WORLD TEACHERS DAY

From the UNESCO website:

"On World Teachers Day, and on any other day for that matter, the basic message that a teacher needs to receive is quite simple. "We appreciate you." That message cannot be repeated often enough, by those of us in the United Nations family and by those who interact with you every day."

It was WTD yesterday - 5 October and the UNESCO message above says it all really. Remember that T.V campaign from a few years ago that said "you always remember a good teacher," - well it's true isn't it, although I'm sure you can remember the bad ones as well.

I was thinking about teachers last night by coincidence whilst waiting for Nathalie and one of her friends to finish theskiinging lessons at the local ski centre. The school trip next February to Italy has beprecededded by three two hour lessons fthosehos pupils who don't have any skiing experience and it stuck me how much patience you have to have to be a teacher. Okay being a parent can be pretty daunting but you get time with your child everyday, at school the teacher has a forty-five minute lesson with thirty children, some of whom will be more demanding than others.

I left school nearly thirty years ago but I can still remember those teachers who praised and those who damned me.

At the Middle School (aged 10-12) there were two male teachers, Mr Joyce (English) and Mr Smith (Maths) who would stay behind a couple of nights a week and listen to records with us - I had to bring in a Beatles album each week for post-education listening - can't see that happening these days, can you? Mr Joyce was a really cool person, he drove a sports car, had a David Bedford moustache (this was the 70's so it was fashionable not ironic) and also took games. When my Mum and Dad went to the dreaded parents evening he ticked their names of against the list, said "Paul's English is great, but how can we get him to play for the school Rugby team?" - that was it, my annual report!

In the Upper School (13-17) my economics teacher was Mick Taylor, a Brummie who looked like Bill Oddie and had the sense of humour to go with it, when it came to lessons of fiscal policy he produced ten pound notes with his face on them, which had Bank of Oddie instead of Bank Of England - that took some effort back in the seventies, before copiers and digital cameras, perhaps he had a counterfeit printing press somewhere.

The only teacher we gave a hard time to was Mrs Bell our Geography teacher, we were her first placement after qualifying and she was scared of her own shadow. We went on a field trip to Wareham and managed to convince her that one of my mates had died and four of us carried the 'body' on our shoulders through the quiet town's High Street back to the school coach. She went off us after that.

The only teacher I really didn't like shall remain nameless. I wanted to be a journalist when I was at school (having failed by footie trials and turned down pro football in Belgium!) but he said my English wasn't good enough and really gave me a hard time. I went on to get A grade O Level and I've done pretty good from writing over the years, writing plays, had articles published and doing the TVS television review I mentioned on Sarnia's blog.

I admire teachers because I think they do a difficult and thankless task, political parties come and go (although not recently obviously) but they must teach our children regardless and they deserve all our support, all of the time.