B: Pop stardom V teaching

There's a great line in The Simpsons when Principal Seymour asks
Edna Crabapple if this (teaching) was how she had imagined her life
panning out.

"Yes," comes the reply, "but I was a depressed child."

There are teachers that picked the profession as a vocation, a
compulsion to be a part of children's development and preparation for
adulthood, to make a difference to young lives, to inspire, to "do some
good". But these teachers are so rare, I wonder whether they are at
best a myth - or, at worst, a complete fabrication. Mainly, the first
line of this paragraph is just the stuff we put on our GTTR
application. In any case, those who go into the job powered by this
ideal soon have it knocked out of them.

My motivation was reasonably common: I couldn't think what else to do
with my degree. They were - still are - desperate for teachers. I got
on my first-choice course in spite of (I later found out) a university
reference that complained of advanced absenteeism. The pay seemed okay.
The holidays more than okay.

In my mid-twenties, a period of serious illness and major surgery had
given me cause to reflect on my life. I had been scraping by on a
pittance-winning "temporary" job; going nowhere. Just living for Friday
night, the usual shit. And so, refocused, I decided to give myself two
new options: a pop-music technology course at Sir Paul McCartney's LIPA
fame school in Liverpool; or teacher training. Though less sensible,
the pop music course was confidentially my preference; but its European
funding fell through, and the choice was made for me.

I plumped for Chester College on the mistaken premise that Chester
schools would be a piece of piss. Doubtless Chester has its schools
where children bow respectfully when you enter the room, ready to kneel
down at the altar of learning; but few associate teachers are sent to
them. Chester is the way you'd expect Bombay to be, characterised by a
ridiculously polarised rich and poor divide. Its social and economic
problems are swept away into a corner called Blacon. Blacon is like
Toxteth or Moss Side, with a few more trees. Quite a place to cut your
teeth in as a rookie educator.

I don't suppose I've done too badly in my career, here in North
Manchester. I became a senior teacher at a mere thirty-six years old. I
won't progress any further up the ladder in this school. You need to
care more about pernicious league tables to be a deputy round
here.

I have an office. Admittedly it's a rabbit hutch in a community day
centre filled with the sickening stench of cheap filling nutritious
food for old people. But as I type this, my words appear on one of
those state-of-the-art flat monitors. I'm looked after, in the way
museum exhibits are. I have a reputation that comes before me. People
are fond of me. I'm the right sort of teacher in the wrong sort of
world.

Some senior teachers make it their life's work to get out of teaching.
They invent spurious pursuits to avoid slumming it on the front line. I
don't. The sad if slightly self-aggrandising truth is this: it would be
a monumental waste of my talent. This year in particular, I have spent
a large chunk of my time in the classroom. The fearsome, notorious 9B5
were causing such mayhem, we established them in one room and assigned
all their learning to myself and two others. This is the main source of
inspiration for my writing this novel. So I'll introduce you to
them.