I spent an interesting time with Mrs Webb’s junior class who were busy writing little poems on paper cut-outs of footsteps.
‘Later, I shall type out all the poems and make a small anthology which the children can take home to their parents. I shall mount the original footsteps along the wall and call the display “Walking in the Footsteps of the Poet”.’
I was tempted to say, ‘Rather safer than “Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus”’ but thought better of it. Watching the teacher limping from desk to desk and recalling the account of her ill-fated journey to Jerusalem, I thought this rather an incongruous task to set the children.
For the remainder of the morning I joined the infants. They were busy painting, showing all the confidence and enthusiasm that only very young children and very experienced artists can do. At such a young age, children are totally uninhibited in their painting. They depict the world as a bright, bold, happy place full of round, pink, smiling faces, houses like smiling boxes and blue trees. They splash on colours with abandon, making great swirling curves and huge blobs with their brushes, they spatter and daub, smudge and smear and produce the most wonderful creations.
‘Tell me about this,’ I said to Mary, a small girl with a round saucer face. Her drawing depicted a brightly coloured, egg-like figure with long spidery fingers, kneeling before what looked like an immense coloured lake with tiny rocks, bits of driftwood and floating weed in it.
‘It’s someone saying a prayer,’ explained the child.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And is this a lake?’
‘No, that’s the sick’, little Mary replied, dipping her brush into a large pot of mustard-coloured paint. ‘She’s saying a prayer for the sick.’
The next child I encountered, a serious-faced girl with more paint on herself than on the large piece of paper in front of her, had drawn what I thought was a snake. The long, multi-coloured creature curled and twisted across the page like a writhing serpent from a fairy story. It was a small masterpiece with intricate patterning and delightful detail.
‘That’s a very colourful snake,’ I commented.
‘It’s not a snake,’ the child told me, putting down her brush and folding her little arms across her chest. ‘It’s a road.’
‘It looks like a snake to me.’
‘Well, it’s not. It’s a road. I know ‘cos I painted it.’
‘Ah, yes, I can see now,’ I had said tactfully. ‘Is it a magic road?’
‘No.’
‘It looks like a magic road to me.’
‘Well, it isn’t,’ said the child. ‘It’s an ordinary road.’
‘But it’s full of greens and reds and blues. It looks like a magic road. Perhaps it leads to an ice palace beyond the ragged clouds where the Snow Queen lives.’
The child observed me for a moment. ‘It’s an ordinary road and doesn’t lead to any ice palace.’
‘Why all the colours?’ I asked, intrigued.
Her finger traced the curve of the road. ‘Those are the diamonds and those the rubies and those are the emeralds,’ she explained.
‘It is a magic road!’ I teased.
‘No, it’s not,’ the child replied, ‘it’s a “jewel” carriageway.’
Having delivered another very positive report to Sister Brendan on what I had observed that morning, I discussed some of the children I had met. When I brought up Mary and her prayer for the sick, an enigmatic smile came to the nun’s face.
‘Ah yes,’ said the nun, ‘the very mention of that child’s name always makes me recall a funny incident when I put my foot well and truly in it with her father. I was travelling by train from York to Liverpool just after Mary had started here. The carriage was one of those old-fashioned ones where three people sit facing each other. I happened to choose a carriage full of businessmen on their way to work. The conversation stopped immediately I got in. Nuns often have that effect on people. They are either terrified of us or see us as soft touches for money. Anyhow, every man stood to offer me his seat but I was quite content to sit on the last seat, in the middle of one side. The conversation resumed but stuck to trivial topics like the weather and the amount of traffic on the roads. The man I was facing looked very familiar, much like Mr Ryan, Mary’s father. He seemed to recognise me, too, because he kept smiling. After a while I thought I had better say something so I leaned towards him and said, “I have an idea you’re the father of one of my children.” Well, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.’
The afternoon visit to Tarncliffe Primary School was to see a probationary teacher. During their first year in the profession, teachers are carefully assessed and monitored and have to pass a period of induction. Part of my brief was to visit newly-qualified teachers in the county a number of times during the year, observe them teach and examine their lesson plans, schemes of work and record keeping. If everything was deemed satisfactory they passed. If not, the teacher could be referred for another year, or failed.
Tarncliffe Primary School was tucked between the village shop and the grey brick Primitive Methodist chapel and didn’t resemble a school at all. From the pavement, the door opened directly onto one large classroom and curious passers-by would often peer through the leaded windows to observe the pupils at work. On one occasion an elderly couple had walked in, thinking it was a café, in search of a pot of tea for two and a toasted teacake.
The headteacher, Miss Drayton, was one of those permanently optimistic and cheerful people whom nothing and no one seemed to dishearten or discourage. She was a totally dedicated teacher who ran an excellent school. Her former assistant, Mrs Standish, had retired the previous term and a new member of staff, Mr Hornchurch, had been appointed. My visit that afternoon was to assess the new teacher’s competency. Prior to meeting Mr Hornchurch and observing his teaching, I sat with Miss Drayton in her small office to discuss his progress.
‘Well, Mr Phinn,’ she said, smiling, ‘I’ve either got someone who will turn out to be brilliant or someone who will be a millstone about my neck. I knew it would be a bit of a risk when we made the appointment but Mr Hornchurch had something about him, something you couldn’t put your finger on, that convinced me he would make an outstanding teacher. He just stood out from the rest who applied for the job. He’s an enthusiast for a start, and I like enthusiasts because they get children to be enthusiastic. He’s also very hard working and spends hours outside school time, organising trips, coaching the football team, getting together a group to go carol singing and much much more. Standards in English and mathematics have soared since he started, and the children are book-mad.’
‘He sounds amazing,’ I said. ‘What’s the downside?’
‘Well, to be perfectly blunt, he’s eccentric. That’s the only word for him. He’s idiosyncratic, unpredictable, untidy and sometimes infuriating. He does the most brilliant thing one minute, like the project on astronomy when he had the whole class and their parents sitting in the playground in the middle of the night staring at the stars and identifying all the constellations. Then the following week he took the children on a school trip to the Wildlife Centre at Wlllowbank and failed to notice one child climbing into the pond area. After the child had got home and had his tea, he had been sent upstairs to get ready for bed. His mother discovered him sitting in the bath, surrounded by bubble suds, with a baby penguin paddling away merrily in there with him.’
Something told me that Miss Drayton rather admired Mr Hornchurch’s idiosyncrasies, and relished recounting them.
‘Yes, indeed,’ she continued, ‘I shall be very interested in your assessment of him.’
Dividing the one large room was a wooden partition with the infants, in the charge of Miss Drayton, in one half and the juniors with Mr Hornchurch in the other. The infant classroom was neat, clean and orderly with everything in its proper place. Walking through into Mr Hornchurch’s classroom was like entering a completely different world. It was like an exotic junk shop – a mass of clutter and colour. There were
boxes of every conceivable shape and size stacked in a corner, huge abstract art posters and paintings covering the walls, piles of books, a basket of footballs and cricket equipment, a trestle table full of interesting-looking objects. It was like a scene from The Old Curiosity Shop. In the centre of this confusion was Mr Hornchurch, lounging back against the teacher’s desk, with his pupils sitting at theirs, watching him intently. He was a tall, pale-faced man in his early twenties, with an explosion of wild, woolly hair and a permanently startled expression.
‘Do come in, Mr Phinn, and find a chair if you can. This is Mr Phinn, children, and he’s a school inspector. Here to see if I’m any good as a teacher. That’s right, Mr Phinn, isn’t it? So, if he asks you what sort of teacher I am, you all have to tell him that I am absolutely brilliant. Now, sitting up straight, eyes front, everyone listening, please.’
I climbed over boxes and stacks of books, negotiated the basket of sports equipment, and found a chair tucked away in the corner next to the trestle table. While Mr Hornchurch was settling the children, I had an opportunity to look at the objects on the table. There were birds’ skulls, old tins, bits of pottery, coins, little brass figures, curiously-shaped pebbles, fossils and shells, faded feathers, dried flowers, rusty keys – a fascinating pot-pourri of objects.
‘I’ve taught the children something about the qualities of a good story, Mr Phinn,’ the teacher explained to me. ‘About the need for clear structure, a gripping opening paragraph, intriguing ending, authentic characterisation, significant detail, figurative language, imagery, etc. We’ve read and discussed some really interesting and descriptive extracts and I’ve now asked them to attempt something similar, something really colourful and vibrant and full of atmosphere. OK, OK, let’s get on.’
It sounded to me far too advanced for the children in the class but I was in for a surprise. The lesson I observed was one of the best I had ever seen. The pupils were encouraged to give their opinions, and each contribution was evaluated by the teacher who constantly challenged the children to justify their points of view.
‘How would you have felt if you had been the person in this story, Monty?’ he asked. ‘What do you think I meant in this sentence, Mandy?’ ‘Can you explain why this character decides to do this, Lucy?’
The children then began writing their own stories and the quality of the writing that I saw as I walked round was remarkably good. Child after child produced work of a high standard. One boy, who frequently consulted his dictionary before scribbling away, passed his paper over for me to see. ‘We’ve all been asked to write a descriptive paragraph in a different genre,’ he explained.
‘Genre?’ I repeated.
‘You know, different varieties of writing – science fiction, mystery, adventure, historical. I’ve written a ghost story.’ Not only was the boy’s piece extremely vivid, it was also neat and accurate.
‘Are you really a school inspector?’ asked the boy when I had finished reading it, and had congratulated him.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘And are you really here to see if Mr Hornchurch is a good teacher?’
I tried to evade the question. ‘Well, I’m really interested in how well you pupils are doing.’
‘But you have to do a report on him?’
‘I don’t discuss teachers with pupils,’ I explained, ‘but I do report on the lesson, yes.’
‘Well he’s a really good teacher and I’m not saying that because he told us to. I didn’t much enjoy school before this year. I never used to like reading and writing and now I do. I can read better, my mum can now read my writing, and my mental arithmetic is miles better.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ I said.
‘This year, we’ve been to castles and museums, the fire station and a wildlife centre, all sorts of interesting places. School was all right before Mr Hornchurch came, but now it’s brilliant.’
I quizzed the boy about the books he had read, his knowledge of grammar and punctuation, tested his spelling, asked him what he knew about history and geography and about the amount of homework he received. He was obviously receiving a broad, balanced and appropriate education.
‘Mr Hornchurch is…’ He paused for a moment as if struggling to find the right words. ‘Well, he’s different, you know, not like lots of teachers… he’s a bit… well, different, but he’s really good. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I know what you mean.’
Towards the end of the afternoon Mr Hornchurch instructed the children to put away their folders, which they did without a murmur, and to sit up straight. He then climbed onto his desk, crossed his legs and, much to my amazement, proceeded to place a large cardboard box on his head which had been adapted to resemble a television set. There was a cut away square (the screen) and various felt blobs (the knobs).
‘Will someone please turn me on?’ he asked pleasantly.
One of the boys came to the front and made a clicking sound as he ‘turned him on’.
‘Hello, children,’ began the teacher in the voice of the storyteller. ‘Welcome to the world of the story. My story today is about the child who could not cry. Once, many, many years ago
Along with the entire class, I sat completely transfixed as Mr Hornchurch related a captivating folk tale, using a range of accents. When the story ended, the same boy came to the front and ‘turned him off’.
What was I going to say to this wildly eccentric but obviously very talented young teacher? I thought to myself. His classroom was a mess, the lesson plans were scrappy, his planning virtually non-existent and the record system of no practical use at all. And yet the standard of education was high, the range of work wide and challenging and the quality of the teaching quite outstanding.
‘You see, Mr Phinn,’ explained the teacher after the children had filed out of the classroom to make their way home, ‘children these days live in a television culture. The average eleven-year-old, you know, watches thirty hours of television a week. We’ve got to get them to read, haven’t we, but more importantly to encourage them to become life-long readers and enjoy books. I find that if I pretend to be a television set, lift the text from the page so to speak, the children listen better.’ I was lost for words. ‘So how was my lesson then, Mr Phinn?’ he asked. ‘Will I do?’
‘Before I give you the feedback on the lesson, Mr Hornchurch,’ I began, ‘perhaps you might remove the box.’
When I arrived back in the office that afternoon, Julie popped her head round the door and told me Harold wanted to see me as soon as I got back.
I knew it was going to be news about the interviews and whether I had been shortlisted or not. I felt terribly nervous and spent a few moments unpacking my briefcase in order to calm myself
Harold looked up as I entered. ‘Ah, Gervase, yes, do come in. I am glad – er, good that we have been able to find a time to talk. Er, have you had a good day today?’
‘Thank you, yes,’ I replied. I could see by his expression and tell by his uncharacteristic fumbling for words that he was about to tell me that I had not been put on the shortlist.
‘I’m not on the shortlist, am I?’ I said.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he replied.
‘Oh,’ was all I could muster up to say.
‘Dr Gore will, no doubt, be having a personal word with you but wanted me to break the news. The fact is, as Mrs Savage was at excruciating pains to point out at our last full meeting, the calibre of applicant for this position has been particularly high and all have considerably more experience than you. You have only been a school inspector a little over two years and Dr Gore and the Education Sub-Committee felt you needed more time in the job before you can aspire to a senior position of this kind.’ Harold rubbed the side of his nose with a forefinger. ‘I have to say, Gervase, that I agree with them.’
‘I see.’
‘You are only a relatively young man and have a long career ahead. I expect you are very disappointed with this news but
your time will come. I really feel you have a field marshal’s baton in your knapsack.’
‘Thanks, Harold,’ I said quietly. ‘I thought it was a bit of a long shot when I sent in the application. I suppose, deep down, I knew I’d have little chance for the reasons you’ve just given. I just felt it was worth a try.’
‘As I’m sure you know,’ continued Harold, ‘Dr Gore values your work highly, as I do, so don’t be too downhearted. If I may be quite blunt, we often learn more from our failures than from our successes. The other point you should know is that the Sub-Committee felt that the inspectorate would benefit from an outside appointment.’
‘I see.’
‘To be frank, Gervase – and this is my personal opinion – I think you will have quite enough on this year what with your wedding and setting up a new home, without having to manage the team which is not an easy job, as well you know. There are endless meetings, late nights and weekends away from home. Not the sort of life-style for a newly-married man. I did think, when you said you were applying, of having a quiet word with you but decided not to in case it discouraged you.’
‘So, what are the five candidates like?’ I asked. ‘Or aren’t you allowed to say?’
‘No, I’m not in a position to say anything at this stage. You, along with the rest of the team, will be meeting the shortlisted candidates later this month when they come for interview. I won’t be directly involved in the appointment this time. That will be done by Dr Gore and the Sub-Committee but we will all have the opportunity of meeting the candidates prior to the interviews when they will be shown around. All I can tell you is that, as I said, the field is very good. All the applicants are in senior positions at the moment, all are well qualified and have substantial experience – perhaps this might make you feel a little better, knowing the competition you were up against. Don’t let this get you down. Your time will surely come.’
Thanks, Harold,’ I said. Then, attempting to push the disappointment to the back of my mind, I asked, ‘Do you have a few more minutes? There is another matter I wanted your advice on.’
Head Over Heels in the Dales Page 14
