Pig farmer turned English teacher, head teacher turned writer
I am working on an English User’s Manual. According to employers and university teachers GCSE examinations no longer provide reliable indications of ability and many young people feel let down by schools.
The manual is aimed at adults and young people who need to improve their written English, at parents who are trying to help their children and at teachers who might like another source of ideas and materials.
The manual aims to show how the language works, so that students can use their English more effectively.
Just as we can dismantle an engine to see how it works.
—–-
I remain convinced that young people should be taught subjects well, rather than be trained to take examinations. They need to be encouraged to achieve beyond their own expectations and become independent of their teachers.
These lads have just finished work on William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the story of boys trapped on a tropical island who kill a pig and set up its head on a stick, as a totem.
It’s 1988, my last day with them and they were waiting for me when I came into the
classroom. Where on earth they found a pig’s head in Dagenham, which they then smuggled
into school I don’t know, but I was proud of them. One of the best send-
“I have kept bees for over twenty years. It's an interest which keeps me in touch with farming.
Here I am about to shake the bees from the branch into the box before taking them to an empty hive. The swarm had settled into a tree from which I had sawn this branch.
Despite appearances, I am not in danger because, generally, swarming bees are happy bees.
Before a queen bee leads half the colony away to find a new home her children fill themselves with enough honey to last for about four days. Bees that are
full of honey are usually
happy bees.
2003
My one and only marathon, run in aid of the Ron Pickering Memorial Fund which helps young athletes.
Ron was on the staff of Wanstead County high School where he taught me. Later Ron was to train Lynn Davies who won gold at the 1964 Olympics, before becoming the BBC’s athletics correspondent.
Peter’s articles have appeared in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily
Express, The Times Education Supplement, Swiss News, Beecraft, Children Now and The
Farmer's Weekly. He has also written on self-
Peter gives talks on writing other topics and conduct workshops in schools. He has
supported home-
Some of my best students
It could well have been these boys who helped me entertain a school inspector who
was sent down from Newcastle the previous year to assess our A-
I had just encountered an Australian poem, Peter Porter’s Sex and the over Forties, an amused and ironic examination of the view young people have of older folk’s private lives. The boys rose to the occasion; they did not need to be told what was going on and responded loyally, aware of the professional tension in the room.
The inspector, the only female in the room, and the only one of us who was clearly over forty, listened. We examined every possible nook and cranny of the poem, milked every word for the slightest of innuendos in ways which would have crimsoned most women at the time. Our lady from Newcastle did not bat an eyelid because, I then realised, she understood too exactly what was going on.
At the end of the lesson she spoke to the boys and complimented them on their work;
the standard was what she would have expected of able eighteen year-
If bees are not happy an experienced beekeeper will be aware of this very quickly and will put on a veil at least before continuing.”
Learnt at fifty-
Favourite piste?
The black run, down from Furgg into Zermatt.
Back in the classroom
Teaching is learning -
giving talks and running writing workshops
Reminding yourself what makes young people tick
About Peter -