Head of Drama and Second in English... prancing around in the Hall instructing children to be trees, suspension bridges, the Eiffel Tower or whatever crackpot idea comes into my head. "And today we will dramatise... 'The Odyssey'!" and not a lesson plan in sight. The children happy, fulfilled, exhausted. And, as I bark out increasingly eccentric commands, the headteacher sails like a stately Spanish galleon into the Hall saying, "Now that's the voice of a real teacher!"
Today the same children accost me in the High Street with joyous shouts of "Bong!" - my way of gaining their attentive silence during drama activities.
To this is added a gifted set of young athletes generously handed over to me by the P.E. department after I have announced to them that I am the Brian Clough of schools' football. More Spain than Holland, these Year 7 boys skip their way to the final of the Under-12s Kent Cup under a full moon at the Belmont Stadium before 500 paying customers. They lose but it is recorded in the Kent Schools' Football Association Handbook 1990 that 'they emerged cheerful from the dressing room at the end of the game to reflect positively on an enjoyable season.'
Losing hurt, but not much in the grand scheme of things. What mattered was they enjoyed their football, played fairly at all times, took pride in themselves, and laughed, win or lose, all the way home. And how had it been done? Through their skills, commitment, application, enthusiasm - and not a little tough love kindly applied though rarely necessary.
The same bunch of lads sweeps me along into the cricket season and then proceed to sweep all before them, including the grammar schools. Unknown to me, they are already accomplished young cricketers, attached either to Chestfield or Whitstable Cricket Club, and receiving proper coaching twice a week. This produces that rarest of anomalies, a successful Scottish cricket manager, though I am regularly to be seen running to the P.E. department begging them to explain the LBW rule to me 'one more time'.
I am not always successful in my judgements and recall being frowned at severely by members of staff, including a Deputy Head, when I umpired the annual staff-student cricket match at the Belmont. The words were unspoken but, o, how they rang in the air: "JP, you cannot be serious!" But my finger was raised, and my raised finger is the Law - whichever finger it may be! Realistically, you cannot expect kilted men to take seriously a sport that requires players to assume such indecent postures.
The football, if not the cricket, goes on and on and on... till at the age of 61 I find myself one wet, cold, blustery, muddy afternoon as darkness falls, trying to run up and down the infamous Nottidge slope waving a whistle and dragging my gammy leg behind me. We troop from the field looking like monkeys caught in the rain, and I make a decision. Next morning I inform the Head of P.E., "That's it. Count me out in September." And one of the happiest chapters in my life as a teacher closes.
I describe my involvement in sport at some length because it encapsulates my attitude and approach to teaching: fun, confidence, preparation, discipline (preferably self-discipline), consistency - not conformity! - and the application of tough love as and when required. I have no time for targets, goals, statistics, forecasts, assessment for learning, and all the pernicious twaddle that has smothered the joy of teaching. I pay it lip-service when I have to but in my heart, and more to the point in my intellect, I know how destructive and corrosive it is. I have sat through too many CPD sessions and Staff Meetings observing the glazed stares of the huddled, or the twitching of the apprehensive, who, like cows sniffing the air of an approaching storm, sense imminent disaster.
I tick all the 'smiley faces' anyway because I know those who are presenting have the best of intentions, and, as the Bible says, 'sufficient unto the day are the evils there of.' I do not see it as my function to add even more at the end of the day. Yet, so many who witnessed my flare-ups at meetings failed to understand their nature - it was not rage, it was desperate boredom. Few teachers ever drop dead from overwork, but many quietly curl up and die when half way through a meeting, particularly when the outcome is to have a follow-up meeting.
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