Ms Boudicca (our headteacher) is waiting for me. I take a deep breath and steel myself to deliver bad news. I’ll be 64 in October and have decided to retire from teaching. I have arthritis, a hearing condition and poor IT skills. It’s time to make way for someone younger, fitter, and better able to update pupil progress data online.
I ring the bell, enter, and five minutes later find myself outside again clutching next term’s timetable. This is the fourth time I’ve failed to retire in as many years.
Teaching takes its toll
“Why would anyone keep coming back to the classroom when they don’t have to?” asks a younger colleague after the final bell has tolled. She is crawling on all fours down the corridor dragging a trolley filled with several tons of textbooks, exercise books, ring binders and a laminator.
I assume her question is rhetorical, because when I open the doors for her she carries on without me. I watch her cross the car park, load up her Cinquecento until the suspension groans, and head off in the direction of the summer holiday.
“Good question,” I say to myself. Now I’m being rhetorical.
Standing alone in the school doorway, the truth suddenly dawns.
“It’s the bells,” I cry out loud. (A teacher talking to himself is an occupational reality rather than a sign of madness.)
“What would happen to my life if there were no bells? Isn’t it the bells that give it structure and pattern? That wake me up and get me out of bed? That mark the beginnings and endings of lessons? That chime out the rhythm of my professional existence? I hear bells, therefore I am a teacher.”
And yet they provide more than structure. The power of the bells strike an even deeper chord. There is an almost religious symbolism in their tintinnabulations.
Saved by the bell?
Bells have always resonated with committed teachers. Their voices call the faithful to the classroom. And herald the path to higher achievement. And celebrate our devotion to a revered vocation.
It is the school bell that each day urges me to enter the Church of Learning with renewed faith.
But is it not written that a teacher cannot survive on faith alone? What sustains me in the darkest hour of a wet Friday afternoon? How do I find the will to survive when faith falters? When I’m on the ropes and my flimsiest lesson is overpowered by bored minds and rebellious spirits?
At such times only one thing keeps me from throwing in the towel. Knowing that, soon, the bell will ring a temporary reprieve - giving me enough time to steel myself for one more round.
A final ringing endorsement
“I hereby declare that it’s the bells that keep me teaching. The sound of the school bell is my life, my faith and my inspiration!”
Yet even before my words echo into silence another voice intervenes.
“What bells?” says a passing colleague. “We haven’t used bells since 2005.”
I stare at her incredulous.
“You know what your problem is?” she adds, speaking rhetorically. “Tinnitus.”
And she could be right. Perhaps I’ve been working for too long in noisy classrooms? Maybe I should retire?
If only I knew how.
Steve Eddison teaches at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield
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