Secret Teacher, Guardian - As the pressure of SATS, data, target tracker and my appraisal looms angrily over me, there’s 30 people who bear the brunt of it: my class. My caring, hardworking, and delightful class. As I stand at the front, I desperately throw information at them and hope somehow it will enter their minds. I especially need it to stick with George. He looks at me blankly. He’s my pupil who has had every intervention under the sun flung in his direction. From one-to-one support to class teacher focus groups, you would have thought that something must work. But nope. Not for George.
Did you know it takes him two hours to get to school each day? Two trains and a bus. He’s always late and he’s always tired; he doesn’t go to bed until 1am, his mum isn’t the least bit interested in education, and his dad messes him around every weekend. But here I am, in reciprocal reading, asking him to summarize the main points of chapter five in The Secret Garden; and for some reason I expect a level 5 answer (because something happened recently and a level 4 is no longer “satisfactory”).
I feel my frustration edging up again. “You read this damned chapter yesterday.” Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “Right, let’s start with the basics. What’s the main character’s name?” He’s forgotten. Again. We’ve only gone over it 137 times. “Right George, go and sit over there, read it again and don’t come back until you know the answer!” Why do I get so annoyed? Where is the empathy that I dutifully show in front of parents and colleagues?
As I lie in bed I think about the conversation I should have had with George – the type of exchange that only happens every now and then, usually in September after the summer break or on a Monday after half term. “George, let’s have a look at this piece of text together. Can you read the first paragraph and spot the main character’s name?”
“Thanks Miss, I re-read this chapter at home last night to help me today,” George replies. “I remember now, skim-read for the key word, that’s right isn’t it Miss? Found it! She’s called Mary Lennox.”
“Great effort George, I’m really proud of you for trying so hard.”
As we discuss Mary and her selfish ways, George becomes passionate, explaining his feelings about her and backing it up with evidence from the text. A flurry of excitement tingles through me as I see him listen intently to the others on his table and then the children calmly debate why Mary acts the way she does. I’m patient. I pose a question at key moments to develop their answers and I’m focused – as are the children. Oh, wow, this is real teaching. This is how it should be.
Then the pang of guilt leaps in: here I am, in the real world, demanding so much from these little faces and in the most toxic way. George needs to read, yes, but force-feeding him The Secret Garden isn’t going to help him cope with all the things he has to manage outside of school. But it must because he needs to make accelerated progress, six point progress. Come on George. That’s when my frustration kicks in. I moan, I groan and, sometimes, I raise my voice.
I know that I’m actually annoyed with those in their ivory towers – mostly the government and Ofsted. But, unfortunately, the only people getting this anger is George and Co. In that moment, at home in bed at 11.30pm after an evening marking session, I’ve forgotten that you pulled Sarah’s hair, I’ve forgotten that you haven’t handed in your homework (all year), and I’ve forgotten that teaching can make me crazier than I ever thought possible. But I haven’t forgotten that I appreciate every one of you, you make me proud every single day, and I don’t tell you enough that you inspire me to be a better person. I really, really do care – I’m just not given enough space and time to tell you that.
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