Continuing the posting of ideas to encourage creative writing, for the fun of it!

As before, this is a cut and paste resource as I have not yet been able to offer as a download. I will also mention again that these are written to the student/writer:

Lending the Lawnmower

The aim of this unit of work is to promote some fun in the writing of a poem based on Adrian Mitchell’s Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody.

Instead of using a wheelbarrow, you will be avoiding the lending of an object of your choice and you will be doing so in a variety of attitudes. The following example uses a lawnmower as its object of rejection:

Six Ways to Avoid Lending Your Lawnmower to Anybody

1. Humorous

May I borrow your lawnmower?
Have you heard the one about the lawnmower and the
artificial turf?

2. Sarcastic

May I borrow your lawnmower?
If I can borrow £50.

3. Overbearing

May I borrow your lawnmower?
It really does require considerable skill
and I’m not sure you have this.

4. Sadistic

May I borrow your lawnmower?
The blades are razor sharp.

5. Diplomatic

May I borrow your lawnmower?
I think my grass might be just a tad longer than yours,
so how about my using it first?

6. Psychological

May I borrow your lawnmower?
So what makes you think it’s mine to give?

Writing the Poem

First: Adrian Mitchell’s poem uses a wheelbarrow as its object not to be lent and the example you have seen uses a lawnmower. You need to decide what your object is going to be.

You can keep it realistic and select an object that someone would commonly want to borrow. This could be any garden equipment, tools, household appliances like a vacuum cleaner, sugar or milk for coffee and so on. You could think about things that are borrowed at school like pens, rubbers or someone else’s homework!

You could make your object more abstract like friendship, love, peace of mind and so on. This could make your poem very unusual.

Second: You now need to decide on the attitudes with which you will reject the request to borrow your chosen object. Mitchell’s original poem used the following: patriotic, snobbish, overweening, pious, melodramatic, pathetic, defensive, sinister, philosophical.

Decide on how many attitudes you want to write about. You might decide to write about a number of objects and so limit the number of attitudes per poem. Whatever you choose to do, try to be as creative as you can with your interpretation of these.

You can use attitudes from Mitchell’s poem or the example you have seen. The following are a few more ideas to help you:

suspicious        antagonistic      obsequious          ambivalent        tired
dismissive        eager                   arrogant              pretentious       noisy
pedantic           soporific             temperamental  tacit                     reluctant
moronic            caustic                lovey-dovey        inspirational     cautious
pompous          teacherly            indecisive            manic                  forgetful

Use a dictionary to work out unfamiliar words and/or to find some more of your own.

Final: Once you are clear about what the attitudes you have chosen mean, write your poem. Each opening line will be a request to borrow your chosen object. You then turn this down with just the right amount of attitude!

In Thursday’s Guardian – April 2nd – there was an article headlined Teachers don’t like the Tories – so why isn’t Labour benefiting? [here]. I didn’t have to think very hard about that certainty on the day, and I have been considering this assertion from the NUT’s General Secretary Christine Blower on and off since. For those of my generation, beginning teaching in 1980 and working until 2010, there are key experiences that inform a view on this question; I am less sure about a more recent teaching generation’s viewpoint, not least the de-politicised nature of the profession overall, apart from apparent dislikes, as it seems to me.

A potted history of my early experiences is all that is needed to underpin personal, main feelings on this question. The first 17 years of my teaching were done under a Tory government: Maggie Thatcher 1980-1990; John Major 1990-1997. The Education Secretaries who served across that time were Mark Carlisle 79-81, Keith Joseph 81-86, Kenneth Baker 86-89, John MacGregor 89-90, Kenneth Clarke 90-92, John Patten 92-94 and Gillian Shephard 94-97. The most infamous amongst this generally shabby lot were Joseph, Baker and Patten.

It is ironic, however, that within this political framework and the distasteful ideologies and strictures imposed by it, this was also the most professionally rewarding time in my teaching career of 30 years. This was always due in the first instance to the wonderful people with whom I worked, especially the English teams in my school across the whole time, but in that 17 year period it was without doubt underpinned by the inspirational,  cogent thinking and ideas shared by my county’s triumvirate of outstanding English advisers Pat Brain, Nick Jones and Martin Phillips . Whilst on the one hand the national political thought was essentially narrow and idealistically skewed, on the other, the Devon LEA English Advisory service was independent and imaginative: a separateness peculiar to the time.

Also historically, the Tories introduced the worst aspects of what has survived to plague the education system to this day – testing and targets. The testing regime was the initial damnation of all that had up to that point been good about teaching English. The Tory’s Education Reform Act of 1988 led to the establishment of The National Curriculum and more crucially SATs, Standard Assessment Tests, affecting me in particular at Key Stage 3, ages 11-14. Trying to keep this as summary, what galled most was the fundamental distrust of teacher assessment, but for English in particular it was the discrete and finite nature of the testing that proved utterly anathema to the realities of how students demonstrated their knowledge, understanding and skills in this subject. When putting this argument to the test – in other words, students subjected to the often simplistic question/answer nature of English SATs at KS3, but most importantly the restrictive and patently erroneous mark schemes for all responses to which examiners were shackled [though these charlatans should themselves have been shackled to something else…] – it signalled the death knell for a creative and expressive approach to teaching and learning in English, as well as a broad method for assessing its rich and varied elements of response.

There is much more I could say on this historically – about both the discussion paper Bullock Revisited of 1982, and the Cox Report of 1989 responding to the demands for a national curriculum in English [respectively brilliant and surprisingly apt]; about the positive role of Examination Boards [JMB/NEAB and 100% coursework assessment], and the creativity of the publishing market for English teaching resources – but I will save this for another time. These are also ironic realities as the genuinely purposeful nature of this collection also occurred within the philistinism of a Tory regime.

Which brings me from this potted and to a degree planted-out historical context to Labour. By 1997, the impact of the diminishing effects of a testing and target culture outweighed the professionally inspired attempts to circumvent it. Therefore, teachers like myself craved a change and we all felt that Tony Blair’s New Labour would achieve this. Did it happen?

I think it was on the very first day of their actual operation in government that Labour confirmed the reappointment of Chris Woodhead as the Head of Ofsted, another Tory construct of destruction in so many ways. Woodhead himself was a withering traditionalist who did little to support teachers and everything to undermine them. That too is another lengthy story, but imagine the shock of his re-appointment for people like me: a dedicated English teacher looking for hope in significant change, and someone whose political ideology of fairness and liberalisation looked to Labour to bring this to bear on educational thought and curriculum development. No, it didn’t happen, and far from it.

During Labour’s long tenure in government – one promising enlightenment under the campaigning banner of Education, Education, Education – they did not change that testing and target culture [indeed they consolidated and strengthened it] and there was little if any insightful or ideological alternatives introduced within the existing curriculum. Whilst it is true that significant sums of money were put into education, and thus a genuine measure of realisation to that campaigning pledge, there simply wasn’t the change to impact on the teaching and learning in English that I had craved. It was devastating.

Getting all of that out of my system – but important in explaining my opening premise about feelings of my generation as a teacher – it is presumably easy to see how Labour wouldn’t for many teachers ‘benefit’ from a current dislike of Tories. Having behaved towards education like Tories in so many ways from 1997 to 2010, what would inspire anyone to imagine there could be a difference in a Labour government from 2015? Certainly little has been said by Labour to significantly challenge the last five years of a return to a largely Tory educational ideology [stated as scant reference to the claimed ‘liberalising’ impact of a coalition], one quite frighteningly shaped by the singular fundamentalism of former Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove.

What has the Shadow Secretary of State for Education Tristram Hunt contributed to encourage me and current members of the teaching profession to favour Labour? In another Guardian article on the 30th March [here], Tristram Hunt answers questions put to him and this one is most apposite to what I am exploring here: What is a left-wing approach to education? Hunt’s answer is:

‘I see it as a heated dialectic between Gramscian rigour and Ellen Wilkinson’s evangelism for innovation, creativity and freedom. In Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks there is this remarkable paean for the traditional rigour of the classics as being crucial for Italian working-class consciousness. On the other hand, Wilkinson, Clement Attlee’s first education secretary, argued: “Schools must have freedom to experiment, and we need variety for the sake of freshness. We want laughter in the classroom, self-confidence growing every day, eager interest instead of bored uniformity.” A modern, left-wing response to the 21st-century digital economy needs a dose of both. But where these two philosophies meet is equally important – that education is precious beyond instrumental labour market outcomes. That is something we must fight for when the right attempts to commodify it.’

I need to place my reservations on hold for a moment to acknowledge the intellectual aspect of what he is saying. As an Historian, Hunt is much better read than I will ever be in many respects, but certainly educational history, and that is a welcome alternative to the tenuous grasp of educational theory yet brazen legislative application from someone like Gove. He would appear to have embraced his role entirely from a personally myopic educational experience and then obtuse extrapolation of this into dictates. However – and accepting the single commentary I am quoting – Hunt’s response also reflects a typically cerebral rather than practical, experienced ability to reflect on what a ‘left-wing’ government would do, in curriculum terms, to return us to a more fair and progressive system. He, and Labour in opposition, have said little else about concrete alternatives they would apply, if in government, to counter the current situation. Where, for example, was the Labour outrage at the undemocratic and appalling legislative move to effectively ban American authors from being studied for GCSE English Literature from 2015, something that has altered the uncontentious status quo in this subject under both governments over countless years?

What else has Tristram Hunt, as the education voice of Labour, offered so that as a political party and alternative to the Tories it can benefit? Two salient but silly soundbites spring to mind to further serve my point: firstly, Hunt’s absurd recommendation of an ‘Hippocratic oath’ for teachers to declare [a piece of peripheral nonsense that allowed the Tories to take the moral – and sane – high-ground and argue that teachers didn’t need to declare such an oath], and secondly, his ‘Master Teachers’ proposal which had all the echoing of a kind of teacher-as-professional-prefect project. Whilst the idea of rewarding and retaining teachers in the classroom is not without merit, it is in the context of announcing such ideas as sudden initiatives [not in fact new or exclusive to Labour] rather than focusing on sustained attacks on Tory policy that has caused Labour to appear so depressingly weak or even distant.

If the current election campaigning is teaching us anything about how thoughtful people are influenced, it is for politicians to stop posturing and to present articulate, convincing and meaningful alternatives in striving to make a case for their declarations of intent. I know it was easy for her to do so in the – let’s be real – unlikelihood of forming or even being instrumental in the next government, but Natalie Bennett as leader of the Green Party did speak in the recent TV debate about two key elements that I think teachers today [and of the past] would see as a position to benefit them in the future: first, a return to local authority control of schools, thus removing aspects of needless competition as well as the incoherence of disparate systems; and second, a call to a broader approach to what we teach so that it is more than what can be measured by testing and targets [and whilst this t&t has changed somewhat of late, its essence is still in place and still toxic]. This would obviously need much more detail and examination – for example, how to dismantle the Academy/free school ideologies and practices, and then fund, structure and support all LEAs so they are as effective as Devon in the 80s/90s – so when you place it against the answer Hunt provided about what makes a ‘left-wing’ approach to education, it is saying something very similar but in quite active if ambitious ways.

Imagine Labour, and Hunt, being a little more proactive and at the very least speaking like this about real alternatives to the Tories. Actions do speak louder than words, but without even that latter, where are the benefits in voting for them to be envisioned?

[An additional note of hope is that perhaps we will be entering a phase where tracking achievement/progress in English will be more reliant once more on teacher judgements; and the book I have promoted in this blog Writing Workshops has, as I have argued, returned to an ethos and approaches that did work in that ‘better’ past. This of course has been achieved without Labour….! A final point which probably hasn’t been strongly apparent in the article above, or in that preceding comment, is I would still much rather see a Labour Party in government compared with the Tories, for many critically important reasons, not least of overriding values about equality and fairness].

Pleased to get this up on the Guardian website today [see here] – mustn’t let up on the pressure to right a wrong:

Having decided to move to a weekly posting, I have also decided to give any larger posting a miss for this weekend as teachers will be enjoying the start of their well-deserved half-term breaks. Seems stupid to attempt to intrude on this!

Instead, here is some light relief with a tinge of attitude. I was recently asked if I would be interested in developing multiple choice questions for SPaG practice as a potential online learning tool. A genuine request for a genuine project and something that will happen, but it wasn’t for me.

The last time I was ever involved with MCQs would be between 1980-83, I think, with a then CSE English examination, and I have questioned their value ever since. One very personal experience validates that view over and above my more general and considered objection: in order to attain my Teaching Certificate I had to pass an ‘O-Level Maths Equivalent’ test. Now in any genuine sense I can assure you this would have been an impossibility. However, the exam questions were multiple choice, and I guess I guessed well, but I do also remember clearly one of the questions was based on a quadratic equation and of the four possible answers only one contained the x and y that was in the maths question being asked!

The idea then of devising MSQs for SPaG, where the weighting in the new GCSE English Language Orders for this latter is going to be punitive, was bound for many reasons to be anathema to my particular interest in supporting students as writers. Thus the following:

SPaG MCQs

a. is this the way, you will ask? the question [or]
b. is this, the way, you will, ask the, question? [or]
c. Is this the way you will ask the question?

is this the way you will ask the question
this is the question the way you will ask
ask is this the way you question the will
is the way you will ask the question you
question is this the way you will the ask
will you ask is the question the you way
the question you ask is the way you will
is this the question the way you will ask

d. the question
you will ask
is this the way?

Moving to a weekly, Sunday posting I thought I would in addition to English subject and general education reflections, share a few creative writing ideas/worksheets I wrote and produced some years ago. These were available to purchase back then, but it is a considerable time since and I trust no-one who did buy would mind my sharing these like this now. I have in fact been re-shaping and revising a number of these, accompanied by a significant selection of new poems written for a younger audience, and hope to put together an anthology with creative writing ideas targeted for a Key Stage 3 audience. We shall see.

An important element of these was obviously encouraging students to experiment and explore, but equally the intention was to provide exercises that prompted students to select and use language for precise purposes, thus developing language and writing skills, but always within this creative context.

I am not able to present as downloadable resources/worksheets, so I hope anyone who would like to use could cut and paste [and maybe then revamp for presentation if desired] for their own use. Do let me know. The work is addressed to students.

Beheaded Poems

The aim of this unit of work is get you to write beheaded poems. These are poems that use beheadings, words that can have their first letter removed to leave another new word – for example, when the word pear is beheaded (p/ear) it becomes ear. Here is an example using this word:

Eating a Pear

Hold a pear
to your ear
and hear the tone
of just one
sound: the slow
rhythm of a low
and steady beat
you’re able to eat.

You do not have to make your lines end with beheadings. You can try writing with the beheaded words anywhere in a following line, for example:

In the Night

Somewhere in the black of night
there is a lack of anything good.
Here is the absence of a bright idea
to show what is right or wrong,
and in the swish of its darkened air
you’ll hear a wish for something better.

Can you work out the beheadings in each pair of lines?

Both of these poems are examples of ‘stream of consciousness’ writing – this is writing which is done spontaneously and without planning. By using beheadings these can act as prompts for subsequent lines because you know what the word is that has to be used in that line.

Writing the Poem

First stage: If you are going to attempt ‘stream of consciousness’ writing you will simply need to select your first beheading and see where this takes you!

However, if you feel you need more back-up and support, you can begin by building up a collection of words that can be beheaded before you begin writing your poem (and you can, in fact, use these to support ‘stream of consciousness’ writing as an acceptable cheat).

Second stage: You need to decide where you want to place your beheadings. These can be at the ends of lines, as in the first example you have seen, or consecutively in pairs of lines, as in the second example.

You can, of course, be more relaxed than this and have the beheadings occurring anywhere in the poem, as long as they are still consecutive.

Final stage: It is useful to have some idea about what you want to write, even with a ‘stream of consciousness’ approach. The poem about the pear is about eating it, so this is a fairly obvious idea! The poem about night explores negative ideas associated with this, for example the lack of anything good and the absence of a bright idea.

Be prepared to edit your poem carefully. If a beheading has taken you away from what you really want to write, get rid of it and start again! Sometimes you have to be prepared to sacrifice a good sounding phrase if it doesn’t actually fit with the overall tone and meaning of your poem.

It is hard to teach students when and how to use a long sentence, not least to punctuate it carefully [yes, ‘correctly’, but hearing the shifts and turns in the rhythm is in many ways the best way to achieve both, so by ‘carefully’ I am suggesting an intuitive, if informed by practice, approach rather than the mechanics of a learned accuracy]. Good writing benefits from good sentence variety – written to again emulate shifts and turns and changing emotions and so on in the meaning and dramatic/visual/aural purpose – but we also know as teachers that ‘sentence variety’ is a big one in assessment criteria, especially at GCSE.

The worst way to teach this is in order to hit that assessment criteria. Easy to say; sometimes hard to avoid. Hard if you feel bludgeoned by expectation in target-setting and have an inkling that hitting that assessment criteria – no matter how mechanical – is one step closer to a student ‘improving’ their potential to get the best grade possible in their Writing.

I saw plenty of this manufactured writing when I examined a GCSE Writing component for two years [as well as plenty of superb writing, let’s be clear!]. This assembly-line writing also included the deathly three-adjectives-in-a-sentence proliferation – as if this is the ‘magic three’ rather than a naive example of over-writing – and that other composition coffin-carrier, the endemic use of metaphor and simile: at least one in every other sentence.

I might exaggerate a little. But not that much.

The best way to teach the use of a long sentence isn’t something I can explain definitively. Why? Because good writing is hard to do and hard to teach. I’m sure we all know that one of the most effective guides to exemplify overall good writing, but also in this case the use of sentence variety and in particular the long sentence, is reading good writing. The other is practice. So how do we find engaging ways to practice?

A little pitch: in the book I have co-authored Writing Workshops [see here], one of the units looks at the writing of Charles Dickens from Dombey and Son. With the caveat that one isn’t suggesting we try and write like Dickens did in the mid-1800s, by reading and discussing how he brilliantly mimics the relentless movement of a train, we are ‘hearing’ how he uses long flowing sentences to achieve this, and by some natural osmosis, the collaborative talk of students and reading aloud, and more explicit teaching/doing, we begin to appreciate how his use of punctuation allows this to happen.

I tried to match but also ‘counter’ Dickens’ excellence at such writing through the use of complex sentences with a contemporary example from Cormac McCarthy who also writes glorious long sentences but does so in the [sweeping statement alert] American tradition of using compound sentences, the connective ‘and’ being the magical vehicle for this other journey. But McCarthy doesn’t allow his writing to be used for such a purpose!

So – finally – here’s an idea, but it is primarily a creative writing idea: this wonderful poem by Billy Collins is written as one long sentence. The poem describes the fall of the Elk River, and does so through the mimesis of sentence flow and, of course, the structure of the poem itself. Whilst the latter would seem impossible to work as prose, that is actually just a visual cheat because although the enjambment of the poetic form allows the ‘sentences’ to fall from one line to the next and thus describe the river’s journey to the sea, it is both the punctuation and conjunctions that in fact create the shifts and turns and visual purpose and effect of the whole piece.

Read the poem first

Elk River Falls

is where the Elk River falls
from a rocky and considerable height,
turning pale with trepidation at the lip
(it seemed from where I stood below)
before it is unbuckled from itself
and plummets, shredded, through the air
into the shadows of a frigid pool,
so calm around the edges, a place
for water to recover from the shock
of falling apart and coming back together
before it picks up its song again,
goes sliding around the massive rocks
and past some islands overgrown with weeds
then flattens out and slips around a bend
and continues on its winding course,
according to this camper’s guide,
then joins the Clearwater at its northern fork,
which must in time find the sea
where this and every other stream
mistakes the monster for itself,
sings its name one final time
then feels the sudden sting of salt.

What a great poem! If I was reading/teaching this, I would obviously read aloud again.

Now here is the proof in the sentence pudding:

is where the Elk River falls from a rocky and considerable height, turning pale with trepidation at the lip (it seemed from where I stood below) before it is unbuckled from itself and plummets, shredded, through the air into the shadows of a frigid pool, so calm around the edges, a place for water to recover from the shock of falling apart and coming back together before it picks up its song again, goes sliding around the massive rocks and past some islands overgrown with weeds then flattens out and slips around a bend and continues on its winding course, according to this camper’s guide, then joins the Clearwater at its northern fork, which must in time find the sea where this and every other stream mistakes the monster for itself, sings its name one final time then feels the sudden sting of salt.

In one important and definitive sense this destroys the purpose and effect of it being a poem. However, in another, I think it also illustrates how it is entirely the rhythms of this one long sentence – punctuated perfectly, conjunctions providing connection and impetus – that generate the actual visual emulation.

Enough of this. Speaking of long sentences, this exposition is pretty damn long! So how to use this poem in the classroom?

I won’t produce a worksheet here [but maybe I should have a go later…] and will simply suggest the poem could be used initially as a model for prompting a copycat creative writing response.

Students can take a similar theme, or expand and/or change

• the fall [journey] of a river
• a waterfall
• the ocean’s waves [what they ‘encounter’ on the way: boats, islands, debris, beach…]
• a storm [researching the meteorology of this]
• movement/motion of a train [thinking of the Writing Workshop unit on this]
• any other mode of transport
• a bird in flight [crossing various terrain]
• a plane [!]
• anything similar….

For any of the above, I would encourage the hard work of researching and/or making notes about the content that will form the detail of the long sentence, or as a differentiated option, a number of long sentences. Collecting and collating the information will obviously help in then shaping this into the sentence flow.

I have always believed in and put into practice the principle of copycatting to encourage creative writing. Students benefit greatly from a model to literally copy or adapt and use as a varying guide.

Revisit Collins’ poem and work though how the enjambment – in the first instance – tends to create most of the rhythmic shifts in what is actually being described as the river’s falling shifts. The punctuation used can then be mapped against this, though at times it isn’t a punctuation mark but a conjunction/connective like ‘and’, ‘which’, ‘where’, ‘before’… so there is no single pattern to how Collins keeps his long sentence flowing [and I apologise for ‘mapped’ because that has connotations of some more prescriptive type of teaching and learning but I’ll leave it in for the hopeful irony.].

And did you notice that final parenthesis? Collins only uses one in his poem, and I find I use this quite a lot in my own writing, especially across long sentences [though I often prefer the use of the dash to brackets].

Couldn’t resist.

Once students have written their copycat poems, you could move on to them re-presenting this as a prose piece, preserving the punctuation and so on – or, using the prose ‘conversion’ to highlight the further need for careful punctuation. Word-processing and formatting will obviously make this whole process easier.

I quite like the creative writing idea and have some reservation about appropriating it for another purpose, but the overall intention is to enjoy reading good writing and improve our own writing skills: if a poem to read and copycat aids that intention, then all is well in the world of teaching Writing, certainly far better than the illness of hammering on the dead-heads of assessment objectives.

MF 20.3.15

Teacher training for those who can
Teacher training leaning into the rails
Teacher training as one of the four
Teacher training with bells on
Teacher training without rhyme
Teacher training to the tune of Ray
Teacher training in four part harmony
Teacher training unplanned
Teacher training whose art arcs science
Teacher training with the umbrella
Teacher training forever
Teacher training waiting for coffee
Teacher training with springs to leap woodcocks
Teacher training like foreplay
Teacher training for outer space
Teacher training spelt conceptually
Teacher training as a mirror
Teacher training before the heartbeat
Teacher training that knows its magic three
Teacher training in its paisley shirt
Teacher training playing the bongos
Teacher training riding the wave
Teacher training inside your head

[The following chapter is one that didn’t make the final edit for my novel Writing with Hammers. I am posting here because I am still fond of it, for a number of reasons: [1] It is based on a real event – this chapter recounts my school’s first ever Ofsted Inspection and the man who inspected English was about as ludicrous as the caricature presented here. I did in fact have to make a formal complaint half-way through the process because he was ignoring/forgetting details he was given, and in the end the lead Inspector asked that the school did not pursue the matter further as his birthday was imminent and he would also be retiring from Inspections! As my Department had received a reasonable seal of approval, it was decided to let this one go. It never did for me, thus the chapter; [2] This was an early example of using satire – perhaps elements of the absurd – to try and capture the incredulous reality of what actually happened/happens in schools. I have found it difficult to stand back far enough from this to judge if that satiric ruse ever fully worked, and therefore I have not included it in the published novel. Difficult to believe, this wasn’t the worst experience I had at the hands of those who thought they knew better…..]

When the school is Inspected, my department gets dealt the crap hand – not that there’s ever going to be a ‘happy’ deck from which to deal when it comes to these stomach-churning visits. Teachers probably work themselves up into unnecessary frenzies, but the general approach of a fault-finding scrutiny hardly puts us into a party mood.

Our Inspection team is fairly stereotypical: a residential home for the elderly has been picked at random and the occupants trained for the job within a couple of weeks of their selection. The teachers get to meet them all at a pre-Inspection buffet held in the school canteen, a ruse to appease the fear and anxiety we are all feeling. Cheese on sticks and sausage rolls don’t quite do the trick, but I am personally a little comforted to meet my Inspector, a seemingly affable, roly-poly bear of a man who exchanges chit-chat with the ease of a travelling salesman (and for all I know, this may well be his main profession).

He introduces himself as Sir Toby Belch and I am surprised but in no way impressed to hear that he has a royal seal of approval for his Inspection work. He is quite pedantic and cheesily theatrical in his speech, but I put this down to attempts to impress. His rotund bonhomie soothes away my concerns and I decide that there is little to fear in his impending visit.

Some weeks later, and I’m less convinced that I should be quite so relaxed, but I recognise there isn’t much I can do about classroom observations other than have myself and the team prepare thoroughly. However, I know that he and I will have regular one-to-one meetings in my office. Not entirely certain that Sir Toby will be a complete push-over, I decide to secretly record these since the canteen tête-à-tête. I’ve heard all kinds of horror stories about misinformation and misrepresentation coming out of the Inspection of other schools, and I am going to do everything I can to avoid this nightmare. I decide to bug my office by putting a tape recorder in it, concealed in a box just underneath my desk.

During the week of the Inspection I record every conversation and debriefing session we have. Sir Toby and I meet each morning before lessons begin as well as occasionally in my non-contact periods. It is a disturbing experience. I soon work out that there has been a big mistake in Sir Toby being let out of the residential home and imagine that whilst there he is normally restrained in a straightjacket. And a gag. I begin to think that his thespian’s prattle at our first meeting was probably restrained by Prozac or some other tranquilliser he subsequently stopped taking.

Halfway through the week I decide to make a formal complaint to the lead Inspector and the Head. I can’t have this mad man making judgements about my department. I grab the Head in the staffroom at breaktime on Wednesday.

“You’ve got to do something about Sir Toby,” I nearly scream. “The guy is a complete fruitcake and can’t be allowed to continue with his Inspection. I want him reported.”

The Head, already at the edge of a precipice by having to oversee every aspect of the Inspection so far, looks at me like I’ve asked for a million pounds.

“What are you ranting about?” he asks, trying to remove my grip from his arm. “This is so typical and I wondered when you’d start to complain about some aspect of this Inspection. But to actually get rid of Sir Toby! Well, that’s more outrageous than anything I could have imagined.” He tries to move away but I still have his arm in my hand and give it a squeeze that makes him exhale a tiny squeal.

“Come with me,” I demand, pulling him after me like an errant child. I drag him all the way to my office with passing students gawking at us in disbelief. When we get there, I sit the Head down on one of the chairs and finally let go of his arm which he immediately begins to rub.

“I’ll have you for physical assault,” he moans. “You’re the only fruitcake I know in this school at the moment.”

I grab the tape recorder and slam it on my desk. I also pull out some sheets of paper from a file on my desk.

“After you’ve listened to this,” I say, pointing at the tape player, “you can make your final decision on who is and isn’t insane around here. I’ve been taping all of the conversations this Sir Prat and I have been having, and I think you’re in for a shock. And just in case you can’t believe what you do hear, I want you to read those sheets of paper, because I’ve transcribed these tapes just in case anyone wants to claim they can’t hear things properly or don’t want to believe it.”

I give the Head the following transcript and play the recording of one of our absurd exchanges:

Meeting – Wednesday 13th March, 12.15-1.15.

(Sir Toby Belch meets me in my office)

Mike

Hello Sir Toby

Belch

Why, how now, my bawcock! how doest thou, chuck?

Mike

Yes, well, I’m fine Sir Toby. I see you’re in Shakespearean mode again. I don’t suppose there’s a chance of a more normal conversation this morning? (There is a long pause) I’ll take it that’s a ‘no’ then. I also wondered if you had seen Smith’s lesson as we arranged?

Belch

He’s as tall a man as any’s in Illyria

Mike

Yes he is, but I don’t see – look, I really just need to know if you saw the actual lesson we talked about?

Belch

Pourquoi, my dear knight?

Mike

Well, because you were adamant that you needed to see some ICT use in lessons and you claimed you hadn’t seen this in the other ICT type lessons I’d arranged for you to observe.

Belch

Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before ‘em?

Mike

There’s nothing hidden about the ICT work Sir Toby. The lessons I’ve arranged for you to see use computers as a part of the whole lesson. We don’t teach ICT – it’s an aspect of the work we do and that’s what you wanted to see. I have to say, I think I have every right to be annoyed if you missed this again.

Belch

What dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in?

Mike

Would you please stop talking like that! As I’ve said, there’s nothing ‘hidden’ and, yes, we’re actually proud of what we do with ICT in English. Why do you assume we wouldn’t be open about this?

Belch

A false conclusion: I hate it as an unfilled can.

Mike

Hang on, hang on Sir Toby. This is getting bloody ridiculous! If this session carries on like this I’m going to have to take this matter further and complain about these silly conversations we keep having.

Belch

It comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.

Mike

Look Sir Toby, I don’t know what you’re trying to do – push me as far as you can to test me or something – but this has got to stop. I’m doing everything I can to organise things properly for you and you seem to be doing everything you can to make a mess of it. We’re all trying to take this Inspection seriously, you know.

Belch

Thou’rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink

(At this point Sir Toby gets up from his seat and turns towards the door. It is obvious that he wants to go to lunch because this has been his main concern at about this same time for the past two days)

Mike

Sir Toby, I really don’t think you’re listening to me! You just seem to want to get out of here as quickly as possible and have another bloody school dinner.

Belch

Thou’rt I’ the right. Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs

Mike

Look, the last thing I want to do now is go to lunch with you.

Belch

Taste your legs, sir; put them to motion.

Mike

I’m staying here until we sort this out. This is just crazy behaviour by someone in your position.

(At this point, Sir Toby is half-way out of the door, beckoning me to accompany him, and he clearly intends to leave with or without me)

Belch

These clothes are good enough to drink in; and so be these boots too: an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.

(With this, Sir Toby leaves the office, and the meeting we are having finishes)

I turn the tape off and look at the Head who is still rubbing his arm in nervous, spasmodic movements. He flicks through the pages of the transcript again, but I can tell he isn’t actually reading anything. After some minutes of this genuinely stunned but annoying procrastination, I interrupt the silence.

“We either take this to the lead Inspector,” I tell him bluntly, “or I’m going to send this stuff to the local or maybe even a national newspaper.”

It’s the next day when we have an official meeting with the lead Inspector, Mrs Morey, a rather large and malodorous woman, who fills the room with her considerable presence. I play the tape and let her read the transcripts. It is a long meeting and there are many knowing nods and looks of stern concern. Eventually, Mrs Morey speaks, looking directly at me.

“This is obviously totally unacceptable behaviour and I can assure you that I will not allow this to ever happen again.”

I’m immediately put on my guard by this response, even before she gives a knowing glance to the Head. I’m not in the least bit concerned about what happens in the future, not that I’d wish this experience on anyone else, but I want something done now about what’s happened to me and my team.

“I would like you to consider,” she continues, now looking at me again, “that Sir Toby has given very good service in the past and this does seem to be an aberration, as upsetting as I’m sure it has been for you. I’d like you to know that this Friday is his birthday and he will be 87 years old!” she tells me smiling and with the kind of jolly encouragement you’d expect from someone arranging a collection for a birthday gift. “This is, in fact, Sir Toby’s final Inspection and I’m sure you’d agree that it would be a terrible thing to blot his record with what I think is just some rather silly behaviour. After this he will no longer be involved directly in Inspections, apart from an advisory capacity, and I’m more than happy to make a report of your complaint to put on file for future reference.”

What amazes the most is that the Head readily endorses this whitewash. I suspect a part of this is his petty way of getting back at me for hurting his arm. I also sense that I have met a brick wall, as immovable as Mrs Morey and taller than I can climb alone, and very quickly give in to their conspiratorial urgings just to get away from the cynicism and increasing stink of the office.

Ironically, although by no means undeservedly, the department gets a glowing report from Sir Toby at the end of all of this nonsense. I do not learn anything I don’t already know and Sir Toby doesn’t criticise any of those areas that need improving. I still contemplate making an official complaint to someone outside of the school but the Head’s view is that I shouldn’t ‘rock the boat’ as we have all come through the process relatively well.

I have no idea what Sir Toby goes on to do after this unbelievable example of his work with us. I half expect him to become Education Secretary, and whilst he hasn’t yet achieved this, I would think that a man of his age and attributes still stands a very good chance.

SCREWS LOOSE IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT IN LOOSE SCREWS
LOOSE ENGLISH IN THE SCREWS DEPARTMENT
IN THE DEPARTMENT ENGLISH SCREWS LOOSE
DEPARTMENT LOOSE IN THE ENGLISH SCREWS
IN THE ENGLISH SCREWS LOOSE DEPARTMENT
LOOSE DEPARTMENT SCREWS IN THE ENGLISH
SCREWS ENGLISH IN THE LOOSE DEPARTMENT
THE IN DEPARTMENT SCREWS LOOSE ENGLISH
SCREWS IN THE LOOSE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
IN THE LOOSE ENGLISH SCREWS DEPARTMENT
THE DEPARTMENT SCREWS IN LOOSE ENGLISH
IN THE ENGLISH LOOSE SCREWS DEPARTMENT
ENGLISH IN THE DEPARTMENT SCREWS LOOSE
THE ENGLISH SCREWS IN LOOSE DEPARTMENT
IN THE LOOSE DEPARTMENT SCREWS ENGLISH
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT IN THE LOOSE SCREWS
LOOSE ENGLISH IN THE DEPARTMENT SCREWS
IN THE SCREWS LOOSE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
LOOSE DEPARTMENT IN THE ENGLISH SCREWS
THE LOOSE DEPARTMENT SCREWS IN ENGLISH
IN THE LOOSE DEPARTMENT ENGLISH SCREWS
LOOSE SCREWS IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

Lest anyone who reads this blog think the diatribes have no creative edge, I have recently published my novel Writing with Hammers as an ebook. Written in my latter years of teaching but also since leaving the job, this doesn’t just rail against the treatment of English and teachers by extraneous forces, it also attempts to capture the life of working in a school through the presentation of students and teaching colleagues: always real people, usually honestly presented, occasionally exaggerated, often satirised, but never named, and never criticised for who they are/were. Apart from one.

The novel has been previously blogged though is now removed from this access. It has since that blogging been heavily edited: chapters removed – especially any that were more of a blunt instrument than the metaphor of the title; new chapters added, and whilst some detail is dated it has been retained when it reflects importantly its time, or again if it doesn’t, has been edited out.

It should be evident that I have self-published this, but I mention anyway to be clear. I have had a very few agents and publishers interested when I tried for publishing in the early days of its initial completion, but never enough to be taken beyond that tentative liking.

Enough now. If you are interested, there are more details about the book itself, and also how to acquire by going here.