**Teaching Laughs: Chainsaws and Getting High for Poetry!
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We have to laugh!
Every day the schoolyard can be a dangerous place! I remember early on in my teaching career having to get between two brothers who wanted to belt each other blue – all while holding my coffee. And no, I didn’t spill a drop!
The staffroom was amazing though, and a place where we survived by laughing. It’s funny though, it’s always Year 9 (14-15yr olds) that seem to be at the centre of the action. Here are two of my favourite stories from that school:
So there was a young man whose interests largely included staying up all night to drive around the state forest to shoot wild pigs. He came to school, I suppose, because you didn’t go ‘piggin’ during the day. He was pretty interesting character.
One day though, his Agriculture teacher came back to the staffroom, in a state of distress. This young man had just fired up the chainsaw and was chasing another kid around the ag-plot! You can imagine it – avoiding the chicken poo, chainsaw blaring, this kid laughing and the teacher grumbling to, ‘Come here! Don’t kill that kid!’.
But it begs the question: why was he trying to ‘get’ the other kid? As it turns out, the kid with the chainsaw had an enormous forehead. The smaller boy was just pointing out this fact.
On another occasion, when I was teaching Year 9 English (which also included the large foreheaded child) I was making my way through a poetry unit. Now, this class was tricky – literacy levels were low, engagement was low and let’s face it – young people these days ain’t impressed by verse. That said, one day, I felt like I had made my breakthrough. I think we were looking over some good old Lord Byron, and a young woman kept saying, ‘It’s just so lovely’, ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ – To which I was astounded in my reply, ‘Yes, it is lovely! ‘Yes, it is beautiful!’.
Having concluded the lesson, and feeling pretty chuffed that I had gotten through, the school Deputy asked me about the girl’s behaviour – as it turns out the young lady had spent her lunchtime smoking marijuana in the bathroom. It turns out, poetry is lovely when you’re high! The next lesson, her opening remark about the poem was, ‘What is this shit?’
Thanks for joining me in the staffroom.