Ah, September.
There’s a crispness in the air again, it’s time to scrump the apples hanging over the fence from the neighbour’s tree, and, of course, the kids are going back to school.
These days, the primary impact on my life is crowded buses and more near-death experiences with SUVs on the school run. But it’s also an excellent moment to finally get stuck into a series of blog posts I’ve been thinking about for months.
One of my recent posts may have given some readers the impression that I’m not a fan of the teaching profession. But really, nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve benefited immensely from knowing some wonderful teachers, and I’ve seen first hand just how demanding the job really is.
So, without further ado, here’s the first of a series of posts celebrating my favourite teachers.
There’s no order like chronological order, so let’s start with my first teachers: Mum and Dad.
Every parent teaches their children, both deliberately and through example. My parents taught me a lot: everything from the importance of education and hard work, to good nutrition and the offside rule. My Dad is a particular inspiration, coming as he does from a mining village in Northumberland that had never sent a kid to university before. My Dad lost his coal miner father to laryngeal cancer when he was only 10, and was raised by my Nana, who cleaned pubs and hotel rooms while my Dad excelled at grammar school and then at Manchester and Oxford universities. My Nana had my Dad’s graduation photo in pride of place in her house, over the fire, and refused to take it down even when it took on a ghostly green pallor with age. “Proudest day of my life”, she’d say.
However, I was at a particular advantage in that both my parents are actual trained teachers. They understood the educational system, and helped my sister and me excel. They knew all our teachers (every teacher in York knows every other teacher), took a great interest in all our activities, and even helped us and all our friends prepare for our French exams.
But really, the most significant thing that my parents taught me was how to read.
My Mum took many years out of her career when she had kids; she started working part time in a clothes shop when I was about seven and my sister was five, and finally went back to teaching when I was eight. She admitted to me much later that she spent the last few years in a state of perpetual boredom. To alleviate the tedium, she started to teach me to read at a very young age. I started school at age four, reading books meant for six-year-olds. This set me up for many years of bullying academic success, and I truly believe that her efforts made more of an impact on my education and career than anything since…
…except maybe a memorable biology lesson when I was 14. But that’s a story for another post.
This post is dedicated to my cousin-once-removed, Dani, who continued a proud family tradition this week as she started teacher training, and to my good friend Dr Pants, who hopefully went back for her second day of teacher training today!
Last updated:
Tuesday, 08 Sep
2009 - 15:38 UTC
Wow. Your parents are both so tall and thin.
The picture is magic: the camera is in the picture! HOW DID YOU DO THAT?
Bob, my photos have been doing that recently – I’m sure MT4 will fix this (it looks OK in IE7, but not in Safari or Firefox).
Eva, I believe there are actually two cameras in that photo!
I wouldn’t want to give my own kids any less than my Mum gave my sister and me; but I’m just far too selfish to take that length of time out of my career
The wonderful thing about being a mom (I’m hoping anyway, because I’m not one yet!) is that there are a zillion different ways to be awesome at it :)
Cath – your homework for today: if you go to your flickr account, select the pic, click on the “all sizes” button, select the medium sized one (width = 500 pixels) and then cut and paste the link/javascript text underneath into your blogpost, you should recover the correct proportions.
Done – did that help? It looks the same in IE7, and I can’t use any other browser at work. I’ve been selecting the large size since I started blogging here, and it’s only in the last couple of weeks that it’s caused problems… I guess either Flickr or NN changed something!
Alyssa, I did say one of many reasons ;)
Your parents sound absolutely amazing – way to go where nobody had gone before in case of your dad!
Was the bullying in school really bad because you were so young? Just worrying because my son is the youngest in his class (kids start school so ridiculously much later here in Germany!!!).
Thanks Steffi! I think so ;)
The bullying had nothing to do with age – I was actually right in the middle of my class, age-wise (deliberate ploy by teacher parents). It had everything to do with standing out for doing well academically. I once deliberately got a bad grade in a German test by giving answers I knew were wrong – and was rewarded with days of jeers along the lines of “you’re not so f*%&ing clever now, are you?”. I quickly realised I was screwed either way, and never pulled that stunt again…
My sister got better grades than me, but was also really good at sport, and so escaped most of the bullying.
The photo looks better now (I’m using FF in Ubuntu).
Excellent work on the photo, Cath – 10/10!
NN has had a 500 pixel width limit for some time so I’m not sure why this problem has cropped up for you only recently…
Oh, was I supposed to show my work?
I’m not sure either – did Flickr change anything?
Please don’t scrump apples (I don’t what it means but it doesn’t sound good……). But the post is really sweet!
It’s OK, it just means steal.