The Best Things in Life are Nearest - Robert Louis Stevenson

When I began teaching, we wrote with chalk, on a blackboard (which we were allowed to call a blackboard). There was a Banda machine in a cupboard which hand-cranked out copies. If you had the patience with the skins, you could produce multi-coloured resources - one copy per turn of the handle. It was exciting and intoxicating, the latter largely due to the magical properties of the Banda fluid with which the machine had to be regularly fed. When I began teaching, there were large book stocks. Novels, plays, anthologies, textbooks, all stacked and orderly, titles facing out, reading left to right or top to bottom depending on size and how they fitted into the jigsaw on the shelves.  A visit to the stockroom was like visiting a venerable library, hushed and sacred, the air full of the scent of vanillin- like an apothecary- the smell coming from the breakdown of compounds used in the book making process.  I suppose this is where I admit that I’m a book sniffer. Judge away. I have no problem with not buying a book book that smells wrong.  The stock cupboard of my memory was filled with “good” books. I now teach in a new build. There are many advantages. Windows that don’t leak. Being able to leave things on windowsills and knowing they will not be a sodden mess tomorrow is a good thing. Doors that fit properly. A smart TV linked to the desktop computer for (mostly) seamless transmission of PowerPoint, Prezi, SmartBoard write-on and save for later - that’s a good thing too. Knowing that Aldi baby wipes keep the learning wall writing surface pristine, having a secret stash of wedge-tipped markers that you have marked with an X on the treasure map so that two trusted colleagues can use them if they desire, being able to display sections of text on the big screen so you can save on the photocopier budget; these are all positives. One tiny advantage of our new (much smaller) stock cupboards is that you can shut yourself inside (light on or off depending on preference) and no one can find you. I like the dark. Having a fob to unlock doors - at least the ones I’m allowed access through - saves carrying a bunch of keys. (There was an offer of a wristband but that’s not me: wristbands should be kept for festivals and all-inclusive bars, not schools. )  However, due to COVID measures, the only frequently used door not propped open and requiring swiped is the main entrance. Despite this, when I left home last week without it, I felt naked and uncomfortable all day. Doing online learning during lockdown last term would simply have been impossible - not even imaginable - when I began teaching. None of the frustrations or cursings or mind-numbing Zoom meetings (other platforms are available) would have existed either. Learners (and staff) might have occasionally been anxious back then but it was not a condition registered on a Learning Profile. I genuinely wonder how we can teach Resilience. Resilience is keeping going even when it is tough; it is finding a way past or round; it is having another go when something doesn’t work first time. Too many youngsters don’t seem to want to even try. “I can’t,” translates as “I don’t want to”, as “it is difficult”, as - most tragically - “if I don’t try it I cannot get it wrong so it won’t be a failure.” Failure is valuable because we learn from it what doesn’t work. Back then, before Standard Grade, before Higher Still (versions 1, 2, & 3), before ScotVec, before Portfolio, what mattered most was the relationship you built up with your pupils. Seeing the value in what the lessons taught - that “practising” was a thing, that “I can’t do it - yet” was a valid place to be; surely they are still fundamental. Mazlo before Bloom, I say. When I started in the profession, you had to make sure your name didn’t get in the papers. We didn’t have a protocol for Social Media. If I wanted to wear a low cut top and drink martinis from a goldfish bowl, I could.  I suppose newer teachers can still do that if it floats a particular boat; however, sharing the experience on Social Media is not advised. One school I worked in had a Friday Night Club. We, happy band that we were, would descend on a local hostelry on the ascribed evening. More often than not it would be a quick drink and a moan about the week and then home to our weekend. Occasionally (payday related), we would have something to eat as well. Rarely, (often coinciding with the end of term) we would stay out later. There is no photographic evidence of the night involving a couple of professional rugby players, some breast-reduction scars, a limbo and splits competition, and finding one of our party in a nightclub along the road wearing someone else’s clothing. (Happy memories) There were no departmental spreadsheets. My PT had beautiful, neat, cursive writing and she kept it small for exam score cut-offs. Descending numbers in the margin and names matched against scores. We’d discuss whether or not the norm referenced curve represented our cohort. We debated where the lines should be and, if James Southwell was the wrong side of the line in our opinion, we had better have a very strong argument to support our case. Moving the line down to 49% for a C did not mean that the A and B lines should move too. What is the educational justification for such a move? Would the decision stand up to scrutiny? How would our decision impact on later appeals to SQA? What would James’s parents say? Actually, there was less parental pressure then. It was still there but fewer contacts, and I can’t help but think, about less trivial matters. Before the advent of mobile telephones, contacting the school was a bigger deal. And, while there are many, many benefits to the technology, I often long for the unplugged peace. I freely acknowledge that my rose-tinted bifocals are on but I miss the no-tech days sometimes. Just this week, one of my S2s sent me their homework while in class working on the laptop. My flaming watch buzzed too. Because of COVID-19, I had to set my work emails to come to my phone (downloading several apps to allow it to happen). Although lockdown has eased, I haven’t felt brave enough to disconnect - does that say something about my fears for the near future? Maybe it does. The fundamentals of teaching have not changed. The skills I am teaching have not changed. I accept that I am preparing learners for jobs that don’t exist yet; however, to do those jobs they will need to be able to read and write and - most importantly - assess what they read with a critical eye and mind. Is it credible? Is it authentic? Is it reliable? How far should I trust the source?  Although when I began my career, there was no such thing as click bait, it is everywhere we can click. Even to read an article from a respected (in ironic inverted commas) newspaper online, I must endure an onslaught of offers for home insurance, car finance and - increasingly - the best hearing aids on the market. (Sighs disconsolately for the days of dial-up, that ear-harming ‘chchchchxhxhchk’ sounds like Flipper on acid. Sighs more sadly for the time before then when the internet was science fiction.  Star Trek had pocket communicators. Part of me wishes they had stayed boldly going where no politically correct ‘person’ had gone before.) Nevertheless, this is typed first into my smartphone in a notes app. (Yes, I could have used the dictate function but I think more slowly than that.) Technology is not a bad thing: it is simply ubiquitous. (Side thought, “is it broaching the realms of tautology to think of it being ‘too ubiquitous’ ?” So, as I stand in a field pretty much in the middle of nowhere waiting on the horse trough filling, I notice the sounds around me. Very faint traffic noises, the wind in the trees, the twitterings of various species descended from dinosaurs, the craic of pheasants blissfully unaware of impending shoots, (don’t go into the Rule of Six not applying to shooting parties), the soft crunch of grass being cropped by Jock and his friends, the whirring of a combine in the distance over the hill: I have a good life. I really have no right to complain that, thanks to COVID, when I have non-contact preparation and marking time I can’t go to the staff workbase because there are already five people there and capacity reached. I should be grateful I have access to a laptop and can work in a break-out flexible working space. But, I am a teacher and - I learned from Tom Russell in the staffroom of Crieff High thirty years ago - teachers grumble. We just do it online now!