The road to Blackberry Hill

It’s the day of the interview, I can walk there, and it’s a sunny day. Imagine that, no trains, no tubes, no cancellations or delays, no standing for three quarters of an hour or being stuck in tunnels, no smelly armpits or people sneezing on you, just a brisk 20 minute walk in the summer sunshine. OK, at some point it’s going to be cold and raining, and this being England, that’s going to be sooner rather than later. But for today I’m just enjoying a walk in the sunshine and listening to the sound of birds (this is leafy suburbia, although they’re working on it they haven’t managed to chop down all the trees yet and we still get the occasional bit of fauna). 

The interview notes state that there will be around 20 applicants, with each giving a 5 minute presentation. As it turns out, there are only three, and only myself and one other are there and its 10 minutes past the allotted hour. So we start anyway. Being as there are only the 2 of us, plus the 2 lecturers/interviewers, this happens in an office, rather than an auditorium. It’s all rather cosy. 

I volunteer to present first, and am immediately put off my stride. When I introduce the topic – Does Grammar Matter – one of the lecturers mentions that it’s of particular interest to her. Now, I always knew that the lecturers would already know anything I could dig up for the presentation, especially given the timeframe I had to prepare it in, but I have rather emphasised the research showing that it doesn’t really matter very much at all. And I do poke fun at the pomposity of someone who gets upset when a apostrophe is in the wrong place (actually, when I do this, I don’t get so much as a smile, clearly no-one is demonstrating the benefits of positive feedback at this point). Too late to change now. 

The presentation goes relatively smoothly. I invite, and get, some discussion around one of the Slides. I make a couple of jokes, no-one laughs, but no change there. Following the conclusion slide the lecturers make some positive murmurs and I sit down again.

 It’s my fellow applicant’s turn. I spoke to her a bit while we were waiting to start, she’s nice. Part of the selection process is that you are required to be suitably smart. I’ve dressed down a bit, I didn’t think that my normal suit and tie would be applicable, so have gone for slacks and a shirt. My fellow applicant is also suitably attired. She stands up and starts speaking. She clearly knows what she’s talking about – “Synthetic Phonics”, a hot topic. Apparently. But there’s something about her that I find vaguely distracting and I can’t concentrate on the presentation. She has something metallic in her mouth, its not braces, you just get the occasional flash and I’m transfixed. And then I get it, she’s got her tongue pierced! Are you allowed to be primary teacher with a pierced tongue? I’m not sure what the rules are on self-mutilation. Presumably ear-piercing is OK, but I’m guessing that a bolt through the neck wouldn’t be. Do pierced tongues live in the grey world in between?

Presentations over, we have the dreaded written test. It is emphasised that the grammar and spelling are at least as important as the content – discussion of a children’s book. Content I can do, I’ve read books to classes before, I can talk about it with confidence. Writing about it, on paper, without spell-checkers or on-line thesaurus, it all seems a bit last century to me. We are left on our own to get on with it, and, when we are done, we swap and check each others work for errors (didn’t do it, nobody saw us do it, can’t prove anything – and actually no-one said we couldn’t). Amazingly, neither of us has any corrections, so we are on to the interviews. 

I’ve done interviews before, and given lots of them. I’ve had a lot of training in doing so. I was braced for a grilling, drill-down on each of my answers to see the limits of my knowledge, questioning of my motives, looking for my weaknesses and strengths. But it’s not really like that. There are five standard questions, which I answer, and there isn’t too much follow up. I come away with the distinct impression that I haven’t really done myself justice, I’ve done a lot of preparation, reading on teaching and child psychology, and practical experience in classrooms of different descriptions, but I don’t feel I’ve been able to convey much of this. 

No matter, the lecturers seem satisfied. Just a quick check of the 20 (that’s Twenty, with a capital T) documents I’m required to produce, and then I’m back out, walking home. In the sunshine. I’m feeling optimistic, positive, forward looking. I look for a word to describe how I’m feeling, and I find it – happy.

“Queen’s in Queen’s University Belfast takes an apostrophe before the s. Making a mistake in the institution’s name is not acceptable”. That’s the headline in the specialist Teaching newspaper. They do exist, I now know this. OK, its not really anything to do with teaching in primary school, but I have a presentation to do in 2 days, I can’t spend half that time deciding on a subject. Skills learnt in my old life suddenly become very relevant – taking the headline totally out of context and using it to my own ends. I have a concept for my presentation “Does Grammar Matter” – a presentation about the level that grammar should be taught to in primary school.

For the first time, seeds of doubt enter my mind. I know nothing about grammar, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure how to spell it (oh God, I’m going to have to write things on a blackboard, and last time I looked these things don’t come equipped with spell checkers). How can I possibly put a presentation together about it. More fundamentally, what makes me think I’m suitable to teach it! I’ve got a feeling the course is going to be far more intense than I had originally thought. 

However, the search skills from my old life serve me well. Very quickly I find out what grammar is required to be taught in the national curriculum, and quite soon after I find a whole body of research on the value of teaching grammar. Who’d have thought. (If anyone’s interested, the research tends to indicate that it really doesn’t matter very much at all).

 I now have my subject matter. It doesn’t take me long to turn this into a presentation. Par it down to the 5 minute limit, do all the good stuff about presentations – introduction, overview, summary, audience interaction, etc. I add the college’s logo to the slides, apply some basic slide transition effects (I have the feeling being too flash would be frowned upon) and am feeling pretty good about the whole thing. How many other applicants are old hands at this stuff, and know what makes a presentation work. All those skills I learnt in my previous life now seem very applicable, at least in getting on the course, I’ve yet to see how applicable they are when you’re standing in front of 30 six year olds. 

To be continued …

I’ve given presentations before, lots of them. So what’s the big deal about giving a presentation to a couple of lecturers and a bunch of students fresh out of college, all of whom have to do presentations of their own, and none of whom have any idea about presenting. Surely they’d be all so wrapped up in their own inadequacies to spend any time focussing on mine.

Well, a few things. Firstly, I had to present on something topical and relevant to teaching in primary schools. Now, I’m not claiming to be Mr Presentation 2007, but if anyone asked me for any advice, I’d tell them to stick to something that they knew something about. I wasn’t even aware that it was possible to have anything topical to say about teaching in primary school. And secondly, and most importantly, this really mattered. For presentations in my previous life as an IT manager, what’s the worse that could happen? People fall asleep or I get rotten eggs thrown at me (or, in the case of conferences in the more upmarket Parisian hotels, more like lightly scrambled eggs with black truffles).

 But this time, entry into my chosen vocation depended on it. Ever since hearing about my impending redundancy from the Eastern Edge of Reason Bank (EERB) a few weeks ago, I had been planning on realising my long held dream of becoming a primary school teacher. I’d spent my first 2 weeks of gardening leave helping out at the local school, and hunting for teacher training places. On calling my local college, St Martha’s at Blackberry Hill (within walking distance of my house – no more commuting! Actually, Blackberry Hill is a strange name for the place, there is no hill and no obvious sign of any Blackberry’s) I was told that in somewhat unusual circumstances some places had become available. Apparently, an unusually large number of entrants had fallen pregnant before the start of the course. I didn’t ask what the normal number was. I was also told that interviews were starting in 2 days time, so if I wanted to be considered, I needed to get my application in that day.  

Anyone who has ever completed one of these forms, you have my sympathy. They require digging out all my exams passes (amazingly, I was able to track down my ‘O’, ‘A’ and Degree certificates from 20 years ago) and blocks of text explaining why I wanted to be, and would be suitable for the life of, a primary school teacher. It was also noted that the use of language, spelling & grammar would be carefully scrutinised. For prospective teachers I can see the sense in this, but for someone who has been working in IT for 20 years, with people from all over the planet, the position of an apostrophe in a sentence was the least of my concerns. I persevered, ideally I would have liked to have had a week to complete and review the form, I did it in 8 hours, finishing at 6 in the morning. 

I think I must have caught the recipients on a particularly good day (or is that bad day?), as I was offered an interview. The invite came the next day, the interviews were in 2 days time, and, the first I had heard of this,  I had to give that presentation. 

To be continued …