A few of the kids shyly slid Christmas cards onto my desk towards the end of term.
My favourite was one that thanked me for being the teacher, because the pupil
enjoyed my lesions. I’m not sure if I have lesions I don’t know about that can only
be seen from particular angles, or what the kid’s parents would have thought if they
had seen that card: was I inflicting lesions on the children, metaphorical or
otherwise? Maybe that’s the kid whose parents wrote me a note telling me they’d like
to meat me. I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or scared by that missive; on
balance, it still holds an air of menace for me.
Maybe the lesions are one of the reasons I scored so low in one kid’s chart of
teacher scores that I confiscated when they were supposed to be doing something
educational like watching a cartoon. The cheeky little scamp had drawn up a profile
of my attributes or otherwise, and rated them out of ten. In the category of looks I
discovered that I don’t appeal much to the group of Year 7s who compiled the survey.
On the other hand, I scored quite highly in the “coolness” section. And at least I’d
had a couple of years knocked off my estimated age. But what I found absolutely
shocking was that for “strictness” I scored a miserly one out of ten! And there
was me thinking I was strict and nasty, on a par with a Victorian school master
who keeps his cane within reach, when I’m obviously not giving out that impression
at all. Well, at least it’s given me my first resolution to work on for the New Year.
Must become stricter.
Sometimes there are murmurings that we should evaluate our own lessons by giving the kids evaluation sheets at the end of a unit of work to assess our teaching. If I was reluctant before, I’d be firmly opposed now, having glimpsed an insight into their twisted little minds. Thinking back to my own school days, there were always two or three teachers that I had irrational grudges against, and at least one who was given the epithet “that bitch”, even when we no longer remembered why we’d decided she was such a thing in the first place. Only when I became a teacher myself did I truly appreciate what these teachers had put up with on a daily basis. Forget National Service, stick everyone back in the classroom for a fortnight to make them appreciate their own education a bit more!
added 20/12/04
© Copyright laws apply to the contents of this website. 2003, 2004