The English Teacher

I think that really I began thinking this way round about last September, maybe a little later than that. I've always thought that there are many things about school that are unfair, and wished I could do other things, but I never really understood quite what was wrong. Basically I just put up with it, like I'm sure many children in school do. I don't think we even realise anything is wrong - it's just the way school is. We just have to wait and count the years...

But last September I came back to school and discovered that I had been moved into another English class... Again. I had started in June and accidentally been put into the bottom set - it was called class one or something silly like that, and everyone believed I was being put into the top set. The bottom set kids were perfectly nice; they threw rubbers and rulers and screamed and asked me if I smoked. For most of the term I was stuck there, until about the last week before the summer holidays when it finally got sorted out and I was moved into a higher English class - though I'm not sure that was the top set either. I was happier in that class, and fully expected to return there the next term. But instead, I found myself sitting in a different classroom, meeting my third English teacher of the year.

He was called Mr. Stead. The rest of the class - apart from one girl who had been moved from the same class I had - had been his class since year 7, and they loved him. He was certainly the best English teacher I ever had. He showed us films like An Inconvenient Truth and took us to the library for whole lessons just to read and talk about books. He thought the curriculum was terrible. He was like a friend, really, not a teacher. But then again a friend is exactly what a teacher should be - someone you can talk to and laugh with and share your thoughts with. That's how proper teaching should be done.

I only had Mr. Stead as a teacher from September to Christmas. He said we were his best English class. None of us were sure if he was just saying that, whether he'd said it to all of his classes, but really I don't think it mattered. We all knew he was the best English teacher we were ever going to get.

I think it was on his last day that I really starting thinking. We messed around the whole lesson - putting make-up all over a boy's face, running about, laughing, talking - Mr. Stead gave the boy a note to take to his other classes - and Mr. Stead asked me if I was going to be a writer. Well of course I was. He told us that we had to fight against the curriculum to make it better for everyone. A few of us got very excited and I said, "We should protest!" We all started writing things on the board - PROTEST! big and bold in the centre; DOWN WITH CURRICULAR MONOTONY in smaller letters, lower down.

We can do it, if we work together. We can bring curricular monotony down.