High School

 

High School.

Those words bring back so many different memories for different people. I’d even venture to say that for everyone they aren’t good memories.

Sometimes I’m not sure if my high school memories are good ones, or just interesting ones. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I was a geek (I was never quite clever enough) but I was swimming somewhere around the geeky clique. In high school I helped organised the Careers section of the Library, I was a prefect, I was even deputy head girl and have the badge to prove it – I know it sounds like Hogwarts, but I liked those sides of our school. I like my prefect tie (it was purple). I like our blazers, they had big deep pockets for hiding sweets. I liked my array of badges, some of which I ‘borrowed’ from the desk of our head of year as a jokeI have to say I didn’t like the blue tartan skirts they tried to get the year 11′s to wear = fail.

It took me a pretty long time to settle in at school, I was the only one from my junior school to go, so I was a bit of a loner. But eventually I made a really good group of friends and by about year 9, I’d say I’d found my feet and I started sticking my head above the parapet once in a while. I liked to think I was cheeky, but only when noone was watching. Although I did get sent out of the classroom twice for pushing the boundaries. One time I got sent out in Maths to sit on the ‘naughty desk’ in the corridor and whose name did I see scraped in the wood… Mick’s! Family follow family I guess?
Maths, urgh, I did hate Maths. After training as a teacher myself, I look back and think I can openly say my teacher was rubbish. Every week he made us do a test, it was a HARD test. Then on Monday morning he’d make everyone stand at the back of the room and he’d read out in order from top to bottom the names of the pupils who did the best. If you did great, you got to sit at the front of the room, and it snaked back all the way to the dunces table – my table. For some reason I was always at the bottom. I was gutted, I tried so hard, but no luck. Which idiot decided that the kids who struggled should go at the back, where you can’t hear, and can’t see and get ignored?! And which idiot decided that they’d ruin your self confidence by sitting you in order? I think I’m now qualified to say that was bad teaching. Although I would just like to point out here that I was bottom of the top set – I can do my two times table. I got lazy and found that all the answers were in the back of the text books. It was the most boring hour of the day.

I did have a good balance however, I wasn’t lazy with everything. I was pretty good at History, and English – I had good teachers you see. I think it changes everything. Sometimes I’d like to go back to school and tell them they were wonderful. That I appreciate the effort they put in and inspired me along my own teaching paths. A good teacher is worth their weight in gold, and a good teaching assistant is worth double!

 

Anyhoo, the reason I’m doing this post is this morning I got up early and went in the bath. I just lay there for a long time thinking, and got to thinking about self fulfilling prophecies. I wondered if because I did badly in Maths at high school and never did well, that I was destined to fail. Yet I did well in History and English and went on to study them at A level. The teachers told me I was good, I believed them and I did well.
I’d quite like to think that these self fulfilling prophecy thingy ma-gigies do come true. You see on the last day of high school we had some gnome awards… you know for daft stuff like, Biggest Drama Queen, and Couple most likely to get together… one award they did was for ‘First person to make a Million’. I remember them announcing this one and looking at my mega smart friends who were fluent in multipiple languages and always sat at the front of the room in Maths and thinking, yes that’s you. Never in a million years did I expect my name to be called. But it was. The people in my year voted me the person most likely to make a Million.

I have to say I wouldn’t mind that prophecy coming true. It’d be cosy, but this morning in my bath I was thinking that it probaly won’t be a million pounds, not on a teachers wage anyway! So maybe it’ll be a million of something else like a million…

- Children (erm not after watching 15 kids and counting)

- Friends (I don’t have enough time for the ones I already have)

- Buns (I’d be up for that challenge)

-  Blogs (maybe one day?)

- Memories?

I don’t know, but maybe at some point this prophecy will come true and I’ll be able to share with you all what my Million somethings was. If it is buns you are all more than welcome to one.

Being a history buff, Winston Chruchill said, “To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him and fitted to his talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour“. If I am to bake a million buns, or make a million friends, or raise a million children, I’d like to think I’ll be prepared, and my self fulfilling prophecies will be fine hours indeed.

Who knows? In the mean time, how about a million chuckles with some lovely ‘trip down memory lane’ photos.

Happy Wednesday.