“What is 247 x 25?” I asked the class. In less than two seconds, Joseph’s hand was in the air.

“Six-one-seven-five,” he said.

“Can you tell us how you got that answer?” I asked, while my brain frantically tried to quarter 700.

Of course, Joseph could tell us. In fact, he had mapped out his thought processes on the whiteboard, well before I and the rest of the class had caught up. It left me thinking (and not for the first time) how on earth I ended up teaching someone whose mathematical skills were so clearly superior to my own.

It wasn’t just maths. Joseph was a gifted writer and voracious reader. I remember quizzing him about his reading habits on his first day. “Have you read Treasure Island?” I asked. “The Wind in the Willows? The Secret Garden?”

“Oh yes,” he replied. “But when I first read Treasure Island I was too young to understand it, so I read it again when I was 5.”

Teaching children like Joseph is a rare and exciting privilege, but it is also a big responsibility. How could we stretch him? How would we stop him from getting bored? How should we keep his self-esteem high without letting him dominate lessons?

Trial and error

With some difficulty, it turned out. With a mixture of careful planning and a fair bit of trial and error, we managed to mostly keep him challenged. It was hard work, but the compensations were abundant. You could always call on him if you needed the right answer to a question; his writing inspired those around him; and he had the ability to ask questions that would flummox everyone.

He loved unusual vocabulary and would fixate on new words, using them in every text, whether it fitted the genre or not. When I pointed this out, we played a game: I would use his word-of-the-moment in my marking or in whole-class-modelled writing. He, in return, would slide it into science reports and maths explanations, and then watch me intently as I read them, breaking into a smile of triumph and delight when I reached the code word.

But although academically advanced, emotionally, he was still a child. When dissecting a reading test he had misinterpreted, he dissolved into floods of tears, telling me he would fail his GCSEs and never get a job. For the following term, our main goal was to teach him how to fail.

Luckily, he had sensible parents (both professors), who encouraged him without pressure. The only question they asked at parents’ evening was, “How’s he getting on socially?”

At the end of the year, we said goodbye to him with reluctance. I knew I might never get to teach a Joseph again. On the last day of term, he handed me a card that said, “I really enjoyed being in your class. I liked your maths games and the fact you weren’t afraid to tell me when I was being a smart arse.”

“Was this a good thing or not?” I wondered. I really didn’t know. Joseph would know. Joseph would always know a little bit more than me.

Jo Brighouse is a primary school teacher in the Midlands