How did it start?

I have had a love affair with Pink Floyd since the glory days of early high school. I remember clearly being introduced to the music, I just cannot remember why at all.

I was fifteen. It was part of an English class. Our teacher started showing a few of us the movie of The Wall as a time filler at the end of class. I stayed back into lunch time to continue watching it. I was in. The animations, the music, the ideas – I was captivated. I had no idea of how it all fit together but it did not matter. It took me another year to get to watching the film stoned, and it was only then that it all clicked for me.

I think that we were shown this film in class primarily because it was music that this teacher loved as well – and it seems easier to justify showing a film to a class than to play a CD.

She was an awesome teacher. One of those teachers that you remember all your life. She took over from another teacher mid-term. Our claim as a class was that we were the ones that had pushed this last teacher out of the system. We were little shits and knew it, loved it. We took pride in our supposed reputation as teacher breakers. It’s funny to look at those days from the other side of the divide now, where there’s staff room bitching and general taking the piss out of the main perpetrators of classroom idiocy.

Anyway, this woman walks in aware that our class is a handful and she immediately earns my respect. Why? She didn’t pose. She didn’t walk in and put a wall of superiority between her and all of us. She didn’t let us know who was boss with force. She walked in, sat up on a desk with her feet on a chair, totally at home and relaxed. And then she told us about herself.

She introduced herself using her first name as well as her last. The school system required us to use the last name and the appropriate title for an adult, often without the knowledge of that person’s first name. Think about it – this person knows your full name, but you only get to know half of theirs? It effectively builds a wall between the student and teacher. This woman busted through and gave us the info. She told us where she’d worked before, that she’d been travelling and where. She gave us information that let us know she was real, not just this authorative figure who dictated how we should behave and what we should be doing with our spare time. Then she set our first homework. She said she wanted to get to know us as well, and gave us an own choice project. It still fit the curriculum, but we could pick anything we wanted to write about. Own choice? In the system we were in? This woman was gold.

I try to use elements of this in the way I teach. Especially at the boys boarding school. They get introduced to me first lesson as Miss B by the admin assistant – but as soon as the door shuts I tell them the deal.

“Righto. Call me Vic or VB. Unless you’re in front of the principal.” I get called VB by the other staff all the time, and for one I don’t think the students should know this and not be allowed to do it themselves. First name basis just works better for me in a one-on-one teaching situation. I think it allows a more relaxed and comfortable environment. Another reason? I hate, being called Miss. Always have. There’s one person that calls me Miss Vic, and that’s for a funny reason involving a lot of drinking, which I will write about another day. Miss, to me as a word implies a young girly gender identity that I just do not fit.

This works, mostly. I used to struggle with teaching a lot. I had a few kids who would just not do the work. I tried to power-dress. I was for mal about it. I had a pedestal. It just did not work. Interestingly, immediately that the monster relationship break-up occurred, I relaxed teaching and became more friendly. I’ve had some real successes since then.

On that note, I had a big night out last weekend and there was an ex-student out at the same venue. In a two traffic-light town that now sports a newsworthy FOUR ESCALATORS!! it is not unusual to come across a lot of people you know in a drinking session. But this student comes up to me and says thankyou.

”Thankyou so much for teaching me. I play all the time. I love it.”

Fourty plus students currently, and I’m approaching the typical end of term three burn-out that occurs. Just for a while though, the one statement has made it all easier.