When I last sat in a classroom, an embattled Margaret Thatcher looked set to become one of our shortest-serving prime ministers; inflation was at 18 per cent; and the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan. The world in which we live was being born.

So it was with some trepidation that, earlier this year, I set foot inside a classroom for the first time since. I had been told at various Train to Teach seminars that 1,000 teaching dreams die an instant death on recontact with school. I had read so much from the outside about changes in methods and technology that I didn’t know whether it would all just be completely baffling.

My dream didn’t die, but the changes I found surprised me.

Coming from the corporate world, teaching is still incredibly low tech and low spec. Chalk and blackboard have gone, but only to give way to whiteboard, marker pen and a multitude of photocopied handouts. Static slides supplement these, seemingly designed at the dawn of PowerPoint. Overhead projectors make an occasional appearance and newish PCs are omnipresent, although the programs they run are far from new.

The use of YouTube can be amusing. In one history lesson I observed, the Great Plague was being taught to a remix of Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl on the history teachers channel. For your reference, the current historical thinking can be summed up as:

“You’d get acral necrosis/From the Yersinia pestis/And it makes your tongue all black girl/Gonna bury you in the back girl/Ooh ooh fleas on rats, fleas on rats…”

Otherwise, the materials are those of a corporate meeting room from around 20 years ago, in a world in which students are bombarded with sassy imagery and media. It is still all down to the teacher. Was I the only reader to smile wryly when Tes reported the proposed use of AI and VR in the classroom, and then wondered when and with which resources?

Teachers are withdrawing their personalities

Uniforms are now far more strictly enforced than they ever were. For about two years from the age 14, I wore what could only be described as my school colours as modelled by the Artful Dodger. I have the photographs to prove it (and they were taken on a “smart” day). No disrespect to the sacrifice made to provide this clothing - uniforms were vastly more expensive in real terms; there were no £3 trousers from Asda then.

Now, during patrols at the fortress-like school gates on entry and from the constant checks throughout the day, any slip in uniform standards is interrogated and remedied. It is, of course, a matter of continuing debate as to whether this does or does not improve educational standards.

The classroom is now less fun. I’m not saying that each and every lesson I ever attended was a rollicking barrel of laughs, but I totally agree with the sentiments of Anthony Seldon recently. Many teachers seem to make a conscious effort to withdraw their personalities from their teaching for reasons that I totally understand. The pressure just to get through information ratchets up as exam season approaches. But, to take one example, why are surnames not more widely used as they were, rather than Sir or Miss? I remember walking down the drive with my maths teacher at the end of the day. Would such familiarity be allowed now? Indeed, would she be leaving before 7pm?

But school is now more tolerant. It is hard to fault the effort to recognise and celebrate diversity in the schools I have been in. I only wish it had been like that as I wrestled alone with my own sexuality in a suburban Midlands comprehensive back in the day. 

Some things never change. Boys will still be boys and girls will be…well, even naughtier, from what I have seen. In my various perches at the back of class, I have seen all manner of rule-breaking not seen by Miss or Sir, from furtive sweet-eating to footsie to throwing things.

Occasionally, I have seen inattentiveness drift into sleepiness. Is it hormones kicking off, or is there a lack of sleep and why would that be? I have gone home concerned, beginning to understand the totality of the pressures on teachers - and my admiration for the profession and my desire to join it increase.

Sometimes the opposite happens and I see enthusiasm, great participation and genuine excitement. I see a student glance momentarily across the playing field, perhaps wondering what they will make of the world and what the world will make of them. That’s why we’re all in the room.

David Hall is applying to become a teacher. For 25 years, he worked in communications for a range of clients. He tweets @campdavid