Teaching
Strangely, I have not one single picture taken in any of the schools in which I taught. The pic on the right was taken during the summer of 1985, sitting on a wall opposite the chippy in which I worked - anything to supplement the poor teachers' pay of the period!
The caption was the spontaneous contribution of my young son, Conor, 
then aged
4½ - a delightful, cheeky little git!
This was him later on that year, when he had just joined primary School.
Purgatory!
Teaching school was purgatory for me!
It is the hardest job I have ever done, without exception!
At the end of each year I was drained mentally and spiritually,
physically just about wiped out. Most teachers in primary or secondary education
will tell you the same. Please believe them - us!
Imagine trying to meet thirty or
thirty-five eager young minds for hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month
after month. There are breaks of course, without which one would never survive. "A
great job you teachers have, with all those holidays!" How often have I had to
endure the jovial jeer, because there is no possibility of expressing the reality of the
situation.
And it gets worse as pupils arrive at the age of fourteen or
fifteen years, when hormones kick in and the restless become really restless and
begin to regard you as the old fogey who is insisting upon keeping them corralled between
four walls, with the sun of liberty beaming in from the outside world.
There are boys and girls who work away happily and enjoy the challenge
of learning, but to the less gifted the teacher becomes the detested Warder, the focus of
anti-adult, anti-authoritarian scorn. For these...... maybe okay if you are a
phys. ed. teacher with a group of young football-mad macho-men, but if you are a teacher
of Art, as I was, and you have come to view yourself as an art-zombie (which you well may
be!), or if you are a teacher of English and the pupil is barely able to sign his or her
name (which does happen!) the seeds of rebellion are firmly planted, and tend to grow and
flower with wild abandon, despite one's efforts to keep the plants pruned, pinned and
directed. There are moments when you believe that the day of the Triffids has
arrived, when paint blobs burst against ceilings, when jam-pot jars crash onto flooded
floors, when sniggering youths crow with delight as the Master sticks his key into the
classroom door to find the lock blocked with chewing-gum and drawing pins.
It's only youthful good fun, exuberance, entertainment - and it drives
you wild - when you consider that all you want to do is impart information and
skills to your younger brothers and sisters, lead them to an appreciation of the finer and
more wonderful things of life, equip them for constructive living!
- more to come on this! Maybe!