World Teacher's Day

I realise that it's rather late in the day to be posting this, but I am a bit behind today, added to which I wasn't planning on writing a post to celebrate World Teacher's Day; not I might add because I don't value our teachers, I really do, but until this morning, I had no idea that there was such a day. However, having now discovered that said day does exist, and given what I witnessed today, it would be wrong not to join in the celebrations.



I think it's a great idea to have a day on which we can celebrate our teachers. I often find myself getting extremely frustrated when people assume that teachers work 9am to 3.30pm and have lovely long holidays. I know so many teachers, both in my working life and also in my personal life; a number of my friends are teachers and the reality of their working lives is far from the easy life some people think they have.

It's not just a case of standing in front of a class of up to 30 children, or young people. Lessons have to be planned, homework set and then marked, reports have to be written and all in accordance with an ever changing curriculum. And whilst doing all of this, little Jimmy is throwing a full blown tantrum because he couldn't sit on the bit of carpet he wanted and teenage Tess is swearing at the teacher because she doesn't want to be in his 'boring maths' class. Who on earth would want to be a teacher?

And yet, our fabulous teachers keep going, they keep teaching and encouraging and helping our children to be the best they can be.

Today, I discovered that it's not just the kids giving teachers a hard time. From time to time we hear about teachers being attacked, but I never imagined I would witness such a horror. Let me explain.

As you may know, last week we attended an Open Evening at our local secondary school. Today we returned for a visit to see the school during a typical day. Whilst on the tour, we got to visit a lot of the classrooms and learnt about how a school day runs and their expectation of behaviour etc. Then it was off to the farm. They are very proud of the farm and rightly so. They show at the County Show every year and have a large number of rosettes on display. And this is where it happened. It was truly horrific!

I could see them as we entered the farm, their beady eyes were on us and you could feel the tension building; something was going to happen, it was just a case of when. As he (the teacher) made his way to the gate to take us through to the livestock, the ringleader made a beeline for him. He was evil looking, this ringleader. Should you be unfortunate enough to meet him, exercise extreme caution, he is extremely dangerous. He looks very like this (the one standing up)...

...okay, yes it was a goose, but he was still nasty. Anyway, now I've built it up, let me tell you what happened next, because honestly it was the highlight of the tour. So our teacher guide is trying to take us through to the livestock when he is attacked by the goose. It's hissing and attacking his leg, so he gently tries to push it away with his free leg. Goosey, is not at all happy about this and has decided he is not going to lose this fight and dutifully goes for the teachers weakest spot, in other words his crotch! Hilarious (not for the victim). Final score, Goose 1, Teacher 0. It was truly one of those 'priceless' moments when you really wish you'd had your phone's camera function on and ready to go, sadly I did not and, therefore, am unable to share the true hilarity of the experience with you. As I said it was, indeed, the highlight of the tour for me and I have been chuckling over it all day.

So you see not only do our teachers teach, some of them risk their lives fighting wild animals too ;-) So thank you teachers and Happy World Teacher's Day!