![]() I recently heard a teacher in dialogue with her students referring to herself in the third person (‘So what Mrs X wants you to do now is….so Mrs X is showing you how to….’). ![]() Much has changed but I remain curious about the degree to which we allow ourselves to be authentic with our students and why we insist on maintaining some of the routines, rituals and practices that seem so disconnected from life outside of school. Now admittedly, that was a long time ago. Is it any wonder they were taken aback to see me doing everyday things that every day people do! And what strange beings we teachers were (are?). What a strange environment classrooms were (are?) in contrast to the lives lived outside of school. They did activities that I planned and followed rules I devised for them. They sat at little tables in little wooden chairs – occasionally ‘working’ on the floor for a special treat. They ate when the bells told them they could, we rarely ventured out of the room unless it was to go to ‘the art room’ or ‘ the gym’ where they would spend 45 minutes learning something that was quite disconnected from anything that happened in the classroom. ![]() I referred to the classroom as ‘My Classroom’, the kids had to line up in two straight lines before being allowed to come in to the room after each break. I’m sure many of you have had the experience…slightly awkward, a few giggles, the out-of-context encounter that challenged their view of me as ‘the teacher’ whom they assumed probably lived at school (OK - yes, I almost did.)īack then, I was ‘Miss Murdoch’. At the supermarket, walking my dog, in a café…and the reaction was most often the same - especially from the younger kids: “Whaaaaat? A teacher? IN THE SUPERMARKET? OUT WITH FRIENDS? etc. Living so close by meant I inevitably bumped into kids from the school over the weekends. One the one hand, I could work late and still be home at a reasonable hour on the other hand I probably worked way too late way too often. I once spent a year living in the same street as the school in which I was teaching.
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