One of the great things about teaching is that you really can astound people
with your knowledge of meaningless trivia, because most of them are too young
to have heard it before. It makes a change from trying to outsmart the
contestants on TV quiz shows in a vain effort to feel superior. With children
you can feel superior pretty much all of the time, at least with the younger
years. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that they don’t know stuff that you’ve
assumed is common sense for the last twenty or so years. And feeling superior
is no comparison to seeing a class of genuinely fascinated faces taking on
board something for the first time. You can almost see the penny drop. You
can imagine the intricate brain processes as they store away the shred of
information for tests, exams, pub quizzes, and to tell their mums later.
When it comes to spouting out facts and pointing out parallels, I’m up there with the best of them. Despite whatever we’re supposed to do, like sticking to lesson plans and ensuring a complete coverage of the curriculum by means of x, y and z, I do like to ramble. After all, nobody stops to take photos when they’re on a strenuous hike. It’s all about the ascent and reaching the summit. Only when you’re there can you admire the view, but by then it all looks a bit far away. A nice gentle ramble on the other hand means you stop for picnics and to peer at wild flowers and watch clouds make curious shapes. Much more enjoyable.
I always want to fill the gaps and background to whatever we’re studying.
If a child asks me a question, I want to answer it as best as I can. I know it
holds up the lesson, but it’s often the most interesting bit. Sometimes I see a
connection between something we’re doing and something I know they’re studying
in another subject, and I’ll endeavour to bridge that gap. At other times,
the diversions arise by accident.
For example, one lesson I’d decided it was time to subtly expand their
vocabulary. They were quite a mixed bunch of abilities, as all classes are,
whether or not they’re set or streamed. If truth be told, I’d been worried
that some of the “gifted and talented” kids were going home to their inevitably
middle class parents and moaning that they’d learned nothing new and they
worked far too quickly for my lessons and they weren’t being stretched.
So I thought I’d drop in a few long words as a kind of secret code of “hey,
gifted and talented kids, I’m on your level too you know – it’s not all
dumbing down”. But I think I went too far with one word: “beneficial”.
Inevitably the class loudmouth pipes up and demands to know what that means.
In a classroom bereft of dictionaries it’s up to me to try to explain myself.
“Umm, it kind of means good things,” I stutter, before catching an idea that was drifting past my brain at that moment. I gather momentum. “From the Latin, bene, which means good.” Don’t ask, I don’t know where that came from. I’ve never studied Latin. “Words that start with bene often have something positive about them.” Now I’m getting out of my depth. I should just move the lesson swiftly on.
“Like Benjamin?” the loudmouth asks and the rest of the class start laughing. It reminds me that the naughtiest boy in the class, Benjamin, is still standing outside the room where I’d sent him half an hour earlier. I inch towards the door.
“Or benjour?” shouts out another.
“No, no, it’s bonjour not benjour, but, no, hang on, actually, you’re right, you see, in French it means good as well: bon is good.”
Meanwhile, the laughing and the lapse in my stream of task explanation has meant I’ve lost half the class to their own conversations, and I vow to keep my vocabulary simple for the rest of that lesson. Possibly even the year with that particular group.
But the point is that so many facts trickle from my lips each day that I endeavour
to never run out. And that’s pretty tricky for somebody with a memory as
superficial as mine. With the facts I do know, I really don’t know how I know
them. With new facts gleaned from slightly dull documentaries on the TV,
I try to push them into my brain, but they pop out again when I’m not paying
attention a few minutes later. I wonder if I’m ever learning anything new.
Sometimes I have to, for a particular scheme of work, but then a year later
I have to learn most of it all over again. Maybe everything I can remember
was learned at school. And maybe it’s even more important that I return the
favour to the next generations and bequeath to them the facts passed down to me.
added 27/11/04
© Copyright laws apply to the contents of this website. 2003, 2004