Come Back Miss Brodie, All Is Forgiven

I love this book. "I am in my prime, and my girls are the crème de la crème". 

An amusing post by Sue earlier in the week about one of her teachers [a real guy, not a fictional character] reminded me of some of the eccentric characters I have encountered in a lifetime of teaching.

In my early days of supply teaching, I was called into a school I had not been to before. The staff were all very friendly. 

I had a lovely day. As I was about to leave in the afternoon, I thanked my Teaching Assistant.[I always did that, they usually work very hard and are not always paid fairly imho] She said she'd enjoyed the day- she'd been so concerned beforehand that the Supply Staff would be Mrs Doubtfire or Compo. It seemed that these were two retired teachers who had become Supply Teachers, one was a stern woman given to wearing large handknit sweaters - the other a rather grumpy guy, who arrived in a woolly hat [he did take it off before he came inside] and always wore a patched jumper. In subsequent months I met both these people. They were very pleasant - but I could see why the children had given them the nicknames.

Another TA I worked with was supposed to be helping a children count, using a number square. I could not work out why they kept getting wrong answers.

The dear lady had somehow not realised that you count along one row, then go back to the start for the next row. She was teaching them to count round the number square in a zigzag, rather like the path on a Snakes&Ladders board.

So instead of 8,9,10 back to 11,12, 13  she was showing them 8,9,10 round to  20, 19,18. It took me a while to spot what was going wrong- and then gently explain to her how to count!

Schools are much better now at having the lesson plans in place - but twenty five years ago that was not always so. I had a couple of boxes of resources in the back of my car so I could produce all sorts of lessons at the drop of a hat. Supply Staff were also supposed to leave detailed notes of what they had done that day. 

In one school the TA told me of a supply teacher who always did "Basketwork" when nothing was on the plan. I said I loved craft, but that seemed rather ambitious with 7 year olds. She told me- "Basketwork is any activity [writing, drawing, maths] done on loose sheets of paper, not in their exercise books. Then at the end of the day, once the class has left, it is screwed up and put in the basket [and nobody ever bothers to mark it, either!]"

I was in a Staff Room once filling out my supply timesheet, and the woman next to me was also doing hers. 

"Excuse me being nosey, but what is ECO?"I asked her [I thought maybe it was some sort of Planet-friendly Green lesson] She smiled at me and said "ECO and ECI are Supply Teacher's shorthand for you never left any lesson plans but I kept them busy and quiet all afternoon anyway" 

But what do these letters mean? I asked again. "Educational Cutting Out and Educational Colouring In" she replied with a smile. "I've been using these on Timesheets for years and you are the first person to ever query them!" I don't think I ever did that with a class. But sometimes I was tempted.

Teaching has changed significantly since I qualified in the 70s - now it is more like competing in the Olympics. All school staff have to work hard to catch deadlines, jump through hoops, run through the entire syllabus, throw everything they have into the lesson, and make sure the whole team will score high marks. 

Did you have any wildly eccentric staff at your school?