My First Teaching Role
The energy of youth
For variety’s sake, I thought a little more of my autobiography this week was the order of the day; there has been quite a concentration on philosophy and Kathleen Raine of late. So, this may lighten the tone a little.
I am continuing to go through my letters and correspondence with Kathleen and will publish more soon, so keep reading. Her poetry is so extraordinary that future generations will find her, as it is rooted in nature and myth.
Many thanks again for the support and comments.
After university, I returned to Berkshire with my new wife to complete a teaching qualification (PGCE) at Reading University.
We settled back home in Rose Hill, Binfield, in Berkshire, the same village where I was born and lived for the first eleven years of my life. There is a curious pattern in one’s life that runs under everything, a golden string that you must hang onto. But at this point, I had lost it or misplaced it. Binfield was not where I should be, and I was caught up in the sanscara of others.
The inner signals were blurred and out of synch; the heart was not talking to the head. My being was not aligned. I did not want to live in Hurst, where I grew up, because it was too close to my parents; I had enjoyed being free of them at university, and I didn’t wish to return to those old patterns. I wanted to be my own man.
The PGCE year at Reading University passed quickly, and I couldn’t wait to start teaching.
I found a curious and old-fashioned Prep School in Eversley, just over the border in Hampshire. It was small in pupil numbers, but the eccentric Head said I could design my own English Curriculum and teach sport every afternoon. Soon, I was busy and working full-time. My salary was £15,000 per year. Less than I had been on when I left British Telecom. This said, the money my aunt had left me allowed me to buy a house with no mortgage. I took over from an old school master called Ninian. The name says it all. It would not be long until small, eccentric, independent schools like this would disappear, and those old bachelors (who could teach many subjects, spoke multiple languages and had often come from the military), who dedicated their lives to them would cease to exist, which was perhaps a good thing.
These places could be a refuge for unsavoury individuals.
I should mention at this point that I turned down an interview at the prestigious Wellington College to take the job at this small Prep school. Reflecting now, it was the right decision and led to everything that followed. Often, we cannot see the pattern until later, and as Ouspensky points out, sometimes causes are in the future!
There are acts of dreadful violence that change things, like the Moors Murderers in the 60s, and it was the sad death of Jaime Bulger, abducted, tortured and killed by two ten-year-olds in Liverpool, that shocked the nation in 1993.
This also changed how people thought about young people and childhood. I recall feeling the need to read every detail of this case to try to understand it. The two boys who perpetrated this unthinkable act, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, were the youngest ever to be convicted of murder in modern British history.
It was a case that raised so many questions.
I was teaching ten and eleven-year-olds, and it struck a deep chord with me. Reasons for the actions of the two boys were winnowed from their families and upbringing, and raised many questions.
Are some people born evil?
The judge, in his concluding remarks, said that they were ‘both cunning and very evil.’ I suppose I studied it to try to understand. The poet, Blake Morrison, wrote a fascinating book on the case called ‘What if…’, which offers greater balance and which I recommend. Such events leave an indelible mark on a society that can never be forgotten or expunged: the ceremony of innocence drowned.
The days were long working at the school, and you only got one and a half days off a week; everyone got Sundays, and I was allowed to leave at 11.00 on a Monday. Thursdays was my duty day, 7.30 until 10.00, once all the boarders were asleep. The final job was locking up the building; what made this particularly torturous was that there was a different key for every lock!
I can still feel the fear as I carried this enormous clutch of keys around in the semi-dark, locking doors and feeling anxious. I can still feel the weight of tiredness and anxiety. The headmaster found sleep difficult and often took what he called horse pills, which you would call tranquillisers. It was a daunting task to make your way to his flat, knock him up and ask him to help you with a lock. I only had to do this a couple of times.
There was something sort of homemade and amateurish about the school. It was certainly small enough to be run off the Head Teacher’s nervous system. We also had Saturday lessons, which were a dreadful and miserable imposition for staff and boys. We had to teach in the mornings, and I tended to do spelling Tests! Then sport in the afternoon until 4.00. We were all exhausted by the end of the week. I vowed never to work in a Boarding School again. Normal work conditions seemed to go out the window; it felt as if we were not allowed to be off sick, and the Head, leading by example, would come in unwell and dose himself up with whisky.
I recall looking after a football match, sitting down because I felt so ill. It was bizarre. After my wife and I moved nearer the school, and I stayed off work because I was so unwell, the head came around and looked in my window at home to check I was not faking it. I contrast this with my final Headship, where you had to tiptoe around staff sensibilities at times to such a degree that it was hard to lead.
The staff were a curious bunch; the Deputy Head was the Head’s best friend.
There was a hilarious final sports day for the Boarding Master who they Head had ‘moved on’. Things had obviously deteriorated between him and the Head. The former oversaw the starter pistol for the track races, and the Head, with a couple of helpers, adjudicated the winners. With parents watching, the Boarding Master kept starting races at arbitrary times before the Head was ready. It was hilarious watching the Head getting increasingly red-faced.
During these years, I managed and trained some cracking football teams and spent goodly sums of my own money on equipment and practice balls. I wanted every boy to have their own ball and to develop their own skills.
You always remember your first form as a teacher. My form was small and a strange combination, and, of course, I was relatively inexperienced. There would be some lovely boys and some with serious special needs who needed greater support than I could give, and then there was a dangerous boy. I worked so hard for him, but he was so self-centred and had such a temper that he had a significant impact on the class.
My enjoyment of working at the school improved enormously when Roland joined as Head of Maths. We hit it off immediately. Roland had a great sense of humour and was an excellent teacher. He has travelled and was meticulous in his work. However, he really didn’t like the Saturday morning schooling, especially as he liked a few beers on a Friday evening. I must say it wasn’t my favourite thing either! We got up to some crazy antics and practical jokes; for example, nailing the Deputy Heads pigeon-hole up with planks, and there was the infamous cauliflower incident!
We nicknamed the Head of French ‘The Colonel’, he was a nice older chap. He’d been an Oxford blue at cricket and had a lovely Labrador dog called Archie, who used to pee up that radiator in his French Room. Mostly, he stayed away from our youthful high spirits and nonsense; he was a member of an older generation and recently divorced. He was tall and completely bald, and he was always complaining about being poorly paid and lacking money.
One day, I was walking past the kitchen where the school dinner was being prepared when I spied a box of discarded cauliflower leaves. Plucking one from the box, I saw that it fitted rather like a green wig on my head. An idea alighted in my mind.
The staffroom was full at 11.30, teachers love their coffee and cakes were also served; at the far end of the room, under the window, was a long table around which we collected our energy and sipped our tea. My victim, the Colonel, was sitting there in his normal oblivious manner with his resplendent bald head like a large egg. I careered into the room with the cauliflower wig on my head and shouted, ‘Oi, Colonel, if you can’t afford a wig, why don’t you get one of these?’ I was pointing at the floppy green fronds on my head.
General uproar and laughter followed. The Colonel moved faster than I thought possible, grabbed me, lifted me, took me outside as I struggled to escape his gift and deposited me in the large recycling bin outside. Some of the staff had followed to see how this incident would end, and they were laughing like drains as I attempted to extricate myself from the bin.
To be fair to the Colonel, he largely took this in good part, and we laughed about it afterwards. He also featured in another moment that was highly amusing. The Headmaster started a campaign to raise money for a new minibus. Indeed, he became obsessed with this.
When the Bus was eventually purchased, he had his picture taken with the bus for the local newspaper, and there was an unveiling and launch that would not have been out of place with the Titanic! I am trying to get across that the Mini Bus was a big deal.
The first person to take the bus out for a trip was the Colonel. Again, we were all sitting around the staff room table with the Head after another punishing school day, when in strode the Colonel, who immediately deposited a large, square, metal object with a protruding handle in the middle of the table. It made a sort of large thud that garnered everyone’s attention. The head’s mouth fell open into a perfect O! We suddenly realised that we were looking at the back door of the new minibus. I shall never forget the next moment, as the Colonel said, ‘It came off in my hand.’ The Head’s face was a complete picture, and for once, he seemed speechless. It was simply hilarious.
The Colonel also featured in a further moment that doesn’t paint me in a good light. I was certainly less aware of other people’s feelings in those days. You see, the Colonel was also in charge of the local Neighbourhood watch. It came to my attention that one weekend, there had been a spate of break-ins in the vicinity and that the Colonel had been away that weekend. In a garrulous manner and with the necessary audience, I let fly in the Staff Room, berating the Colonel for neglecting his duty while the burglaries took place and being absent when he should have been there. It was only a while after that I discovered his was one of the houses that had been burgled!
The energy and foolishness of youth.
Finally, I have mentioned before my friend, Dr Valentin Gerlier’s newly established School of Sophia - by way of introduction please read the wonderful conversation below.
Hilarious!
What great adventures. Thanks David 😀