The Creative End

It is a great source of annoyance and sometimes entertainment to me that staff training days are often little more than New Age psycho-drivel on a plate. And that people, sorry 'consultants', are paid huge wodges of cash to write and deliver this drivel to professional people like teachers who sit in drafty halls (because when the children aren't in school the heating gets turned off and we all have to sit there and shiver) like I did today, looking confused and bemused and wondering if I had some how slipped into a parallel universe where everyone had gone stark staring mad.

Staff training days at school always achieve the same outcome, regardless of content. And that outcome is 'What am I doing here?????' and the urge to run screaming from the building.

So today I am reading a handout because by the end of the day I have to decide which of the two offered new initiatives I am going to implement in my teaching in order to become a better teacher. I am trying not to think a) I wonder what's for lunch and b) I have 18 more days left as a classroom teacher - how much can I actually achieve in 18 days? and c) I could have marked 25 exercise books by now AND changed my Gothic horror character display for my Oliver Twist storyboard display.

And part of what I read is this:- 'If you put pork into a sausage machine, you get pork sausages. If you put beef into a sausage machine, you get beef sausages.'

And at this point I think, 'Is there a vegetarian option? Only I'm feeling a bit nauseous with all this talk of sausages.'

But I don't know who to go and ask about this; Senior Management are conspicuous by their absence - probably hiding in a cupboard somewhere eating chocolate digestives and chain smoking unfiltered Capstan Full Strengths - so I carry on reading.

And within a couple of minutes I have an epiphany! I discover the purpose of the teacher, and I have to say it is quite a revelation and would explain why I have been confused of late, because it appears I've been barking up the wrong tree altogether regarding my understanding of the role defined by 'teacher.'

For here I am thinking that a teacher is an imparter of knowledge, a leader of learning, a guider to the font of wisdom, when according to this new initiative of superb psycho-babble on a plate, a teacher is, in fact...

...the creative end of a sausage machine!

Please don't ask me to explain further. At this point I collapse in a heap on the floor and nearly wet myself laughing. The creative end of a sausage machine? Well, I am glad that's been clarified. I know exactly where I am now. I know my place.

And I now have lots of new material on which to build some new writing. It'll have to be fiction in genre, of course. No-one will believe me otherwise.