My teacher memory is a splintered thing. For every lesson I can recall with crystal clarity, there are a hundred others that have fogged and faded over time. I often find myself wondering about the legions of students who have passed through my lessons on their way to a - hopefully - happy adulthood.
I have been teaching in the classroom for over 10 years, and can still visualise high-definition scenes from my first student placement. Yet much more recent days blend into the mist. Inevitably, it’s the bad memories that come to mind first - the days that felt like a battle, the lessons that stunk the place out, harsh words at my first parents’ evening. Competing with these are the moments of triumph, the dad jokes that drew laughter, the lessons that hit them in the feels.
One of the ironies of teaching is that we get to support students in their most formative years when they are bristling with potential - yet we rarely get to see this fulfilled. On the rare occasion when we do, it is quite a buzz. I will never forget the girl in my Intermediate 2 class who carried her guitar to school in a battered case, and wrote a soulful essay for me about the importance of art. What a thrill it was to see her pop up at the TRNSMT Festival in Glasgow, years later, performing as an upcoming artist.
Will my students remember me as their teacher?
I wish I had a crystal ball to see how some of the others have panned out. The boy who responded to one of my early attempts at an old-fashioned dressing-down by advising me - falsely - that the telephone was ringing, and taking the opportunity to throw a stapler at my head.
Or the girl who wrote a story in which one of the characters gave another a bunch of flowers - because, she admitted shyly, she, too, would like to be given a bunch some day.
Or the quiet boy who came to me and asked if I could recommend anyone to help him with a burgeoning, and entirely unexpected, interest in rap music.
Or the girl who already had, at the age of 12, a far greater mastery of, and sensitivity with, the English language than I could ever hope to attain.
Then there’s the girl who threw up (twice) on my classroom floor. The boy who tried to cheat in a test by writing poetry notes on his forearm. The girl who brought a whole breakfast pack, consisting of square sausage, fruit pudding and potato scone, on a residential trip.
I wonder about these children, and where they are now. What they are doing with their lives. Did the hardworking, clever ones become hardworking, clever adults? Do they own houses and drive cars?
Is there a common thread, something picked up in my lessons, that they would recognise in one another? An approach to learning, a mannerism, a quirk of my speech that they could all mimic?
Or am I leaning into this too much? I suppose it is much more likely that I, too, have faded from so many of their memories, just as they have from mine.
It’s an inevitability in a career during which you’ll work with thousands of students. But never forget that you will have an impact on their lives for decades to come - whether you get to see it or not.
Alan Gillespie is principal teacher of English at Fernhill School, near Glasgow, and a novelist
