Now I am no longer in a classroom I hope that does not mean I have lost my ‘class’ as the old joke goes. These are to be a reflection on my years in a lab and a classroom ; in a school hall an office or a canteen. I am hoping its good humoured But with the lessons I learned. I will try be discrete about the children and young people too, maybe less so my staff colleagues but they will for the most have changed names.

I taught in 3 comprehensive schools from 1981 to 2017 – 36 years, before being interim Education Director at Nottingham City. I enjoyed every day of work (save about 3) and with rose coloured specs I pretty much enjoyed a majority of my 26,000 lessons. Some of which were good, some were really quite amazing and some were really dire.

1 You are a b***dy teacher a first scary encounter at a faculty meeting has a profound consequence.

2 Blowing your cover No one tells you how to handle cover lessons and absolutely no one taught me how to handle this one.

3 Convincing the learner they can learn. An older and much wiser teachers showed me how to transform my difficult Y9 class. She proved to them they could learn English and they not only loved and adored her, they … learnt English.

4 An explosion helps. An accidental almost freak incident reveals just who has the real power in a chemistry teachers lab…. or maybe?

5 Duties. I’m not sure any of like those school duty rotas’: bus, playground, dinner, detention etc Despite one big mistake I grew to benefit from them as well as doing my bit

6 Confessing. Teachers flush out incidents and poor behaviour – how is tricky, is it the look, the face, the eye, the style, the relationship …. this post will make you smile

7 Planning and Preparing as a joy. Back in the 80’s and 90’s until we all got onto the internet we had to search for nuggets of gold to bring our subject to life. Did that make us better teachers?