{"id":7532,"date":"2020-06-22T07:47:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T07:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7532"},"modified":"2020-06-22T07:47:56","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T07:47:56","slug":"lets-hear-it-for-the-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7532","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s hear it for the teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Teacher\/Tim Ellis\/flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I will lay bets that everyone who reads this blog will be\nable to bring to mind at least one teacher who really inspired them, and another\nwho made them wish they could disappear into a hole in the classroom floor so\nthey did not have to spend another minute in that tortuous environment. Mr Yeoman\nbelongs in the first category, Miss Jolowicz definitely in the second. I mean,\nexpecting me to subscribe to her favourite journal \u2018Physics is Fun\u2019? Just who\ndid she think I was?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are the poor creatures whose lives we nasty\nteenagers managed to make a misery. Poor Miss Wheeler who had the misfortune to\ntry and teach us music. Outside the classroom we were all listening to music\nand buying and swapping records, just not the classical stuff Miss W had in\nmind. I remember noisily writing notes and chucking them around the classroom,\nchatting and happily passing the time until the bell rang and we could race out\nthe door without a backward glance. It wasn\u2019t exactly St. Trinian\u2019s but there\nwas a slight resemblance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every teacher I know has been working their socks off since\nthe pandemic caused the lockdown. One friend teaches English in an inner London\ngirls\u2019 comprehensive.  She is exhausted,\nbecause everything has to be prepared in advanced, then taught online, and\nwhile she is teaching and for hours afterwards she has to be available for individual\nquestions. In a classroom, if Susan queries something then there is a good\nchance that Samira might have been puzzling over the same problem, so one\nanswer serves them both. Not so of course when in effect you are dealing with 30\nindividuals, each in their separate bubble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My de facto daughter-in-law is a primary school teacher and rated\noutstanding by Ofsted. She works at an inner London school where some 70% of the\nchildren are eligible for free school meals and would be classified as\nunderprivileged. She too has been teaching remotely, and safeguarding concerns early\nin the lockdown meant that shared activities via one of the online platforms\ncould not take place. Some of the parents have criminal records and could not\nbe allowed even to see some of the other children, taking the concept of a DBS\ncheck onto a whole new level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the other end of the academic spectrum, a friend of mine teaches\npost-grad at The Prince\u2019s School of Traditional Arts, working with students in\nthe traditional arts of the great civilizations of the world. Normally they\nwould combine the theoretical with the creation of beautiful objects. Now he\ncan only teach the theory and history with none of the practical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Classroom\/niko\/flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s hear it for those teachers and all the ones I\u2019ll never meet, and maybe reflect on some of the creative depictions we have seen of teachers. Perhaps Alan Bennett\u2019s The History Boys <\/em>comes to mind; maybe it\u2019s Truffaut\u2019s Les Quatre Cent Coups<\/em>. Or what about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teachers, we thank and applaud you, particularly during\nthese difficult times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember noisily writing notes and chucking them around the classroom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,2,270,53,269],"tags":[268,76,271,81,272],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7532"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7554,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7532\/revisions\/7554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}