Ah school. The bain of my life. My school reports generally read something like this;
"Leigh needs to concentrate more in class. When she gets her head down she can produce some very good work, but unfortunately she is easily distracted by others and likes to chat during lessons."
Yes, that would be because you bore me. Now I've never taught a class of juveniles in my life so I've no right to dictate how a school teacher should teach it's class, however, there are certain methods I find a little strange. Take for example, my old history teacher in high school (who shall not be named. Mainly because I can't remember her name); she used to punish students for being disruptive by making them stand outside the classroom for 10 minutes. What a brilliant idea! Punish a student who hates their history class by making them stand outside so they don't have to learn anything! Fantastic! Obviously I cottoned on to this pretty early on. One time I got caught whispering to my mate and got kicked outside for the rest of the lesson, she'd obviously forgotten about me. No problem with me, I used the opportunity to gaze longingly into the next class where a teacher I fancied was right in my eye line. I can learn more history knowledge in 1 episode of Horrible Histories then I did in the whole 3 years she taught me.
Another teacher who I also won't name..oh ok...MR GEORGE....had it in for me from day one. About 4 or 5 other students in my class were a lot more disruptive than me. One lad used to shout and holler and purposely ask ridiculous questions just to get a laugh out of his numbskull mates. I won't mince my words; he was a cock. He also took great delight in ripping the shit out of me and various other vulnerable kids for no reason at all. I'm not sure why he chose me, I wasn't particularly ugly or fat, I had no disability or afflictions and we all wore uniforms so I had no "two stripe" trainers for him to take the piss out of (those of you who couldn't afford Adidas will know exactly what I'm talking about!). But anyway, one day in class he started shouted names at me and calling me big nose (I've got a major thing about my nose now but everybody else says there's nothing wrong with it. I guess we all have our hang ups). MR GEORGE did absolutely nothing. I looked at him in the hope he'd make it stop and, unbelievably, I caught him smirking. From that moment on I took no notice of his lessons and couldn't give a flying fuck about Geography (yep, that was his subject. When he asked if I knew what to do with a compass I thought to myself "yeah, I can think of a few ways....")
My favourite moment at school was when I got involved in a fisticuffs with the girl who'd bullied me on and off throughout my school years. I was intelligent enough to provoke her to throw the first punch (or slap, in her case) so nobody could say I started it. The conclusion was we were eventually broken up by the teacher and we casually went our separate ways. Job done. More about that in a future blog..!
The next day the Deputy Head or Form Head, whatever she was, called my Mum into the school. I'd already explained to my parents the previous day what had happened and they just told me not to worry, they'd sort everything out. After I explained to the teacher, in front of my Mum, the turn of events, the teacher looked at my Mum and smirked (yep, another smirker). "Well obviously we're going to suspend them both and I'm sure you understand that fighting cannot be tolerated". My Mum just gave her a steely stare and said "Well personally, my husband and I won't be punishing our daughter for sticking up for herself when teachers like you knew she was being bullied and did cock all about it." I knew she was going to say something like that, my parents had always encouraged me to fight my own battles and not put up with any shit. All the same, I nearly died when she said it out loud. The look on my teachers face was priceless. She thought I was going to get an epic bollocking. Ha!
So I didn't have great experiences at school. I felt I learnt pretty much zero. I'm sure many other people have the opposite experience, but that's just me. I got an F for Geography and then went on to get fantastic grades doing a travel course at college. I got an E for languages, now I'm more than competant at talking to my Spanish friends in their own tongue. I got a C and a D for English, now I'm writing children's stories to hopefully be published one day. But the best of all; an F for history, but now I'm shit hot at it and would love to be working at a history museum. What does that say for my high school teachers....? *smirks*
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