Took my Russian degree, teacher-trained in English but got awards for teaching Music

So, teacher-training only in your specialism! Here's my educational story which proves, I like to think, that a teacher can teach just about anything:

I was 5 when I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I was in my second primary school. After a few months in a Luton primary school, where I was made to stand in the bin for taking a marble from off the draining board, we were now in Frampton-on-Seven. The teacher asked us to draw what we wanted to be. I drew a nurse because all my friends did. Then we moved villages and I went to Whitminster School for a few months. The headteacher offered to “tan my hide” for going into his office to retrieve my satchel.




Now I am 7 at Silver Street Silver Primary School in Wythall near Birmingham- my fourth school. I stayed over two years in this one, and was given the Observer’s Book of Pond Life for coming top of the class.  I asked for piano lessons aged 8, and got them. Rather than the expected joy of music, they sucked the life out of me for the next eight years until I begged to be released. 

I was planning on being a female Cliff Richard, but Mrs Kidger at Silver Street told me I was too tuneless to sing in the school concert, and I certainly not being given the expected starring role, so my mother asked if I could mime. And mime I did, in concerts, assemblies, at weddings and folk clubs until I was 28 when I did in fact start writing songs and even singing them (and that was a journey no one should be asked to take). But Mr Parker thought I might be the next George Elliot [whoever "he" was], and I took heart from his approval.

I was 9 when we packed up the book of Pond Life and moved to Leeds, and after that we didn't change town again. After life in the country, Harehills Primary was a shock. I went on to Leeds Girls High. And then, oh no another change, to Allerton Grange Comprehensive. Terrified, I truanted every other day.

Cathy, Charlotte, Sarah , Kaye, Romaine. Stevie, Richenda, x? at LGHS

Still I was good at English and turned my thoughts to being the next George Elliot. A school swot initially, I was expected to grace the cloisters at Oxbridge, but being led astray by a family "friend", and my parents' protracted divorcing turned all my grades upside town, and I ended up, not taking English, but Russian at Liverpool University. I had already  Russian O and A level and there were only a handful of students in any one year.

I never ever got over the shame and disappointment of my underachievement at school. However, I loved, adored Russian literature, so put up with Russian history, politics, and language [and even Old Church Slavonic!] and got a good degree in the end.

me and Romaine being childish at LGHS

When I came, nearly a decade and two children later to teacher-train, I naturally took English as my main subject, and was happy as happy can be. But the English department at Foxwood School was stuffed full of talent, which is why I ended up moving into PSE, and then to Music via the Section 11 Steel Pans. (Music, in which I had once probably reached piano Grade 6 equivalent)

Foxwood at Meanwood Community centre late 80s

I went on to enter more candidates than any other school in Leeds at GCSE; when the school closed I became a steel pan specialist for Leeds Music Service, and also a Special Needs Music specialist. Co-author Diane Paterson and I wrote a book on including children with SEN and were short listed for TES/NASEN award. In steel pans I was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts for devising the Foxwood Songsheets, a system of notation for steel pans and tuned percussion, and  in 2009 I took my city-wide steelband to the Albert Hall as a M4Y award-winner. 

Foxwood  Band in Foxwood School Hall late 80s

At Foxwood, in the early nineties, Peter Brown once asked me, if I had read up on cadences the night before. I told him he should be grateful that I had.

Foxwood on the docks, Leeds centre 1990s

So no, I can't imagine why anyone should have to stick to their degree subject for teacher-training. Of course I could go back in time, ask my parents not to divorce in my teenage years, and to keep an eye on my choice of friends. I could have asked that my dad would stopped changing jobs. But actually it’s a life experience that made me what I am, and I think I became a better teacher for that, and a more understanding music teacher for the steps it took me to get here..

Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows walking on stage at the RAH

People versus PFI. Why We Should All Care.

People formally joining campaigns usually do so because they feel so strongly about the issue that not to join the campaign would leave them feeling wanting. Thus, for me with Anti-Academies Alliance, and thus now with People versus PFI. 

As a travelling teacher and trainer of some years now, I have worked in many different school and college buildings. Before this I worked in one place, and only visited other buildings as a parent, an exam moderator, or as a school governor, not really in any of these cases experiencing the daily delights of staff room four storeys up from Reception, signing in with a hideous mugshot, holding my breath through the post-PE experience with a low ceiling, and the like.

steelband in the enclosed green space

At Foxwood School, Leeds, I taught English, PSE and Music, and when returning from maternity leave anything! This building was situated in the middle of a council estate, then an area of extreme poverty and deprivation. It was one of the first purpose-built comprehensives in the UK, four stories, plate glass everywhere, very light, could be very cold. The Music Room was the size and shape of a small social club, low stage with four practice rooms, large storage cupboards and office, all leading off central room, away from the rest of the school in between dining halls, so several beginners could attack drum-kits at any time of day without Maths going mental!

Deprived children often exhibited challenging behaviour and also got poor exam results, as the rest of city never failed to remind. And league tables closed it. Ofsted passed us at our first inspection but the council didn't expect that, and wrote "in view of failed inspection " blah blah blah in their "consultation" paper. 

Denis Healey visits Foxwood as Lower Building  becomes ELCTB

We were all successfully redeployed as we all had both our qualifications and our behaviour management experience, and I became a peripatetic teacher, at which point I became a connoisseur of good cupboards, well-placed staffrooms, good loading access for music departments, dining halls to accommodate all, and no-nonsense entrances (largely a thing of the past!)

musicians in hall

Of course, my points this: if you only teach in one well-designed and built building, you don't know what the rest of the world is like, you have only the hype to go on. Building New Schools for the future? Building New Slums, more like!

However, any criticism of a school building offends the managers, and affects their and the school's reputation, so campaigning as an active teacher is fraught with difficulties, Damaging a school's reputation damages the working lives of the universally wonderful, but already beleaguered UK teaching staff, I know we have to tread carefully across this minefield, but cross it we must, in order to save our children, both now and in the future from having their lives blighted by working in sub-standard premises.

random nice picture of Foxwood Steel Band celebrating arrival of  a famous sailing ship in Leeds

A few things you didn't know about school governors.

They lie in wait for you, you know - headteachers, and school secretaries; they've got wind that you work in education; and they think they can reel you in. Which they did.

After 4 years or however long the term of office was, I tried to escape. But guilt: there's no-one else; how did I feel where the chair tried to step down again? I stayed for another term; and another . .

I was a governor at Royal Park School from the early nineties till it closed in 2006; till it was hounded to death by a stupid,  uncaring and unimaginative CEO from a private education company - just thought I'd get that in. Our governors' meetings lasted two hours, starting at 7pm, so, if I was planning any lessons for the following day, that didn't happen.

Early on in my career as a serial school governor, I went to a massive school governors' meeting at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and listened, amongst other things, to Joan Sallis talk. Joan was a pioneer parent-governor in the UK, and she talked about the philosophy of governance and the role of governor, as that of a "critical friend".  I bought into this; I recognised that we would not have decision-making powers, and didn't really have any responsibilities but we would listen as the headteacher thought aloud about her day to day decisions.

Rita the Head did allow us to challenge her; on one occasion we came to a 7:8 vote about not publishing our SATS results. But she was the supremo; it was her school and we were her critical friends. We listened; we discussed and then she decided.

So, when a head tells a member of staff that the governors are worried about x, or y or z.  .. what's that about ? That's the head or the Finance Officer shifting the blame in order to get the result.

Then, as Foxwood School was being closed I became a school governor there. A few years with Royal Park had taught me to believe in myself; an immense injustice for a member of Foxwood staff on top of the injustice of closing Foxwood itself made me give up more 7 till 9pms on a week night, and this time in Seacroft, not down the road Hyde Park.

I didn't volunteer any more of the 7 till 9s until I found them laying in wait for me at reception at City of Leeds School.  And actually achieved very little, even as a "critical friend" until I was able to join with the various campaigns to save the school, mostly, it would seem, from becoming nice near town centre premises for Education Leeds. And, I'm glad to say that that particular company doesn't need premises anywhere anymore. Shame.

And also, you're generally safe from being kidnapped into a governing body once your youngest child is past school age. It's parent-governors in the inner-city that are in short supply.