Why I Became a Teacher

I don’t remember waking up one morning and thinking “That’s it! I’ll be a teacher!”-  it was something which I always knew I wanted to be. When I was at Infant and Junior school, I loved my teachers and the whole school thing.

At Infant School, my first teacher was a lady called Miss Anderson, who wore big owl-like glasses, which made her look very wise. She used to read us an extract from ‘Winnie the Pooh’ every day. I’ve never been able to separate these stories from the memory of a boy called Alan who felt so relaxed during story time, that he no longer felt the need to keep a tight rein on his bodily emissions. I would be totally engrossed in the story, oblivious to the pea-souper building up around me, until all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. Alan didn’t seem to mind us all coughing and spluttering around him, as long as the story continued to be told. Anyway, I was obviously scarred for life, as you won’t find any A.A. Milne on my bookcase. Also, none of my children or pets has the name ‘Alan’.

When I moved up to Junior School, I was in seventh heaven. My teacher was straight out of college and had lots of new and exciting ideas, like teaching us Country Dancing. I adored her and she would let me do ‘jobs’ at lunchtime, which I felt at the time, showed that she had spotted within me the teacher who was begging to be unleashed. She let me copy out her Country Dancing notes, complete with diagrams, which was so obviously a vote of confidence in my position as a kindred spirit. Looking back, I really don’t know why she let me do that- my writing wasn’t brilliant and neither was my drawing. Anyway, she was a lovely teacher, Miss Jones, and she nailed pole position on my teacher leader board by not sitting me near Alan, the Boy Who Made Smells.

There followed a succession of supply teachers in the second year at Junior School- one in particular stands out in my memory. She was Very Old (about 40, I think) and she used to sit at a high desk at the front of the classroom and watch us. If we were too noisy, she would bang a reel of Sellotape down on the desk with such a force that it stopped everyone in their tracks, the first few times. However, after that, the novelty wore off and we just moaned about her giving us a headache. One boy got really told off when she found him under her desk. I think she thought he was trying to look up her skirt, but actually he was looking for the pile of sawdust I told him would be there, from her incessant banging.

We all heaved a sigh of relief when a permanent teacher was found for our class, not least because she didn’t appear to have a reel of Sellotape about her person and was very young and beautiful. I think she was recently qualified and she was just so happy and actually seemed to enjoy being with us, which was a joy. She drove a little pale yellow Mini and at lunchtimes, she would let two of us go and sit in her car in the car park and listen to a cassette tape of The Jungle Book, which was her favourite thing. I loved being in her class and to this day she remains my biggest inspiration in the classroom. I don’t remember a thing she taught me, but I do remember how she made me feel, like I was worth something and that she wanted to know what I thought about things. She taught me a great deal about how to be with children and get the best out of them.

In my Secondary years, there were various teachers who Made a Difference and inspired me, and several who did the opposite. I found myself wanting to become a teacher not just because I wanted to be like the ones who held me in the palm of their hand, but also because I wanted to prove that I could be better than some of the uninterested and uninteresting teachers who taught me.

My Aunt was a teacher and so was my brother, so I was following in good footsteps. One of my sisters later became a teacher, but that was after I qualified. When I was at Secondary School, I had spent each Wednesday afternoon helping out at a local centre for mentally handicapped adults and I decided that I would like my main degree subject to be Special Education. I went away to Teacher Training College in Crewe, Cheshire, for four years and by the time I qualified, most Special Units had been closed down and the children were being integrated into mainstream schools. Some people might have taken this as an omen, but not me. I ploughed on regardless, changing my plans as I went, and that is how I ended up in mainstream education.