The alarm pierces my sleep. I open my eyes a fraction of an inch to see the time. Seven o’clock. Just five more minutes, I think and close my eyes. When I re-open my eyes, ten minutes have gone by. I leap out of bed, pull on my trousers and dash to the bathroom. Thirty-five minutes later I start the car and the rest of the family get in. One hour and five minutes later, after dropping off the children and wife, I pull into the school car park.
I take registration fifteen minutes later, and then lead my class down to assembly. Sitting at the back of the hall, I keep my eyes open for anybody who seems to be making trouble, but I don’t see anybody. The assembly ends five minutes after the bell and, after all the pupils have gone, I, too, leave for my classroom.
I teach English and my first lesson is with first years. It is nice to teach these youngsters of the school, for they all want to create a good impression. The lesson goes by fairly quickly, I having taught them the correct uses of punctuation.
During break I am on duty, so I walk round making sure fights don’t start. I get into conversation with some fifth years about why we have English teachers. The end of break bell rings and the children troop back inside.
I go to the library where my next lesson is, with third years. These are the worst to teach because they are the year inbetween and feel they should be treated like adults. The lesson goes on forever it seems, and some of the boys seemed to be having a football game at the other end of the room, but whenever I approached, they were all innocently looking at the shelves.
During the dinner break I caught up with some marking as I was not on duty. My last lesson of the day was with fifth years. These were the cheekiest of the whole school and there were a couple of boys who had a remark to almost everything I said. I had words with them after the lesson, but I doubt it did any good.
Last lesson was free for me, so I did some preparation for tomorrow’s lessons.
Teacher’s Comments
8/10
Grammatically efficient, but perhaps a few philosophical comments would have helped.
(c) M. Robert Gibson
Written 1978-01-10
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I should have rounded off the day and written about going home.
Disclaimer
This is a school essay.
It was written well before the internet. It is full of inaccuracies and assumptions; bad punctuation; bad grammar and a woeful lack of research, but, it is also a first draft. It was also hand-written in an exercise book, none of your fancy electronic gizmos back then.
And don’t forget, it was written by a schoolboy in a time before political correctness.
It is published here for purely selfish vanity reasons, so read it at your own peril and do not expect any great revelations.
M. Robert Gibson 