Something strange happens when you’ve been at a school for a certain length of time. I’d never been in a job long enough to notice it before, but when I look at our school full of pupils, I find it difficult to remember which of them I’ve taught and which of them I just know for other reasons.
When I first started teaching I remembered each and every child’s name clearly and I can still picture them now, as they were at their desks, as well as the insignificant details like which girl had a liking for big hooped earrings, who had pictures of Madonna stuck all over her exercise book, and which boy wrote a story that made me cry. These children have all grown up now, left school, maybe gone through university, and probably started jobs, but I can picture them in their seats (or not), and I remember most of them fondly. Sometimes I wonder where my first form group are now: did Layla avoid the shoplifting and prostitution lifestyle her mother was training her for? Did Joe beat his adolescent depression and stop scaring people with his creepily accurate yet nihilistic observations about the world? Did Leanne ever come out of her shell and achieve the greatness she deserved? Is Liam in prison – and if not, how on earth did he manage that? How many children has Jade got now?
But now I might come across a pupil in Year 12 and completely forget they were in my Year 9 class a few years back. Or I’ll be teaching my Year 10 group and then halfway through the year remember that several of them were in my Year 7 class. Sometimes I’ll be out shopping and I’ll hear a salutation from a teenager, to which I have to give a vague response because I don’t recall them at all.
I wonder why it is I remember the early classes so clearly, but the most recent pupils more vaguely? Did they make more of an impression on me? Did I make more of an impression on them? Was it because it was all so new? Did I concentrate a lot more on the pupils rather than the other stuff like new schemes of work and new directives from management? I don’t want to stop thinking of my classes as full of individuals, but these days it can feel like a factory production line of delivering uniform lessons; maybe I’m concentrating so much on starters and plenaries that I don’t leave time for the variable that should matter the most: the children.
added 28/04/07
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