The teacher’s dilemma

It’s a sobering thought, not to say a frightening one, that the senior pupils I taught when I started my teaching career are now 52 years old.

I thought of that a couple of weeks ago, when I found myself within a stone’s throw of the school in which those lessons took place. Needing some shopping, I decided to visit the supermarket just up the road from there. That’s when it struck me that I might bump into some of my ex-pupils.

It’s interesting, I think, to chart the progress of my thoughts and feelings.

The very first feeling was one of dread, and this for two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t much fancy being called ‘Sir’ by a grown-up: for some reason, all ex-pupils address their ex-teachers as ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’’, even when the age-gap is minimal and the pupil concerned is a great-grandparent.

Secondly, I had this horrible premonition of some social misfit recognising me and blaming his lifelong failure to my ineptitude as a teacher.

And then two thoughts struck me. The first was the realisation that any ex-pupils would have families of their own by now: I would be just as likely to ‘bump into’ their children or even their grandchildren as meet them.

Secondly, why should I be so worried anyway? I always tried to do the best by my pupils, and most of them went on to university or a decent job. As far as I have been able to determine from trawling Friends Reunited, all of them have made good.

But I think the dilemma of any committed teacher is that they are always doomed to failure, at least in their own eyes. I can’t think of a single worksheet I used twice, or in the same way two lessons in a row. I can’t think of a single textbook or other resource that I used ‘off the shelf’: there was always something to be done to make it better somehow.

I claim no uniqueness in these respects: most of the teachers I know or have known are exactly the same. I think this is why any attempt to give teachers a painting-by-numbers type of lesson script is usually bound to fail. It’s probably also one of the reasons that teaching is still one of the most stressful professions.

However, teaching can be a highly rewarding profession. Being in a situation where the successes of your charges serve to drive you on to work even harder, and to never be quite satisfied with your own efforts, is constantly challenging, and therefore constantly potentially improving.

Fear of failure and awareness of perceived failure constitute a dilemma for teachers. Yet, in a funny kind of way, it’s a good dilemma.