Memoirs of a Happy Teacher

 Chapter One

Thomas

I had to help a child who had fallen over and grazed their knee, and found myself running a little late for my new class. I wondered, as I turned tears into a smile, how many other teachers always carry a few spare plasters with them. As I walked along the now empty corridor, and with no sound coming from beyond the closed door of each classroom I passed, it was almost as if the school was deserted. This, however, was an illusion shortly to be shattered.

I had turned the handle and barely opened the door to my classroom, when I was greeted with the sound of a girl’s scream. A boy ran in front of me chased by another, and I watched, mesmerized for a moment, as a paper airplane sailed through the air before hitting a light shade and then crash dive to the floor. Here we go again, I thought. 

The thing is, is that if you want to teach kids you have to stop being an adult - well, at least on the surface. So, while few had noticed I had entered the room, and instead of shouting to try to bring order, I became a pied piper to my little class.

Pretending I was playing a trumpet, I, at fifty years of age, began to dance merrily up the aisle between the desks, not taking notice of anyone, but aware of a boy who had quickly realized this could be a great game and had come behind me playing his invisible drum. This caught on like wild fire. Kids, who moments before were running, laughing, crying, shouting in an unimagin-able frenzy, were now following me in line around the desks, chairs, fields, meadows, streams, and hamlets of their minds. I had noticed from entering the room, one boy who was happily sitting under his desk.

As I brought ‘my troops’ back to their desks, I tried to encourage this child to come out from under his, but he only grinned back and remained firmly where he was. I knew not to try to ease him out. He would have resisted or only moved under another desk or shot back here the moment I released him. This was his game. He had resisted longer than others in his class the transition from free childhood to the civilized conformity that would be required of him by school. He was delighted when I let him stay where he was, while I addressed the rest of the class. He laughed out loud when I looked down at him, pretending that I had forgotten where he was. There is usually such a character in a class. The clown who plays to attention. But instead of shouting at him, I played along. I asked all the students to join me, as I crawled under a desk and sat near him. Now, I told them, let’s begin the lesson, and so this is how we started, all sitting under desks, all happy and none feeling restricted. As the time of the lesson moved, I started to show them how painful it was for my back to sit like this, so I moved to sit against the wall. The children joined and sat around me, except that is for my little friend. So, I played a game with him, until he eventually decided to crawl out from where he was and sit with the group. As I carried on with the lesson, I found that he had moved closer to me, and after sometime came to lay his head on my legs. This was just love, and what he needed. .....

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