A great teacher can change a child’s life. As this school year ends, we ask cultural figures including Charles Hazlewood and Kerry Hudson to remember a teacher who inspired them
So, it’s July. Finally. The UK is half-way through the summer of sport and, in schools up and down the country, teachers, classroom assistants, pupils, students and their parents are starting to believe the finishing line is in sight. No matter that there are still sports days to be negotiated, end of term assemblies and awards’ days, leavers’ proms or tea parties. For those whose children are staying on, the moment of learning if your child has got the form teacher that they (or you) wanted for next year, or if they’ll be in the same class as their best friends. From reception and infant school, primary to secondary, it’s a timetable that has altered little since the 1960s and 1970s when I was at school. Taking all the posters down from the walls, emptying lockers and desks, marks on the walls and dust. The slightly melancholy atmosphere of corridors suddenly empty, of another year over. I remember the texture of those last goodbyes, the making of a card for the teacher or a present. Nowadays, these leave-takings are commercialised – printed cards, special gifts, beautiful biscuits or baskets of flowers. Then, it was more homespun but, as the daughter of a teacher, the wife of a teacher, the daughter-in-law of a teacher I know how much those moments mean.
This year, more than any year, teachers deserve our thanks. It’s too soon to know the true cost of the pandemic on students’ and teachers’ mental health, but it’s clear that the lack of clarity, the incompetence and mismanagement of examinations, the bias and the appalling lack of knowledge shown by government about the majority of children and young people’s experiences of education, have had a profound effect on attainment, on confidence, on a generation’s love for learning. And all the time, from those first uncertain days in March 2020 to this imminent end of term in July 2021, teachers have been on the front line – trying to support pupils, to teach students, to decipher the mixed messages coming from politicians and local authorities, withstanding unwarranted and ill-informed attacks from sections of the media. Because, in the end, teachers have done their best to keep things going for the students in their care, in spite of the obstacles put in their way. They have been frontline staff without the protection, they have kept a watching brief for vulnerable children to make sure they didn’t slip through the cracks. A year and a half of never quite knowing where they stand, what the rules are, what they are allowed and are not allowed to do. Many months of educational leaders not being listened to or being criticised by those who know nothing about what it means to stand up in front of a class of 30 boisterous 12-year-olds and bring history to life, maths to life, music to life.
