Between the cane decades
And the digital interactive days
There were some school years
Free of fear and free of value added
Predicted grades.
There were years without chalk dust,
Or computers on desks.
It was in those free years
With shoulders back
Drawers full of chocolate,
And stickers and badges
And quirky seating plans
I set to revolutionise it all.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Warned They who’d done it all before
There’s nothing new in teaching.
But there was.
Every September
Behind the unused pens and books and pencil cases
There was much new in teaching.
They were also the years
You could, on seeing a stack
Of books in the store cupboard,
Read them.
With a class.
For the sheer joy of reading it.
No tests, no schemes of work.
And that was when I found ‘The Pearl’.
Yet some things do not change in teaching.
The brown, hardback book tattered
Long languished on a shelf.
I knew I wouldn’t win
Their co-operation here
They absolutely would judge
this book by this cover.
Armed with a chaos of colour
Paper and felts and glue
“What the hell, Miss?”
They rolled their eyes.
Make the cover of a book
you’d want to read.
Easy. Do what you want to do.
Anything?
Anything.
And so for an hour they drew and wrote
and stuck their covers of the book
they wanted to read
on the story
she wanted them to hear.
30 different covers.
And as one together we read.
About the scorpion and Kyto and the pearl.
Just for the joy of reading.
Right to the end.
It was alright that, Miss.
Yes, it was absolutely all right.