YING YANG

Being in the presence of hurt, bewilderment and shock is also inevitable in supporting those adults who called on my counsel as a Union representative. And it is a hurt that never heals regardless of the outcome. In all my years as a union rep never once did I come across a teacher or other member of staff who had acted maliciously or for personal gain. Yes, we can all be foolish, we can all be forgetful, we can all be careless, and we can all take every precaution and still have something go wrong. We can all mistakes - we are all human. And we are among the most vulnerable because we spend our days with children, the uniquely vulnerable.

Acting as a union rep can be a lonely business because so much has to be held in confidence, so much cannot be explained to others, so much remains secret, and nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets - and our sins against others. And yet it is a privilege to be called upon to support a colleague, to be asked for counsel, to be respected and trusted. And to reassure those in pain that this too shall pass, that all things must pass, and that as long as one can look in the mirror and like the person one sees that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
So onto the Sixth Form I went... at last to play the lawyer I was born to be, for it was my mother who often said to me, "You could start an argument in an empty house," to which I countered, "Yes, and I'd win the argument too."

Joining the Sixth Form is like coming home. I'm back in the classroom doing what I was born to do - make children laugh, for the soul is healed by the laughter of children. I find myself not only laughing but singing and dancing. Like Monsieur Manet I am restored to life. I shake my head, try to remember where I am and what I'm doing - St. Andrews? San Francisco? Romsey? Geneva? Istanbul? Barcelona? San Remo? Cambridge? No! I am in Whitstable. And what am I doing? Teaching in the Sixth Form! The adrenalin courses through me. It's a long time since I've been this wired. Another awfully big adventure has begun. The learning curve is steep. At times I feel I'm mounting stairs on my hands and knees, but that's fine since I'm upwardly mobile in the only sense that matters: "And I'm on my knees looking for the answer - Are we human or we dancer? You've got to let me know?"

Recently a member of staff said, "My daughter says she's never had a teacher like you." I took that as a compliment. How many students come into their class to find their teacher singing and dancing along to The Killers' "Are we human or are we dancer?" at full blast:

And so long to devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye, wish me well
You've gotta let me go.

What's the point? I'm not sure there is any, but it's important for me to show the kids that their teacher is a man who dances - who saves lives, who carries the wounded from the battlefield, yes, but who also loves to do things that are completely pointless and beautiful, and for which the kids themselves are the only explanation, if explanation were needed. Wearing my fool's cap, I could suggest that dancing, like all our behaviour is the symbolic representation of our earliest tactile being in the world, 'the ritualistic acting out of vanished realities', and in truth one gets so wearied of playing Apollo it is a relief to let the mask slip and once again become Dionysus. Never forget it is women who are the grown-ups; men are forever boys.
Damn this mystical side of me. It takes me every now and again and leaves me hanging from the window by my finger tips, the backside out of my trousers, and - as my gran would put it - away with the fairies. But once in a while you have to do something foolish, even if only to prove you're still alive, and if you look back on your life and ask 'What did I do?', it means that you didn't do anything.

The learning curve in the Sixth Form is steep, but the teaching is easy peasy. My energy and enthusiasm communicate themselves contagiously, though I am sometimes discomfited when a student comes in and announces, "What you told us yesterday is wrong. It doesn't mean that at all. I checked it." What cheek! What nerve! What delight! I fix the impertinent wretch with a frozen smile. "Listen, you. It means whatever I say it means, and if you say it means something else that's entirely up to you. Anyway, that's what the Sixth Form is all about - independent learning. But if you're absolutely sure you know what it means, share it with the rest of us, especially me." Laughter all round. I didn't need to study Law to learn and appreciate the doctrine of vicarious liability. Unless I'm actually off on a 'frolic of my own', when the sh*t hits the fan, it's the governing body, the LEA and Kent County Council who will be splattered while I remain as fragrant as ever.

Yes, restored to life. Most days I'm back on the tennis court by 3.40. I take on a football team again. Off I go with school trips to Dorset, Suffolk and Disneyland Paris. Saturday mornings I'm off with the school choir to wherever it is we are going. And all the time I am writing, writing, writing, and once again getting paid for it. A couple of years later I glance at Amazon and discover I've written Striving for Excellence (Special Needs), Homework 2001, Literature for Life, Drama in Action, Fast Track to SATS, The Passion and the Poetry... and on my publisher's site all of these and workbooks on Educating Rita, Animal Farm, Romeo & Juliet, and others I'd forgotten I'd written.

Writing for me is a form of release and relaxation, as well as providing resources for our own students. It takes me back to those heady years as a junior reporter when I roamed the streets of Dundee - or romped through the Highland Show (my first encounter with a real live cow) and the Edinburgh Festival (where Marlene Dietrich had me thrown out of her dressing room) - determined to secure copy for the Courier & Advertiser and The Evening Telegraph before the deadline.

Who knows where this road would have taken me - for am I not a son of 'jute, jam and journalism'? - had it not been for a siren call from that haunted town by the northern sea. O, Mr. Vice Chancellor, you have much to answer for in luring me to St. Andrews when all I wanted was five hundred words and a natty photograph for the Fife editions of D.C. Thomson's newspapers. That hand on my knee was surely the hand of destiny.