The fog clears, and here we are. And it’s all gone a bit technology-colliding-with-drama-colliding-with-suspension of disbelief.

It’s Year 9 food technology in a special school for children who struggle in mainstream.

The setting is ace and is a real trailblazer in terms of their approach to the curriculum. I’ve been asked to help with a curriculum reboot and am working alongside classroom teachers with their planning and subsequent delivery to the pupils. I’m a familiar face around the school and feel very much at home.

Technology colleagues and I have been looking at how we can get the pupils to present their learning around healthy eating, moving away from the usual PowerPoint approach.  We’ve talked about how we might hook the kids in and get them to want to present.

It’s the hook that’s the key.

I turn up to the meeting with what I believe will be a great hook: a blog written by a fictional cat-loving kebab shop owner called Mick. I’ve spent my Sunday evening creating the five Wordpress blogposts that basically roll out the sorry tale of Mick and his trouble with the council. They are threatening to shut down his takeaway if he doesn’t offer a healthier menu. It’s clear from the blog that Mick doesn’t know a lot about healthy eating and could really do with some help. And he really shouldn’t go on about his love for his cats and their love for his donner meat.

At the end of the last blog I include a selfie of, er, myself, to ensure the pupils are in on the fictional aspect of the blog. In a way, the kids have been offered a design brief and this is what their teacher presents to them. When the kids see the last blogpost and my selfie they nod and say things like:

“That’s that bloke.”

“That’s Mr Roberts. We saw him in Year Eight. He was an airline pilot back then.”

“He’s not actually a real person that Mick.”

…so it’s happily clear that they know this is a fiction - a way of getting the end of project assessment done and dusted, and a nice alternative to a worksheet or PowerPoint presentation.

‘Shall we invite him in? Perhaps we can help him?’ the teacher asks them and they very quickly send me a message via Wordpress, inviting “Mick” to the school to learn some stuff about healthy eating.

I reply immediately and the date is set.

The function of the presentations will be to enlighten Mick, and for him to become a better, more health-conscious proprietor of Mick’s Kebabs.

On the morning of the presentations, I go a bit ‘method’, don’t shave or shower. I don’t iron my shirt and get some left-over gravy from our fridge and smear it down my front. Who knew that education could be this much fun?

Driving to the school I start to worry that they may have had the Ofsted call.

They haven’t, and pretty soon I’m sitting in front of Year 9 being asked prepared questions about my take away shop, my menu, the wholesale price I pay for my hotdogs and burgers and why I think it’s so cheap, and my cats and why I let them wander around the shop. My answers paint an amusing picture of someone who definitely does need help.

We then move to a carousel presentation activity where I go from table to table essentially being educated by these very knowledgeable pupils. On the last table, I meet Thomas, Kyle and Beth who show me all sorts of stuff that they’ve learned. As with the other tables, I nod, ask questions and model all the things a positive learner should be.

Thomas puts his hand on my arm and leans in.

“Listen, mate, you’ve really got to sort yourself out,” he whispers, “You’re wasting your life.”

I nod, not really knowing what to say, and uncertain if he’s talking to me, Mr Roberts, the visiting teacher, or Mick, a fictional kebab shop owner from inside my head. Before we know it, the session is done. I say my farewells and leave. The presentations have been an enormous success.

The class teacher later contacted me saying that the hook of the blog and the teacher-in-role had been useful and had encouraged genuine pupil investment.

And then there was Thomas’s feedback to her: apparently as soon as I’d left, he’d turned to his teacher and classmates and said

“I’m sorry to say it, but that Mick is completely thick. What a moron.”

And the fog descends.

In the words of Boris Karloff, the children have never fallen for my nonsense.

Hywel Roberts is a travelling teacher and curriculum imaginer. He tweets as @hywel_roberts. Read his back catalogue

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