La Sainte Union 4

I have always thought that someone ought to change the lyrics of that well-known hymn:

O hear us when we cry to Thee

For those in peril on TP.

My first view of Mr Smith's classroom 

 

Teaching Practice, aka TP, is (or was) an important element of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education. As a PGCE student, you do not get any choice about what you are going to teach, where or when. And you do not get much choice about which teaching resources you were supposed to use because usually there weren’t any. You had to buy them or make them yourself. On one occasion, I did ask the school secretary if she would mind if I used the school photocopier to produce some worksheets and she looked at me as if I had slapped her. When I suggested to the deputy head that the school should refund the cost of making the teaching resources I had been using, he replied that they were now my resources and I could keep them, so why should the school pay for them?

The good news was that La Sainte Union College did have a splendid institution called Media Resources and so PGCE students could buy just about everything they needed. The bad news was that some students were seriously out of pocket, as the result of buying so much.

Teaching (or trying to teach) in Weston Park Middle School was horrible. The school has now been closed down (thank goodness!) It was in a run-down, grotty part of Southampton and (surprise, surprise) the school was dreadful. There were a few professional, hard-working and dedicated teachers at the school and I take my hat off to them. I do not think that I could ever teach in such a depressing environment.

The first teacher I was assigned to (I will call him Mr Smith, as I do not want to be sued) never seemed to mark his students’ work. When it was time for a Maths lesson, the students worked on some problems and then they looked at the answer book that was hanging on the wall. Then they “marked” their own work. I looked through three different children’s Maths exercise books and I could not find one comment, one mark or even one tick or cross that had been made by Mr Smith, nothing to show that he had even glanced at the work his students had done.

It was much the same with English (or “Literacy”, if we want to use the trendy educational label). The students’ written work was appalling: poor handwriting, riddled with grammatical errors and full of simple spelling mistakes. Mr Smith never made the students do their corrections or re-write anything.

Mr Smith really had it in for one boy. Yes, he was not exactly a bright student – quite the opposite, in fact – but this boy was not disruptive or badly-behaved. Mr Smith frequently sent the boy in question to another class, in which the children were two or three years younger. Several hours later, Mr Smith would eventually allow the boy back into his class again and then he would to lecture him and humiliate him in front of all the children.  

Then there were the gerbils. I cannot remember exactly how many gerbils there were – maybe five or six – but their cages were on the students’ desks, right in front of the students! The smell was pretty bad too.

Another thing that drove me crazy were the assemblies. There were so many of them, almost every day, and on one occasion the assembly went on for over two hours. Yes, it is a good idea to have an assembly, once in a while, but sensible schools make them short and sharp. Assemblies are okay at the end of the school week or at the end of the school day, when the children are tired, but not first thing in the morning, taking up prime teaching time.

And I got shouted out for breaking the rules. There was a girl in my class who often did not come to school and, when she did, she looked as though she had not had any breakfast. She came to school on a cold November morning in just a cotton summer frock, so I “borrowed” a jumper that was in the lost property box. That was when I got into trouble. I have often thought about that girl and wondered what became of her.

Some teachers can thrive and enjoy the challenges of schools like Weston Park Middle, but I never could.

"Hello. Are you the new teacher?"

My second (and longer) Teaching Practice was at Bartley Middle School. Bartley was everything that Weston Park was not. The children were lovely and the location was semi-rural, on the edge of the New Forest. My class teacher, Mrs Yates, was “old school” and she wanted to see the students making good progress.

 I remember that the head had a positive sense of humour. He pointed to a “No Smoking” sign and quipped, “We put them up to keep away the OFSTED inspectors. They all smoke like chimneys.”

In many ways, I was sorry to leave Bartley after eight or nine weeks, as it was a good school and I think that I could have enjoyed teaching there. The farm field trip was great and all the children behaved well, even Tabitha Barnes (Mrs Yates’ bête noire).

 When I finally left Bartley, the children in Mrs Yates’ class gave me some sweet cards they had made. I still have them.

 

In fact, after my TP was over I was “called back” to come on another field trip with Mrs Yates’ class. We had a great day at Hengistbury Head and my friend Peter tagged along as the semi-official photographer.

We went by boat from the harbour and then took the Noddy Train back. School trips are a bit like dinner parties: you enjoy them most of all when they are over. This was a good one and I did not have to make all of the arrangements for it, thank God.

Mrs Yates told me that Bartley wanted to offer me a job for September, but by then I had already accepted a teaching post at Windlesham House School in Sussex. Ah well, we all make mistakes, I suppose.