'Those who can, do. Those who can't do, teach.' And those who trot out this old adage can get stuffed. Those who give enough of a shit that they devote their lives to enabling others to do, teach. Teachers are heroes, inspiration, the best of people. I know it's clichéd, and I'm sure repeated watchings of Mona Lisa Smile* have given me an even more romantic view of teaching, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that I wouldn't be where I am without the effort, support and general brilliance of several staggeringly excellent teachers. Yeah, I'm passionate about learning, and about linguistics specifically, but if through random happenstance I'd not progressed through my schooling having been taught by the people I was, I'm not entirely sure I would be this excited, this driven, this in love with studying.
**
At my high school, every single student between years seven and nine was terrified of Mr Taylor. He was a force of nature, and everyone knew not to cross him, lest face his wrath. And what a wrath it was - he could stand inches from your face and bellow at you, never faltering, almost sinister in his eloquence. Thankfully, this never happened to me, but I saw it many a time, and that was more than enough to stop me crossing him. Of course, it didn't help that Mr Taylor was also a PE teacher, and thus his yelling was also heard on freezing November afternoons as we did cross-country running (or as it was more commonly known, institutionalised torture). Basically, we were shit-scared of the man.
Then came GCSE English, and Mr Taylor was assigned our set. It was like knowing a different man. Mr Taylor smiled, laughed and joked his way through our lessons, vibrant and hilarious but still with an incomparable command of the class (probably from the residual fear that he'd explode - the man crafted his reputation well). He encouraged critical thought, pushed us to be better, but mainly let us feed off his enjoyment of the subject, of poetry and prose, of literary history.
I remember his teaching of Second World War literature in particular. I can recall his explaining the translation of "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"; needing us to understand the terrible irony of the 'glories of war' was incredibly important to him. And the pause, during Wilfred Owen's Disabled, after he read 'In the old times, before he threw away his knees' -- I've never quite been able to shake the power of that line, and I think the pain in his reading of it is the reason. He cared so much, about history and suffering and the importance of art and literature in allowing a generation who never had to live through it to understand, to appreciate what came before them, and how we're able to live so well now.
As is a pattern with all of these teachers, I was a bit of a pet to Mr Taylor. Not because I was particularly academically adept, but I spoke up in class, and went to him for extra help. He used his lunchbreak to gently dissect a piss-awful poem I wrote and help me to draft another (to this day, I remain a piss-awful poet, but he did help), and another to calm me when I freaked out about reading the bit in Great Expectations where Mrs Havisham catches fire and dies, and to read that section through with me, making sure I was okay after every few lines. We also bonded over being Manchester City fans, and thus started my long career of pretending to know more about football than I actually do. At one parents' evening, as my folks sat down at his desk, he said 'Hannah's doing fine - so, did you see the match last night?' and proceeded to talk to my dad about City for fifteen minutes.
When we left year 11, he wrote the whole class a poem (still pinned to my noticeboard), which contained a line for each of us. He also wrote individual poems for a few of us, and I can remember mine off-by-heart, even now.
Hannah Leach
A blue
Good for you
Stay true
To your calling
Hannah Leach
The beach
Lies across the water
Don't do what you think
Do what you ought to
And the sun lounger will be yours
I hope I never forget that.
We went back to see Mr Taylor a few times after leaving school, but haven't been in over a year now. I hope I get to see him again, but more than that, I hope he knows the lasting effect he had on our class. (I'm realising this is getting a bit Dead Poets Society all up in here. I promise none of these stories end with a classmate shooting themselves and a bunch of us standing on tables.)
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| To complete the picture, a school-aged Han (who apparently only had one photo-pose) |
Then came college. In my second year, I studied English Language and Literature with the same teacher - Stewart McNicol. Here again was a a teacher who gave a shit, who was interested and interesting, and a little bit weird. He taught us about diphthongs by talking about hyaenas, schooled us in l337 speak, and littered child language acquisition lessons with anecdotes about teaching his infant son the word 'meteorologist' so he'd look super smart when anybody asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He just enjoyed it.
Stoo also invented McNicol's Gallery of Tedious Anthropomorphism, a new instalment of which greeted us nearly every lesson, and elicited a welcome chuckle.
One of the things I remember most clearly is, when talking about books written for children and their simplified syntax, I spontaneously quoted Black Books without thinking - 'look in the alligator's mouth: it's not there either!' Being met with stony, confused silence from my fellow classmates, Stoo finished the quote - 'we all drank lemonade, the end!' - simultaneously a) making me feel like less of a moron, and b) cementing himself as teacher-type extraordinaire.
Since leaving college, Stoo has been kind enough to help me complete my undergraduate dissertation, giving up his free time for naught more than a bag of Tangfastics. Actually, considering he follows me on Twitter, there's every chance he's reading this sycophantic waffle right now. If so, cheers, Stoo!
**
My lucky streak extended into University, where I was fortunate enough to be taught by some cracking linguists, many of whom had paved the field of linguistics in the first place. (I still get a frisson of excitement when I see a book and think 'the author of that book taught me!') Specifically, I was particularly felicitous to be taught extensively by Kevin Watson. While I loved English Language at A Level, it was my three years at Lancaster University that saw me actually fall head-over-heels in love with Linguistics, and Kevin had a LOT to do with that. Here again was a teacher who radiated enthusiasm for the subject, who took pride in the field, and who was sure of its importance and relevance.
Kevin also supervised me through my dissertation, and the man deserves a MEDAL for putting up with me. One time, having gotten nowhere with an assignment for a course he didn't even teach, he sat quietly by as I cried and waffled about the Turkish noun data in front of me that just didn't make any sense god dammit, and calmly told me that I just needed to read a bit further and think a bit harder, and - lo and behold! - having found the right book in the library, it all finally clicked. He made me feel like I could actually do something in this field, make an impact, and do it well.
Beyond that, he's just a damn good teacher. Eloquent without being confusing, clear without being patronising. And, sharing a common thread with the other brilliant teachers I've mentioned, he gave a shit. He cared.
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| And a uni-aged Han (no seriously, why do I only have one pose/expression when a camera is pointed at me?) |
There have been times where I've felt more of a nuisance than a pupil, and generally discouraged from doing anything innovative, challenging, or left-field. Instead, I've felt encouraged to sit back, take the easy option, to not really try. It happens, and while I don't blame certain teachers for occasionally being this way (teachers have bad moods too!), it can be disheartening.
I've been struggling, lately, feeling a little lost academically. And then last week, I had a brilliant meeting with an MA lecturer, who - yet again - seemed to give a shit, and who encouraged me not to abandon my ideas. Good teachers make me I feel like I can do stuff, and do it well. I now have to actually do the stuff, of course, but the encouragement I've received throughout my academic career has been absolutely invaluable.
Teachers are heroes, and a good teacher can make a cosmos of difference.
*I knowww, it's terrible, but it's so pretty! And their faces! And the clothes!
Aww, I really enjoyed reading this! My own favourite teachers were Mrs Graham and Mr Robertson, my Classics teachers in secondary school. Their enthusiasm kept the whole class interested in ancient Athens and Rome, which could have been a pretty dry course in other hands. Thinking back, it felt like a much more "mature" environment for learning than some other classes. Rather than being told a list of things to remember, we were almost always engaged in informal class-wide discussions, comparing life then and now. These were so interesting they started cracking my shell of crippling adolescent shyness, and I found myself taking part. I could talk in front of (gosh) more than two people at once! So I was learning to gain confidence, and about myself, at the same time as I found out about Isis and the Fates and all that.
ReplyDeleteWe also covered ace Greek plays: Medea, Oedipus Rex, Lysistrata and my favourite, Antigone. The class would read them out loud, taking parts and swapping every few pages. Lysistrata's a bawdy comedy about the women of Athens staging a sex-strike to get their husbands to stop going to war. One passage had the word "cunt" in it, and as it approached (I'd read ahead, because I'm a geek) I KNEW Mrs Graham was going to ask me to read that bit - I guess because she knew I'd handle it gracefully. Aaaaand she did! Also in that one is talk about a sex position called "the-lion-on-the-cheese-grater", which had class and teacher in unawkward comic uproar!
It was the best class, and even in our solipsistic teens we really appreciated those teachers. When we left we clubbed together and bought them both a card, a box of chocolates for Mrs Graham, and a small sieve for Mr Robertson. This was for luck; he'd taught us about the ancient belief that if you're being chased by a demon, drop a sieve and run away. The demon is compelled to count all of the holes before it can chase you, giving you ample time to escape! (He was also a loose-leaf tea-drinker, so it wasn't an entirely valueless gift.)
They were such good teachers, and they fostered an environment for very happy school memories. Hurrah for them!
PS - Filthy Capitalist Pig of a Stapler is the BEST.