Dan Morris: Back in class
It was the smell of the well-worn wooden floor of the hall coupled with the sublime scent of a festive turkey dinner emanating from the kitchen. One breath in, one breath out, and I was home.
No, dear readers, I did not find myself last Friday beside the warm hearth of some country estate, nor was I nestled in the comfort of some traditional Edwardian watering hole musing over the delight of the season to come.
The reason this time for my Cheshire Cat grin of nostalgic contentment was in fact that I was visiting one of our region’s many fantastic primary schools.
Though Sproglet is only three, as other parents will know, the time has come to prospect the locale for the next phase of her education. This being the case, her mother and I arranged a day last week to take a tour of some of our area’s shining lights in shaping the little ‘uns, and it was both incredibly enjoyable and exuberantly enlightening.
Little Miss’s mum is a teacher herself, and therefore was coming into said tour far more armed between the ears than your average bear.
For yours truly, my last experience of a primary school was 26 years ago, when, after a truly sublime time (and, in fact, my very first job on a newspaper) I left one.
As such, despite a bit of online research, I was coming in comparatively blind. This did, however, give me the untainted opportunity to experience the absolute joy in how things have changed over the course of the last quarter of a century.
Let me be crystal clear – my primary school experience was excellent, and my teachers were all first-class. But these were different times in many ways, and happily (at least as it appears to me) times are now better for a lot of schools’ young charges.
With the biggest case in point, I was delighted to see how much care, commitment and strategy is now involved in helping those pupils who may need extra – or at least different – support.
Sadly, I recall a case during my own time at primary school where one of my peers was on the verge of being held back a year because of his apparent lack of progress. This demoralising measure was all set to be given the green light, until it was established that he was in fact dyslexic.
At the time, said school apparently had no real experience in dealing with such a commonplace condition, and so, parties involved were prepared to implement a ‘solution’ that would doubtlessly have been devastating to his self esteem.
As I say, times are now quite clearly better. The SEND support setup at every school I visited last week appeared to be exceptionally well thought out, with everything possible tailored to the individual students in need of its services.
Said chap from my era certainly had the last laugh. He wasn’t held back in the end, and has in fact gone on to become a god-chiselled bodybuilding behemoth, winning trophies for his efforts left, right and centre. Still, back then, the system came very close to failing him, and it is excellent to see that now, similar instances of crucial matters being overlooked seem a lot less likely.
On top of this, I was – very naively – blown away by the extent to which technology is now employed as a primary school resource.
Monitors and screens in every classroom that put my own ridiculous home telly set-up to shame, coupled with iPad trollies and state-of-the-art IT suites firmly put paid to my memories of one dot matrix printer for 200 kids.
Forest school set-ups and outdoor play equipment were also a joy to behold – particularly as an encouraging balance to the embracement of the digital world.
In general, I was incredibly impressed, and excited about the world that awaited my progeny. But in a particularly heart-warming moment, in the aforementioned school hall, I was also transported back to my own days in early years education. Christmas dinner was about to be served, the joy of the burgeoning season was in the air, and I was instantly engulfed by a perfect combination of pride and jealousy over the magical years that my daughter very shortly has in store for her.
A few days later, I bumped into one of my own outstanding primary school teachers at our local church, introducing my daughter properly to her for the first time. She looked her up and down, smiled, and winked.
It’s what Elton John would have called the circle of life, and it does, indeed, move us all.
Bring on the nativities – more on that next week…
