation of reality.
For some, the only difference between a classroom and a plantation is time.
How many times must we be made to feel like quotas —
Like tokens in coined phrases? —
“Diversity. Inclusion”
There are days I feel like one, like only —
A lonely blossom in a briar patch of broken promises.
But I’ve always been a thorn in the side of injustice.

Disruptive. Talkative. A distraction.
With a passion that transcends the confines of my consciousness —
Beyond your curriculum, beyond your standards.
I stand here, a manifestation of love and pain,
With veins pumping revolution.
I am the strange fruit that grew too ripe for the poplar tree.
I am a DREAM Act, Dream Deferred incarnate.
I am a movement – an amalgam of memories America would care to forget
My past, alone won’t allow me to sit still.
So my body, like the mind
Cannot be contained.

As educators, rather than raising your voices
Over the rustling of our chains,
Take them off. Un-cuff us.
Unencumbered by the lumbering weight
Of poverty and privilege,
Policy and ignorance.

I was in the 7th grade, when Ms. Parker told me,
“Donovan, we can put your excess energy to good use!”
And she introduced me to the sound of my own voice.
She gave me a stage. A platform.
She told me that our stories are ladders
That make it easier for us to touch the stars.
So climb and grab them.
Keep climbing. Grab them.
Spill your emotions in the big dipper and pour out your soul.
Light up the world with your luminous allure.

To educate requires Galileo-like patience.
Today, when I look my students in the eyes, all I see are constellations.
If you take the time to connect the dots,
You can plot the true shape of their genius —
Shining in their darkest hour.

I look each of my students in the eyes,
And see the same light that aligned Orion’s Belt
And the pyramids of Giza.
I see the same twinkle
That guided Harriet to freedom.
I see them. Beneath their masks and mischief,
Exists an authentic frustration;
An enslavement to your standardized assessments.

At the core, none of us were meant to be common.
We were born to be comets,
Darting across space and time —
Leaving our mark as we crash into everything.
A crater is a reminder that something amazing happened here —
An indelible impact that shook up the world.
Are we not astronomers — looking for the next shooting star?
I teach in hopes of turning content, into rocket ships —
Tribulations into telescopes,
So a child can see their potential from right where they stand.
An injustice is telling them they are stars
Without acknowledging night that surrounds them.
Injustice is telling them education is the key
While you continue to change the locks.

Education is no equalizer —

Rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream.
So wake up — wake up! Lift your voices
Until you’ve patched every hole in a child’s broken sky.
Wake up every child so they know of their celestial potential.
I’ve been a Black hole in the classroom for far too long;
Absorbing everything, without allowing my light escape.
But those days are done. I belong among the stars.
And so do you. And so do they.
Together, we can inspire galaxies of greatness
For generations to come.
No, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning.

Lift off.

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/16/05/lift

'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.' - ANNE FRANK

This week marks the anniversary of the June 16 1976 youth uprising: the immediate cause of the uprising was because of a directive from the Bantu Education Department that Afrikaans had to be used on an equal basis with English as one of the languages of instruction in all secondary schools. What followed was encapsulated by Sam Nzima's iconic photograph of Hector Pieterson being carried away from the conflict after he had been shot.

A dying Hector Pieterson being carried by another student while his sister runs alongside.
(Photo: Sam Nzima)

That the event was a tragedy is undeniable. But I did not just want to pay tribute to th ose students who lost their lives on that day, or to remember the families who still mourn for them. I wished to salute and to acknowledge all those young people who over the years have taken their future into their own hands and by so doing have taught me about courage and resilience and about the optimism that only the young have. Some may call it foolhardiness or ignorance - be that as it may, the fact remains that student protest is woven into the social fabric of cultures across the world and much has been achieved because of them.

I was teaching South African protest poetry to my grade 11 class today and was reminded of Don Mattera’s poem Let the children decide.

Let us halt this quibbling
Of reform and racial preservation

Saying who belongs to which nation

Students running from soldiers' bullets during the June 16 uprising
(Photo: Peter Magubane)

And let the children decide

It is their world

Let us burn our uniforms

Of old scars and grievances

And call back our spent dreams

And the relics of crass tradition

That hang on our malignant hearts

And let the children decide

For it IS their world ...

Mattera wrote the poem in 1966 and ten years later the children did indeed decide.

But I would be remiss if I did not speak about other student protests that have resonated across the world.

In 1989 a pro-Democracy movement was led by students in Beijing in China. The movement revealed deep splits in the Chinese Communist party and received significant support, eventually spreading to 400 cities across the country. The protesters were based in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing and were peacefully calling for political and economic reform: in response the Chinese authorities declared martial law and used overwhelming force to repress the demonstrations. Military units were brought in and unarmed protesters and civilians were killed en masse. The Chinese government has never released any comments regarding the incident and all mention of the protest remains banned by authorities to the present day. The exact number of deaths has never been revealed but estimates run into the thousands.

A lone student faces a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square

 Coincidentally this event also occurred in June only in this instance it was on 4 June.

On May 4 students at Kent State University in Ohio gathered to protest against President Richard Nixon’s plans to send a further 150 000 soldiers into Cambodia, Vietnam. The war was already an unpopular one and outrage at Nixon’s announcement spread throughout America. The governor of Ohio sent 900 National Guardsmen to Kent State and 28 of them opened fire on the students, killing four and wounding nine. A similar incident occurred 10 days later at Jackson State University where two students were killed and a further nine injured.

Pullitzer Award winning photograph of the Kent State shootings

In 1957 nine black students enrolled at a previously all white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. On the first day of school they were met by angry mobs of white people as well as the Arkansas National Guard trying to prevent them from entering the school. The refusal of the students to back down and surrender to those who tried to intimidate them led to President Eisenhower having the students escorted into school by federal troops. The incident was a landmark in the Civil Rights movement.

White protesters attempt to stop students attending Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas

And then there are those wonderful people who have stood alone in protest and whose courage has defied understanding. Difficult enough to do when you are a Ghandi or a Nelson Mandela, but when Malala Yousafazi at the age of 15 defied the Taliban in Pakistan she sent an unparalleled message of defiance. In response to her demands that girls be given the right to an education she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman but survived and is the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Student marches, rallies and boycotts have resulted in clashes with governments and with the police, but they have also resulted in creating public awareness and outrage against social, political and economic injustices. There are many who decry the violence and the senseless destruction of property and yes, such actions on many occasions become self-defeating and appear to be senseless and wanton acts lacking in meaning and whose only purpose is to cause havoc. But I find it remarkable that what so many of these student protests highlight is the failure of education systems. It is not only in South Africa that students are protesting against the rising costs of education: such demonstrations have occurred, and are occurring, across the world including such countries as Chile, Egypt, Mexico, Greece, the USA and Pakistan to name but a few. 

Student protest march calling for the abolition of tuition fees in Westminster, London

And so I have to ask: on who else can students rely but themselves when authorities drag their heels and make promises they have no intention of keeping? Governments seem to hope that by the time the red tape of bureaucracy has been cut that students will have grown tired of waiting and move on. But they forget that there will always be students and that they will always protest and we can learn much from their tenacity and from their fearlessness.

To all my students, past and present, I salute you. 

'Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.' - W B YEATS

I hated school. I hated everything about it. 

Not primary school - that was nothing spectacular but it was alright and it passed in a pleasant swirl of school plays, friends, learning to write with fountain pen ... the latter very, very exciting and sparking my ever constant love of all things stationery! Especially exciting was the visits to the tuck shop. In those days we got those dinky bottles of milk at break time and I used to forgo the milk and hoard my milk money so I could go to the tuck shop on a Friday. For sixpence (today's equivalent of five cents) we ruled the playground. I could get a packet of sherbet with a liquorice straw, five apricots (orange sweets the size of an apricot) and a bag of gobstoppers. No primary school was fine - it was fun and that is the way it should be I think.

What I hated was secondary school and as soon as I registered that this was supposed to be education I rebelled. The uniforms, the prefects, homework, endless rules - everything was purgatory for me and as for the lessons, I despised the lessons. I didn't feel much antipathy towards the teachers - in fact I didn't feel much of anything about them other than that they really weren't very interesting at all. I just knew - I have no idea why - that there had to be a better way of doing things. For instance, my history teacher remained the same for four years and for those four years she dictated notes every single lesson: that I studied history at university had nothing whatsoever to do with her, and my love of history remained due to the nature of the discipline and the fascination I felt for it. French and Latin were big yawns and what I remember most about biology (life sciences) is being told that giving birth was like pushing a steam roller up a hill but if you struggled it was like pushing up two: wise words indeed! 

Much of my loathing was directed towards geography and my geography teacher: I cared nothing for the annual rainfalls of various European countries, or for the crops grown in the Outer Hebrides and added to that, I was taught all this - and I use the word taught in the loosest possible sense of the word - by a small-minded bigot who did little to hide her contempt for the fact that I was Portuguese. She took delight in asking if we grew vegetables in our back garden and if we kept chickens as did all the other Portuguese immigrants. I remember going home and crying because I was Portuguese and asking my parents please to send me to another school. The only glimmer in an ever darkening universe was my love of reading and my books sustained me and kept me sane through all the tedious hours and hours and hours I spent in those bone chilling classrooms.

You will note that I have not as yet made any mention of maths or science and that is because I dropped them both at the earliest possible opportunity. In the British school system at the time if you dropped maths you had to do four languages to compensate and I embraced them wholeheartedly - anything not to have to learn to mix letters with numbers and to prove that x = 0: I was more than happy to accept my teacher's word for it and saw no reason to try to prove it.

And yet my desire to teach was not diminished - crazy right?  The more boring the lessons and the more constricted I felt the more I knew that I could do it better. And I have spent the past 36 years always trying to do it better.

So what did I really learn from those years of high school? I learnt never to dictate notes; never to judge a student based on culture, class, heritage or anything else; to try to vary my lessons and to use new material wherever and whenever possible; that language is a wonderful gift - any language - and the ability to communicate the greatest gift of all; that in reading we can find true learning and meaning.  And most of all, I learnt that unless you do something, anything, with passion, then you are just wasting your time and everyone else's.

How to sustain the passion? Ah, that is a story for another day.

'By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn.' - LATIN PROVERB

I always wanted to be a teacher.

Back in the day we started school when we turned five and as I was born in December, my January was filled with new uniforms, a brand new suitcase, and the feeling that turning five was not all that pleasant. Our school was tiny and made up of red face brick which was blanketed with creepers - it really was rather pretty although I didn't actually notice this at the time. It was only when I was older and we used to drive past it that I realised its aesthetic value compared to the conglomerate of buildings which was my high school. Not much registered initially except that I had no friends as I could barely speak English: learning to do so was a long and slow process I shared with my mother, who could also not speak English. Janet and John and their dog Spot (my first reader) formed the centre of our world for a long time and I can still remember the sensation of turning the pages of those small blue covered books and sounding out the words until they had some meaning.

One day that is very clear is when I realised that I had understood something my teacher had said: soon followed the knowledge that I had two words for certain things, each in a different language. And I have been fascinated with words and with languages ever since. As my confidence grew so did my fascination with my grade 1 teacher - Miss Carter. I thought she was wonderful, and as young children tend to do with their teachers, I transferred to her the power that she could do nothing wrong.  My memories of her are inexact but I know that she had a lovely voice and that it was when I was in her class that I knew I wanted to be a teacher. That desire stayed with me throughout school and university and 36 years later I am as passionate about what I do as I was when I lined up my dolls and taught them all to read and to write. 



Some have told me over the years that I lacked ambition as I did not allow myself to consider any other occupation or career. Perhaps they are right but you know what, I really do not care. I love teaching and as a teacher of English, I consider myself to be that most fortunate of all beings, someone who has never regretted doing what she does and who has never resented getting up in the morning to do so.