One of the most dangerous things a schoolteacher can do is ask pupils to write what they think of their teacher.
”My teacher is fat and screams all day,” wrote one child.
“Miss Smith is nice but not very bright,” wrote another.
An insightful view came from Glen Shaw of Rosebank Primary when he was in Std 1. He produced a frank expose of a day in the life of a teacher:
“They get up and have a shower, get drest, have breakfast. Then they go to school, sine our work and have tea and go home. They watch TV and go to sleep.”
I would like to ask Glen Shaw and other fearless classroom critics what they think goes on in that secret room called the Staff Room.
Most people know, of course, that teachers go to the staff room to eat all the apples and sweets they have confiscated from pupils and then they eat cake and fortify themselves with generous glasses of sherry. And there they plot ways to get their own back on the parents of precocious kids.
Picture the scene: three teachers in the Staff Room put their heads together and, cackling and rubbing their hands, they dream up HOMEWORK PROJECTS.
They chant the first verse of the Teachers’ Anthem:
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Ms Hecate: Cackle, cackle. I have given my little monsters Ancient Egypt as a project. Do you know how difficult it is finding pictures of Ancient Egypt?
Last year it gave Felicity Worthington’s mother a nervous breakdown – she thought she was a labrador and began chasing cars up and down the road. Jenny Mclean’s mother was caught stealing pictures from a public library book!
Ms Graymalkin screams with laughter. Prancing forward she tells the others how she gave her class a project on soil conservation because it is so difficult finding good information.
She says she had just heard that little Johnny Stewart’s father, who runs a big computer business, is helping Johnny by enlisting the aid of one of the secretaries as well as an assistant manager with a BSc in agriculture – and they have so far worked 22 hours on the project. Her red eyes narrow as her thin, purple lips mouth the words:
“Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid…
She adds with a shriek: “And when Little Johnny hands in his project I shall give him… and his father… a D minus!”
Shrieks of hideous laughter fill the air as the three prance around a table containing a pile of unmarked geography books and sandwiches containing eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog.
Mrs Paddock, burying her long pointed teeth into a big red, confiscated apple, shrieks: “I have given mine a project on a shopping mall. Do you know what that means?
“It means their parents will have to take their kids to the mall here and some will feel obliged to invite their little classmates and they’ll all want sweets and icecream and hamburgers and some will stray and get lost.
“Last year Mrs Swinton took eight children to the square and roped them together so they wouldn’t get lost. Ha! Then she put them in a lift but only half fitted in… Haaaar haaar haaar!”
Ms Garmalkin leaps forward, her twiggy hands clawing the air in ecstasy:
“When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning or in rain?”
Mrs Paddock cries: “When the hurly-burly’s done.
When all projects have been done!”
A flash of lightning, the bell goes, all three, smoothing down their skirts, walk briskly back to their classrooms.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: education humour, teachers
