The fog clears and here we are.

Year 11 at their desks, staring at me. I’m doing my best but I can see that even my backing singers are glazing over. Backing singers: you know, the kids who might nod at you every so often, or demonstrate surprising bursts of enthusiasm? Those kids who echo your words or tell you that they like your hair. Those kids. The ones who are dedicated to learning your moves. To them you are Diana Ross and they are The Supremes. They are the Blockheads to your Ian Dury. Normally they are all over you.

But now, as I stand on this chair channelling the beauty of Seamus Heaney’s agricultural poetry about his father via my seemingly unhelpful aspirational impression of John Keating from Dead Poets’ Society, the band are most definitely splitting up and I’m going solo. Even Chantelle has stopped doing her reassuring nod-thing that I’ve relied on a number of times to buoy me up, and I know all is lost. I’ve honestly done my best but I can feel I’m losing grip.

In the name of chuff, they need to know this stuff!

I’m on the chair and I’m belting it out to them. If a learning walk rolled into town, they’d be buzzing! I’m all over this! Look at me! Doing this poetry lark from atop a chair, punching the sky! You don’t get this every day! Energy Central! Proper going for it. Absolutely going for it. Because I need them to get it. I need them to get this Seamus Heaney stuff. It’s on the syllabus and I NEED THEM TO GET IT.

‘The pupils actually felt sorry for me’

And then Callum puts his hand up.

Callum, a 19th-century docker trapped in the body of a 21st-century 16-year-old.

There, with his hand up.

Callum has never put his hand up.

I’m processing this cold fact as I notice something in Callum’s eyes. It’s strange and not something I’ve seen before. It initially alarms me and yet I find it almost immediately soothing. The corners of his eyes break and I see his mouth turning into a smile. A particular kind of smile: close-mouthed and still. And he’s furrowed his eyebrows. I recognise this look.

Callum is looking at me in sympathy.

“Sir,” he says, as if speaking for everyone.

My arms fall to my sides and I respond.

“Yes?”

“Sir, can you get off the chair please?”

He’s asked me so nicely. I do. I step down from the blue council-issue chair.

“And Sir,” he continues, “Can you just tell us what we need to know?”

My eyes blink quickly. Callum continues, ramming a nail in my heart.

“My Mum says that if I get a ‘C’ then I can have a tattoo.”  

Because, actually, that is all Callum wants. A tattoo. He’d like a decent grade in English literature but that’s only a means to an end. For now, this is it. And Callum needs… wants spoon-feeding. I want him to grow an agility of imagination but it’ll have to wait.

The fog descends.

This was all a long time ago and I should’ve probably done more.

I bumped into Callum in Screwfix recently when I was picking up some self-drill plasterboard plugs. He served me at the till and I saw the Times New Roman lettering of his tattoo on his forearm. We shared a couple of great stories and didn’t mention poetry, which was probably for the best.

His tattoo read CALLUM.

Hywel Roberts is a travelling teacher and curriculum imaginer. He tweets as @hywel_roberts