Well I was hoping that this was all a dream, or not so much a dream more of a nightmare, and that I would soon wake up. What am I doing here? What should I be doing here? Well something that’s for sure. Anything, would be preferable to just standing here.

I’m in a classroom, full of teenagers, who are now losing their patience with me and starting to stamp their feet under their desks. Now I know the modern theory is to ignore bad behaviour and not reward it with a reaction, but quite honestly, I don’t blame them. I’m just standing here, like a rabbit in headlights. I think I have stage fright. I don’t know what to do and so they don’t know what to do. I’m guessing that they’re not used this. My mind is racing. If they carry on like this, or it gets worse, will the floor give way? Will someone hear and come in and rescue me? Will I be sacked before I’ve even begun? Just when I think it’s time to panic and flee, the foot stamping subsides. What an initiation! No one prepared me for this. In fact, no one prepared me for very much at all. I am totally unprepared. I have had no introduction to the school. No explanations, no support, no lesson plans, no books, nothing. I must have looked confident walking in; they probably thought I was an experienced supply teacher and would know exactly how to go on. They certainly did not know that today is my first time in a middle school, my first day in any school as a teacher. I was shown to the classroom by a schoolchild and told to ask a kid to show me back to the staff room at break time. No one questioned who I was, my qualifications or my experience. So here I am, left high and dry, to my own devices but unfortunately I don’t have any.

It appears that they have done away with books in this modern “middle “school. Have they found a way to educate without them I wondered? Well it is 1980 so perhaps they’ve invented some that I don’t know about? I can’t find any alternatives. Searching madly around the room I just come up empty handed. At last a pile of worksheets. I’m saved! “We’ve already done those” they chorus. Okay so now it’s time to Panic. Quick. Think. For the last eleven years I have been doing the traditional mother role and staying home with my three daughters. Thoughts fly through my mind. Perhaps I could entertain them. I don’t think me performing “I’m a little teapot “would fit the bill, although it goes down well with under-fives and I guess “wheels on the bus “is also out?

“Miss, would you like me to go get the books from the store room?” The store room? They have a store room full of books!

“Yes please, that would be lovely “I say calmly, trying not to show my relief,” I’ll come with you and we can carry them together. “ Aladdin’s Cave, I’m in heaven. Everything I need and more. Such a simple solution. Who would have thought it? Well, not me, that’s for sure. I feel like I’ve jumped a massive hurdle. Well I did train as a PE teacher although I was meant to have studied art, neither of which will get me through this geography lesson, a subject I have never studied, not even for o level. But I have the books now so I can be a real teacher and stay one chapter, or at least one page, ahead of the pupils. I think I’m going to get through the day okay.

I wish I had taken my college life more seriously but it was twelve years ago, so I would have forgotten most of it anyway. I had been so disappointed that the art department, along with most of the college, had not been built when I arrived there, so instead of fulfilling my dream to study art, I had qualified to teach in middle school instead. My college had been very forward thinking. They knew that middle schools were being invented when no one else had heard of them. So although we trained in primary schools, which did actually exist, theoretically, we were training to teach in middle schools which didn’t. But now they do and here I am in one.

I’ve been thrown in the deep end. A friend in the babysitting circle, which I was a member of, told me they desperately needed a supply teacher in a middle school that she worked in, and would I be interested in stepping up? Well, “diving in “would be more like it. I should have been more wary when they said “desperate”. The school is not in the most salubrious part of the city, but, there again, I am not very familiar with the city. Always one to try and help out, and with money tight, I put a brave face on it and sailed into the unknown. Here I am facing teenagers instead of seven year olds, totally unprepared. That’s about right. That’s how I function. Jump in the deep end with both feet.