Born To Teach!

I have just witnessed something that I have for years been telling the world, most teachers are a special breed.

I have just watched a programme on TV called Educating Yorkshire.

It’s a documentary set in a school not a million miles away from where I live. This school is not located in a leafy suburb with students that come from middle-class backgrounds; it’s in the middle of a council estate and is very multi-cultural.

Tonight, on the final episode, we watched a young man doing his GCSEs and had to do a spoken exam for his English. This is hard enough for most students, but this young man had a very bad stutter and found speaking in groups nearly impossible.

His English teacher, who I’m sure could walk on water if it was required of him, worked tirelessly with this young man to enable him to achieve his goal. Nothing seemed to work, but then when, out of desperation, the teacher, who had recently seen the film The King's Speech, asked the young man to wear ear phones and listen to music as he spoke, just as he had seen it the film. The results were nothing short of miraculous! This young man not only passed his exam, but went on to read to his year group! There wasn’t a dry eye in the house (including mine).

Other teachers in this school worked against the odds to help young people gain the results and the start in life that they deserve. Often with long hours with no thanks and often with a sense of banging their heads against walls but they still carried on. One teacher was so ill that the Head teacher had to order him to go to hospital because he wouldn’t have time off, because exams were looming.

I see people like these all the time, I work in schools all over the country and abroad; it doesn’t matter what type of school it is, more often than not it will be staffed by people that chose a profession because they wanted to make a difference.

Yet they are constantly blamed for the failures of young people, when the blame should be levelled at crap parents and crap governments! I’m not saying that all teachers are brilliant at their jobs, but the majority are.

I have written before on this blog about the unfair treatment of teachers. One thing that really angers me is when I read about politicians defending wankers, sorry bankers, and their large salaries! They say if you want to keep the best you have to pay the wages or they will go elsewhere. Well if they are the best the banking industry has, then I wish they would all piss off somewhere else!

Yet, after making this bizarre claim about bankers, they try to rob the teaching industry of their pensions and give them crap wages with long hours and cut funding! These people are the best, so applying the same logic that they use with the banking industry, where are the large wages and bonuses for the teachers? Because lots are leaving the profession!

They must have one of the hardest jobs, often giving hope and encouragement to young disaffected people who everyone else seems to have turned their back on.

I think that most people should give up a bit of their spare time and volunteer to do a couple of hours in their local school. This, trust me, would alter the views that lots of people have about the teaching profession.

And maybe your experience and skills can be passed on to make a difference.

The only problem that I have with this school that has been featured on TV is that they haven’t ever booked me!

It must obviously have been an oversight?