School Days

The department is in mourning.

Our leader is leaving us, going on to higher things as an assistant head. Of course this is good news for him but there are tears of sorrow and rage in the English office every time his back is turned.

I have worked under quite a few heads of department now, each with different strengths and weaknesses. It is a bit like the days of having au pairs – they were either brilliant at cleaning or great at entertaining the children, but never both.

So it is with heads of department. What is needed of a good HOD is the following: a love of the subject; organisation; the ability to process data and to motivate your ‘team’; and an interest in education.

I would never put myself forward for that role because I think I have only one of those qualities, even though I have that one in spades. It is sad that often someone who is brilliant with data, organisation and delegation seems to have lost the love of literature which should be the basis of everything.

This man has all the qualities needed, along with a dry sense of humour. I have, under his tutelage, learned quite a lot.

I used to die of boredom at the very thought of reading research about education but, by dint of his quietly sending us blogs, I’ve begun to be actively interested in new ideas. I admit that this is partly because the new ideas are turning back to the old ideas (as so often happens) and so I can read research and find myself agreeing with, rather than snorting at, new crazes in teaching.

The newest craze, and one thoroughly endorsed by our HOD, is to do with the curriculum. At last we are turning back to focusing on knowledge-led, rather than skills-led, learning. When I came here to be interviewed, Our Hero told me he planned to throw out Boy (Roald Dahl’s autobiography) and Holes (an excellent children’s novel by Louis Sachar) and give the children more classical texts to read.

His argument was that all good readers could stumble across those books, but our department’s job is to introduce the students to more challenge.

And he was as good as his word. We are teaching Beowulf (Seamus Heaney’s version; not the Old English, obviously) to Year Eight. Every year group is now studying Shakespeare. We have a poetrythrough-time scheme of work in Year Nine. Year Seven is studying Greek myths.

And it goes further. We don’t look just at stories about gods. We look at how other writers have responded to those myths – poets from Tennyson to Duffy. When thinking about Beowulf, the students are introduced to a bit of Gothic writing – Frankenstein’s monster alongside Grendel. We look at the cultures and contexts from which the works come.

And yes, of course we teach the skills the children need – summarising, analysing, understanding and creating – but we do so from interesting texts. We introduce them to a world of experiences and ideas outside our rural county town. And in doing so, Our Hero is ensuring that, whatever their ability or background, these children are being given a wide cultural experience. They are being given an education in its truest sense.

We will have a hiatus between him and a new leader of at least a term. Whoever gets the post will find he or she has an awful lot to live up to. I can only wish the successful applicant luck.