*The realm or sphere of teachers.
It wasn’t until my final exams at university loomed that I finally began to ponder what career options the study of European literary giants such as Dante Alighieri, Alberto Moravia, André Gide and Christa Wolf might beckon once I’d graduated.
I really didn’t have a clue about what I would do next. For one thing, I had grown accustomed to the laid-back lifestyle of a so-called “mature” undergraduate. The thought of returning to work in a mainstream job filled me with horror.
This Collins dictionary definition confirmed that despite the label “mature student”, I was clearly not ready for the real world of work.
If truth be known, what I actually fancied was leading the life of a well-heeled gentleman of leisure, an urbane, witty barfly and gadabout. A middle-class Bertie Wooster if you will. Unfortunately, not hailing from affluent stock meant there was no chance of a hefty parental allowance to fund it.
I would sometimes half-heartedly thumb through the media jobs section of Tuesday’s Guardian, on the off-chance that a stimulating, well-remunerated, offbeat position in an unspecified creative field would somehow drop into my lap. It didn’t, of course.
I indulged in a bit of cod self-analysis in an attempt to marshal whatever personal qualities and skills I thought I possessed into a coherent list which might then help shed some light as to a potential career direction.
Sadly, all this revealed was that I was someone of a rather feckless disposition, bereft of any discernible skills apart from a talent for speaking several European languages well. (See table below).
Viewing my attributes in a table format afforded me little clarity as to where my future lay and made compiling a credible CV impossible.
Meanwhile, a few earnest fellow linguists had started to bandy about the idea of becoming language teachers. It gave me food for thought. First and foremost, it would mean I could put off looking for a real job for another academic year. Secondly, if worst came to worst, teachers’ pay was not too bad and the generous holidays would afford me the time to explore other more interesting options at my leisure. So, I decided to enrol on a PGCE course.
If I were graduating now, I would not go near a PGCE. The amount of paperwork alone would have deterred me immediately, let alone all the needless meetings they have to attend and the pointless hoops they have to jump through nowadays .
Thankfully, the 1990s were much simpler times. The PGCE course consisted of a few months of lectures at the university, followed by two work placements and if memory serves me correctly, the production of three essays.
After a few weeks of the dull and largely uninspiring lectures, I was dispatched for my first placement to an 11-14 high school located in a reasonably prosperous suburb of Leicester.
I was swiftly and mercilessly disabused of the fanciful conceit that I could employ my playful sense of humour to good effect in the classroom. Nothing I’d experienced as a 1970s’ grammar school pupil, nor anything I had gleaned from those tedious lectures could have prepared me for the rampaging hordes of disinterested, obnoxious fucktards that the languages department’s savvy professionals had slyly palmed off on me, so that they could have a nice rest.
My witty repartee failed to arouse one iota of enthusiasm from my learners. It was here that I first encountered the still oft-recited refrain:
“Why do we have to learn French? It’s boring. I’m never going to go France. Everyone speaks English anyway.”
I soon found myself having to quell noisy insurrections from the distracted and severely disruptive knuckleheads who populated my groups. My frustrations grew and I duly morphed from that would-be “fun teacher” into that “humourless, miserable bastard”. This was going to be no walk in the park.
Every so often, an experienced member of the languages team would pop by and observe a lesson. They’d offer their support by dispensing useless platitudes like: “they’ll be fine, once they get to know you”, before happily pissing off, no doubt to have a chuckle at my expense over a nice cup of Nescafé and a fag with their mates in the staffroom.
“Fuck this for a game of soldiers!” I remember saying to a fellow trainee after one especially difficult day. The haunted look in her eyes told me that she felt my pain. Thankfully by then, the term was drawing to a close and the Christmas holidays were near.
With my batteries recharged over the festive break and a degree of optimism restored, the new year began with a few weeks back at university before our second placement, which would also involve substantially more teaching time with learners.
The 14-18 county upper school I was assigned to had gained a dubiously liberal and progressive reputation in the early 1970s, for which it had been the subject of a World in Action documentary on ITV.
By the time I got there, it had shed a lot of its more experimental practices but still retained several interesting idiosyncrasies. For starters, students called staff by their first names, something that blew my mind. They also had a very flexible attitude to time-keeping; there were no bells at the end of lessons and breaks.
Students would saunter into class seemingly whenever they felt like it and when asked why they were late, would give answers along the lines of:
“Oh, sorry. Is that the time? Wow! I was baking cupcakes with Sarah. Would you like one?” and they would then proffer their Tupperware container.
It was at this school that I was horrified to discover that the canteen served pizza and chips at breaktime. I remember thinking to myself: “Who the fuck eats pizza and chips at 10.30 in the morning?” It turns out lots of people did and still do.
Another of the school’s more interesting foibles was that students and staff used the same toilet facilities. Today this would trigger a coronary episode in any assistant principal responsible for safeguarding and might even cause the Minister for Education to resign.
Anyhow, one day, bored in a free period, as I regularly was, I went for a pee in one of the shared male facilities. Thankfully, there was not a student in sight, so I strode confidently up to the two-man aluminium urinal and began the process of micturition. Back then, my streams took far less fanciful trajectories compared to nowadays, so I was comfortable multi-tasking i.e., peeing whilst simultaneously scouring the wall area for any witticisms that might be scrawled on it. Finding nothing of note, my thoughts returned to finishing the task in hand. However, out of the corner of my eye, I unexpectedly glimpsed what appeared to be a shiny, well-crafted, mid-size anal extrusion, adjacent to my right shoe.
A lovingly crafted poop not dissimilar to this cheeky fellow was symbolically abandoned next to the urinal by its anonymous creator.
After zipping up and of course, washing my hands, closer scrutiny confirmed my initial suspicions that “bowel play was afoot”. I hastened back to the MFL corridor where I excitedly relayed my findings to the head of department.
He sighed and muttered to himself, “he’s at it again.” The poor man wandered off dejectedly to the departmental office to make what was clearly a familiar phone call, leaving me to ponder the identity of the enigmatic “he”. Suffice to say, as a student teacher, I was never going to be privy to such sensitive information, and so, I never did find out.
By the end of the course, I was convinced that teaching was not for me. My tutors however, were suitably impressed with my efforts and to my relief passed me. Having nothing better on the horizon, I decided that despite my reservations, it might be useful to get qualified teacher status (QTS), which required me to complete a further full academic year’s teaching.
A month or so after I qualified, I chanced upon a position at another 11-14 county school in the county. They needed long-term cover for someone who was on extended “sick leave”, due, as I later discovered, to an alcohol problem. They employed me on a supply basis, believing I suppose, that their colleague would dry out and return to work at some point. They never did though, and I completed the rest of the academic year there before moving on to pastures new. And so began this man’s teaching odyssey..
‘Turdgate’ , incidentally, was not a one-off. It turns out that quite a few young people see faeces and sanitary products as effective vehicles for self-expression. Bless them!
Progressive bell-ends!
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