Teachers: the Bad and the Good. Part 2

So what makes a good teacher? You’ve got to know your subject – that goes without saying – but you’ve also got to care about it, to the extent that you’re willing to go the extra mile to figure out the best ways to teach it. Quizzes, games, competitions, stories, role plays, pictures, props, acting – all these are great. Having good communication and people skills is invaluable too.

Mr B was the only science teacher at boarding school when I was aged 7-13, and he taught biology, chemistry and physics to around 200 of us. The entire science block, with its state-of-the-art facilities, was his domain, and I never saw another teacher set foot in it. There was no question of his expertise and ability to command attention. Not only was he a highly competent teacher, he was charismatic and hilarious. He played Widow Twankey in the masters’ school play once, complete with comedy balloon breasts, and had us in stitches. Sometimes, on the last day of term, he would read Winnie the Pooh aloud with different voices for all the characters. If you were good at his subject and he liked you, you had it made. 

But you didn’t want to get in his bad books.

I vaguely remember mentioning to my scandalised parents at around the age of 8 or 9 that, during one of our gym classes, Mr B had hoisted a small boy up in the air by his ears. I also vaguely recall that a small group of parents caught wind of this and complained. 

This may explain why, for the remainder of my time at that school, I enjoyed pride of place right at the top of Mr B’s personal sh*tlist.

Bear in mind that this was well before corporal punishment was banned in private schools, at a time when the cane and the slipper were the official recourse for major and minor misdemeanours respectively; for off-the-record instances requiring discretion, a swift slap across the face from Mr B was the order of the day.

One of Mr B’s more premeditated punishments was making us wake up an hour or two early to tidy the changing room, which by an odd coincidence always seemed to be in a worse state of disarray than ever. It was almost as if someone had paid a little visit the night before, taken handfuls of clothes from their hooks and strewn them liberally around. I was probably just being paranoid though.

Not being a natural at science, I found myself such low grades that I ended up on report card, a disciplinary measure that meant I had to report to the teacher at the end of every lesson for a week (starting on Saturday morning) to get performance and effort grades written on the card. Two low grades meant the report card continued another week, and the two E-5s (the worst grades possible) on my card for double science first thing one Saturday morning sealed my fate before the next week had even started. That day was one of my lowest ebbs.

Fortunately there were also glimmers of light and kindness that helped balance out the darkness, and for some of these I have Mr E to thank. Mr E was our Latin teacher: an avuncular type with a baritone voice and cauliflower ears. He emanated charisma and confidence without a shred of malice. It helped that I enjoyed his subject and the warm way that he taught it. Coincidentally I happened to have the same first name as him. Unlike all the other teachers with their red biros, he used a fountain pen with distinctive green ink to mark our work. Even when annoyed, you could tell that he wasn’t really angry. On one occasion I was brazenly reclining in my chair with my feet propped up one when he came in. He barked at me to sit straight and alerted me to the fact that I was in a classroom and not the local pub. He would often start lessons with a cheery “Good morning girls!” which invariably elicited an equally-cheery “Good morning Miss!” His end-of-term reports helped compensate for the inevitably disastrous science ones.

Immediately after my double science debacle, we had Latin. I was feeling dejected in the extreme. At the end of the lesson, I trudged over to the teacher’s desk and handed Mr E my report card. He took it from me, saw the two E-5s with Mr B’s initials, frowned and shook his head. Muttering something under his breath, he signed my card and gave it back to me. 

A+1. TJE.

Mr B and Mr E were both highly competent teachers: they were charismatic and knowledgeable about their very different subjects and how best to teach them – but otherwise they were diametrically different characters.

Who would you rather be taught by?