After graduating from Edinburgh, my life’s journey takes me to Leeds for teacher training, and then onto London to study astrophysics. I love being a student too much to give it up just yet. But after finishing my year at Kings College, London, I have to find a ‘proper job’, and eventually end up teaching mathematics in a North London Comprehensive.
Teaching for me is both heaven and hell. Heaven being the sixth form, who have chosen to study maths (because they actually like it!), and also the top-steam second year class who adore tests (a punishment for them is to cancel one). Several of the second years also regularly ask for extra homework. Yes, extra homework.
Hell is all the other classes - in particular my bottom second year class, the antithesis of my top stream. They explode into my classroom with unrestrained energy and emotion. I can hardly stand it - I want to run away - but there’s nowhere to run. I put them in detention - then realise that this only means I have to spend another forty minutes with them after school. There’s something wrong here.
Despite the nice parts of teaching, I come home from school mentally and physically exhausted and turn on the television to watch ‘Grange Hill’. It’s cheaper than drink, doesn’t cause a hangover, and provides sympathetic therapy. To see other teachers suffering makes my job just about tolerable - that and the long vacations.
I spend mine in the town of Corwen, North Wales, helping to renovate an old Victorian workhouse for a newly formed educational Trust. The building is to be a College, teaching a new way of life and a natural means of health - based on Inspiration and Common Sense. The Trust is non-religious, non-political and non-medical - and its aims appeal to me very much. So much so, that after handing in my notice at school, I join the Trust and move to Wales.
The renovation work involves the usual things you have to do when faced with a building that has hardly changed in a hundred and fifty years. With only limited resources, we patch up holes in the roof, de-nail and sand down old timber (rescued from an old Victorian hospital in Liverpool before demolition), and generally turn ugly into beautiful. The workhouse has been virtually a prison, and now, from our new headquarters, we intend to do our part to set people free. Free from disease, free from indoctrination, and free from old ways of thought.
The building is also going to be a Crafts Centre, providing much-needed funds for the Trust. Candle-making, rug-making, spinning and weaving, jewellery-making, corn-dolly work and flower-craft will all take place under one roof, seven days a week.
In the evenings, when we’re not working on the building, those of us with an aptitude for music get together to write and record our own songs - encouraged by Dorothy Fosbrooke, a founder of the Trust and the original source of all our writings. Another founder, Bill Dawson, has a daughter called Debbie who suffered with cancer of the kidneys at the age of eight - but is now totally cured, thanks to a change to an animal-free diet.
Debbie has a lovely voice and bubbly personality and becomes our lead singer. Our makeshift band performs our songs to any visitors unfortunate enough to stay overnight. Standing up and playing in front of an audience is a totally new experience for me. And though at first I find it daunting, I get so used to it that a hook on a long pole is required to take me off.
Teaching for me is both heaven and hell. Heaven being the sixth form, who have chosen to study maths (because they actually like it!), and also the top-steam second year class who adore tests (a punishment for them is to cancel one). Several of the second years also regularly ask for extra homework. Yes, extra homework.
Hell is all the other classes - in particular my bottom second year class, the antithesis of my top stream. They explode into my classroom with unrestrained energy and emotion. I can hardly stand it - I want to run away - but there’s nowhere to run. I put them in detention - then realise that this only means I have to spend another forty minutes with them after school. There’s something wrong here.
Despite the nice parts of teaching, I come home from school mentally and physically exhausted and turn on the television to watch ‘Grange Hill’. It’s cheaper than drink, doesn’t cause a hangover, and provides sympathetic therapy. To see other teachers suffering makes my job just about tolerable - that and the long vacations.
I spend mine in the town of Corwen, North Wales, helping to renovate an old Victorian workhouse for a newly formed educational Trust. The building is to be a College, teaching a new way of life and a natural means of health - based on Inspiration and Common Sense. The Trust is non-religious, non-political and non-medical - and its aims appeal to me very much. So much so, that after handing in my notice at school, I join the Trust and move to Wales.
The renovation work involves the usual things you have to do when faced with a building that has hardly changed in a hundred and fifty years. With only limited resources, we patch up holes in the roof, de-nail and sand down old timber (rescued from an old Victorian hospital in Liverpool before demolition), and generally turn ugly into beautiful. The workhouse has been virtually a prison, and now, from our new headquarters, we intend to do our part to set people free. Free from disease, free from indoctrination, and free from old ways of thought.
The building is also going to be a Crafts Centre, providing much-needed funds for the Trust. Candle-making, rug-making, spinning and weaving, jewellery-making, corn-dolly work and flower-craft will all take place under one roof, seven days a week.
In the evenings, when we’re not working on the building, those of us with an aptitude for music get together to write and record our own songs - encouraged by Dorothy Fosbrooke, a founder of the Trust and the original source of all our writings. Another founder, Bill Dawson, has a daughter called Debbie who suffered with cancer of the kidneys at the age of eight - but is now totally cured, thanks to a change to an animal-free diet.
Debbie has a lovely voice and bubbly personality and becomes our lead singer. Our makeshift band performs our songs to any visitors unfortunate enough to stay overnight. Standing up and playing in front of an audience is a totally new experience for me. And though at first I find it daunting, I get so used to it that a hook on a long pole is required to take me off.
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