Back to school

Ah, September.
There’s a crispness in the air again, it’s time to scrump the apples hanging over the fence from the neighbour’s tree, and, of course, the kids are going back to school.
These days, the primary impact on my life is crowded buses and more near-death experiences with SUVs on the school run. But it’s also an excellent moment to finally get stuck into a series of blog posts I’ve been thinking about for months.
One of my recent posts may have given some readers the impression that I’m not a fan of the teaching profession. But really, nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve benefited immensely from knowing some wonderful teachers, and I’ve seen first hand just how demanding the job really is.
So, without further ado, here’s the first of a series of posts celebrating my favourite teachers.

There’s no order like chronological order, so let’s start with my first teachers: Mum and Dad.

Every parent teaches their children, both deliberately and through example. My parents taught me a lot: everything from the importance of education and hard work, to good nutrition and the offside rule. My Dad is a particular inspiration, coming as he does from a mining village in Northumberland that had never sent a kid to university before. My Dad lost his coal miner father to laryngeal cancer when he was only 10, and was raised by my Nana, who cleaned pubs and hotel rooms while my Dad excelled at grammar school and then at Manchester and Oxford universities. My Nana had my Dad’s graduation photo in pride of place in her house, over the fire, and refused to take it down even when it took on a ghostly green pallor with age. “Proudest day of my life”, she’d say.
However, I was at a particular advantage in that both my parents are actual trained teachers. They understood the educational system, and helped my sister and me excel. They knew all our teachers (every teacher in York knows every other teacher), took a great interest in all our activities, and even helped us and all our friends prepare for our French exams¹.
But really, the most significant thing that my parents taught me was how to read.
My Mum took many years out of her career when she had kids; she started working part time in a clothes shop when I was about seven and my sister was five, and finally went back to teaching when I was eight. She admitted to me much later that she spent the last few years in a state of perpetual boredom². To alleviate the tedium, she started to teach me to read at a very young age. I started school at age four, reading books meant for six-year-olds. This set me up for many years of bullying academic success, and I truly believe that her efforts made more of an impact on my education and career than anything since…
…except maybe a memorable biology lesson when I was 14. But that’s a story for another post.
This post is dedicated to my cousin-once-removed, Dani, who continued a proud family tradition this week as she started teacher training, and to my good friend Dr Pants, who hopefully went back for her second day of teacher training today!

¹ When preparing for oral exams, we were always told “if you don’t know the French for the real answer, make something up. It doesn’t need to be true, it just needs to be correct”. So when my Mum asked my best friend what she’d done that day, she said she’d gone shopping. “What did you buy?” “Um, a present for my Mother, it is her birthday today”. As soon as my friend and I went upstairs, my Mum grabbed one of her emergency birthday cards from the drawer, wrote it out, and took it round to my friend’s Mum, who was completely bemused, given that it wasn’t her birthday for another three months.

² This is one of many reasons why I don’t want kids of my own. I wouldn’t want to give my own kids any less than my Mum gave my sister and me; but I’m just far too selfish to take that length of time out of my career.