Being a teacher is a strange job at times. The number of pupils often mean that we are exposed to the side of life we’d rather not be. When you look out at your class you are looking at victims of domestic abuse, young carers, people who live with addicts, dealing with bereavement or long term illness and sometimes you will know. That’s the key point…you will only ever know a fraction of their lives.
This week I decided to teach poetry. The blog idea came during the planning process as I feel I’m rubbish at teaching poetry so thought using the lyrics of songs would be ideal. The witty self-deprecating blog didn’t manifest it’s self due to a single line.
Paramore was one of the bands I went with and the lyrics for the opening verses are below:
As I went through the process I thought of ways to break-up the poem to develop a better understanding with a class. I looked at how each verse had a focus: first the father and second the mother. Then we looked at a word to encapsulate each line. For example the last line on the first verse the word was ‘fix’. When planning it I thought the line ‘He broke his own heart’ would be interesting and thought the discussion on ‘cheating’ to be quite challenging. If only it was that simple.
Yes, predicting where the learning would go is a vital skill for a teacher so it was no little surprise that ‘cheating’ was mention. It was the 3rd and 4th points that I wasn’t quite ready for, or more the classes reaction to it. One child mentioned alcohol abuse as the reason he broke his own heart, which led us to the path of substance abuse. Another child said he might have gave the mother a ‘good slap’. At this point giggles emitted from a number of children. This is an area of life that is hard to understand – Why someone would hurt who they ‘love’? I have no doubt at all among those giggling would have been a poor soul who lives with this. At this point, and I’m so thankful she did, my TA asked a simple question – What do you mean by a ‘good’ slap? Can a slap be good? This use of language and reaction almost highlights how the issue should be dealt with more in schools. I took the black and white approach as discussions often mix the messages – It is never OK to hurt a person, let alone someone you ‘love’.
Bog Standard Teacher 