Art imitating life

OhGodOhGodOhGod.

Last night, instead of watching the football (OK, I forgot), I sat at my homely epson typewriter, which I pretentiously insist on using, despite possessing a very-fine-Toshiba-laptop-thank-you-very-much. I wrote away for two frantic hours, convinced of the comic gold-dust status of my new idea.

Which turns out to be a shitter version Teachers.

Why does this happen? However you want to view it, I'm either someone who writes to escape the horror of teaching adolescents, or someone who teaches in order to fund their creative writing. What I'm definitely bloody not is someone who writes about teaching. And yet here the day job is, encroaching on my pleasure time - my serious pleasure time - and there's not a thing I can do about it.

The last radio drama I wrote was set in a tea shop. Guess who used to work in a tea shop? I'm seriously worried about my imagination.

Hang on, got to go: I've just had a fantastic idea for a sitcom about Oxbridge students and the post-traumatic stress induced by going down.

By this I mean leaving university, not working away at a particularly cheesy willy.

An apology to the wind

It's ridiculously self-important to apologise to my readership of 3 old friends, but I'm sorry I stopped posting. I've just had a week in bed with what was clearly bird flu, and I'm only now feeling strong enough to come to work and blog.

I feel bad because I wanted to do this properly and a certain blogger even wrote something nice about my writing which made me want to write more. With no internet at home this wasn't possible, but now I'm back in the classroom, so if anyone's reading this, you'll be reading more soon.

Teacher Types

The comic genius of his title has already been discussed in yesterday's post (bleakspouse notes with horror that she already sounds like a teacher). I have decided not to go down the route of categorising teachers by their subject because it's been done and these stereotypes are, in many cases, wrong. Instead I have tried to keep it as general as possible. This is easier said than done becase I could name at least 20 specific teacher types off hand. However, I am currently in a class so I have neither the time nor the energy. Fortunately I have solved this problem by remembering a recent coversation with a lovely old biology teacher called Mr Takil - incidentally this is a bit of a shocker for a science teacher's name because it sounds like Mr Tackle and so he always has students asking if they can get out their equipment. I digress. Mr Takil was explaining his new theory of groups, classes, families species etc (I didn't say it was an interesting conversation). So I have tried to compile the general 'groups' of teachers. I realise there are plenty of subsets and intersecting Venn diagrams (oh god) but this is what you're getting for now...

The Cretinous
The aphorism 'Those who can do, those who can't teach' is entirely correct in a (admittedly declining) number of cases. I recently had to check a Maths teacher's marking because he "didn't want to look stupid in front of his class."

The Content
A rare bread of teacher, found more often, though not exclusively, at private schools. Let's face it, some people were born to teach and it's these people who are always remembered as that 'favourite teacher' from your childhood. (Please note that no-one ever has favourite teacherS - there are rarely more than 2 of The Content per school so statistically you are only ever likely to have been taught by one)

The Smug
There a few teachers who, mostly due to mummy and daddy, have loads of money and are thus incredibly smug. Think about it, if anyone actually earnt any money by becoming a teacher then it would probably be the best of all professions; you spend your working day around people who are guaranteed (in most cases) to be less intelligent than you; you are a teacher and therefore have the moral superiority of making the world a better place (like a doctor or nurse except with less stress); and at the end of term you have long and, because you have loads of money, fantastic holidays.

The Bitter
By a country mile this is the largest category of teacher, representing all who do not fall in to one of the above. The causes of bitterness...
1) Teaching - Young people can be inspirational, funny, open-minded etc (you've seen the adverts). Sadly your classes always end up getting dominated the shits. Who ever remembers the students who were quiet, got on with their work and tried their hardest to listen to what the teacher was asking them? Exactly. Everyone remembes the ones who argue with the teacher, blow up the science labs, answer back and jerk off in maths classes.
2) The big 'what if' - What if i hadn't become a teacher? What if I'd decided to go in to publishing, accounting, law etc etc? Most of The bitter think about this every day and end up taking out their frustrations on blogs.

The Weird
After about 15-20 years of teaching, cut off from the real world and surrounded by students everyday of their adult life, most teachers lose their ability to function like normal human beings and end up becoming The Weird. It is The Bitter who generally progress in to The Weird. It is also The Bitter who convince themselves that they will have left the profession before this transition takes place.

Well that's it. I've spent the last 30 minutes tapping away, offering a shhh at 5 minute intervals, while my class struggle through an exercise on chapters 8-9 of David Copperfield. It's not all bad I suppose.

Please feel free to offer any 'types' which you think I've missed.

Pedagogy: the appalling calling

'There are three words that any aspiring teacher should remember: vocation, vocation, vocation.'

So said the Headmaster - with what I now recognise as his customary smugness - on my first day in the job. I reacted in the proper fashion, of course: hitched the skirt up a little further, tittered knowingly, gave that look that says 'I did English at Cambridge, honey: wordplay wets my woowoo.' But secretly I thought, I'll be out of here sooner than you can say Radio Drama of the Year 2005, my creepily moustachioed friend, and then it'll be vacation, vacation, vacation.

How wrong I was. Three years on and I'm still there, toying with applying for Head of Department and enjoying being wittier than twelve year olds, my night school creative writing course nothing but a dim memeory of old dears and psychos reading out their shitty monologues, and the tutor registering surprise at my Oxbridge degree at every possible occasion.

This blog is one part of my attempt to right the wrong that is my life as a teacher. I'm looking round the staff room as I write this (with, I admit, a slightly naughty thrill), and I see so much potential. Potential, that is, for my next post. It will be called 'teacher types', and this is extremely clever, you see, because i will be a teacher typing, and the post will be about types of teacher.

I only hope that someone reads it.

Bleak Spouse

I am going to be posting on writing drama, failing to write comedy drama, plus day to day things that happen in Bath and need to be reported. Bleak Spouse was a woman who could be seen of a Saturday in Cambridge, wandering around listlessly with her more forceful husband. This is part of my attempt not to turn into her, which is what half of my female friends seem to want to do.