1963 Thank you,Tiger!
My teacher wake-up call!
Long ago, in September, 1963, I started my first teaching job. I was appointed as a science teacher at Trinity Fields. The school, like
all secondary modern schools of the time, was for students aged between 11 and 15, all of whom had failed the national 11+
examination, and thus seen to be undeserving of an academic education.
The day before school started, I was given my teaching responsibilities. I was Form Teacher for 1C, which meant I took the register
for attendance, school lunch and for dismissal at the end of the day.
After taking my class to morning school assembly, I was to teach the bottom classes in each of the four years (1C, 2C, 3C and 4C).
The Head of the Science Department gave me the textbook, pointing out the science topics I was to cover.
“Not to worry,” he said. “When they take the Leaving Test at 15, only mathematics, reading and writing are tested.”
The following day I began my teaching career. Well, teaching is perhaps too grand a word. It would be more honest to say that I
began to be paid for standing daily in front of loads of bored adolescents, opening a well-thumbed science textbook - then, scribbling
science words on the blackboard to be copied into science notebooks.
My science-teaching pattern was straightforward. The kids came in, I welcomed them, they took their seats, opened their science
journals, and I read from the science textbook. I then wrote the key science information on the board and the pupils, using their best
handwriting, copied my notes into their science journals.
Nothing to it, really.
What follows is the description of one significant thing that happened during my first, very challenging year with Class 3C.
Thirteen year-old Tiger always sat alone at the back of the science lab. As he was always looking for trouble (and he was really good
at finding it), he was, to put it mildly, a pain in the ***. Tiger made my science lessons a joke. School didn’t interest him and science
didn’t engage him. His dad had told him that he’d have a job with him as a bricklayer on the building sites when he was 15, so why
should he ‘do his best’ in school? What was the point of it all?
My monthly science topics certainly didn’t interest Tiger. Well, to be honest, they didn’t interest me very much, either. When I read
from the science textbook, Tiger would roll his eyes, run his fingers through his greasy hair, scratch his head, and interfere with
anyone sitting close to him. His science notebook was filled with dirty pictures and rude scribbles.
Occasionally, on his really bad days, Tiger shouted that he was fed up with school and very fed up with boring science.
Nothing I did in my science lessons made any connection to Tiger’s life experience or appealed to his sense of curiosity. The science
I read from the textbook was irrelevant to his world – especially, I suppose, the way I presented it. To be honest, the science didn’t
interest anyone in the class.
Most of the boys and girls did, though, sit politely through each lesson. They spent their time scribbling and drawing in their science
writing books, often whispering to each other. The boys, though, waited for Tiger to stir the pot.
The days, weeks and months dragged by.
In the first week of spring thank goodness, the miracle of miracles happened - a big, BIG change for the better came over my
teaching. Tiger, of all people, believe it or not, and a small garden spider were my divine inspirations.
Walking back from shopping at the Coop for the weekend food, I spotted the most beautiful orb-web spider sitting in her intricate silky
web in the black currant bush outside the steps leading to my flat. Surprised to see one so early in the year, I fetched a jar, popped
her inside, and took her upstairs, and made a proper spider home for her.
The spider reminded me of when I was a kid when my dad and I found some garden spiders in the back of our house. I kept two orthree of them in a jar tucked under the bed – quickly learning that you don’t keep spiders together as they eat each other. Looking after the survivor was really fascinating, though. Keeping her safe and well fed with flies and moths made me feel good, especiallywhen she deposited an egg sac for me on her silky web.
I took the spider to school the following Monday, put her in a large bell jar with a little soil, some greenery, a branch, and a couple of
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