Despite lamenting the weary/sweaty/bonkers drag to the end of school term in my last blog (apologies), I am now out the other side and can find the grace to remember that teaching is the best career in the world (remind me of this in September).

As another academic year closes we are sitting in the dining hall with colleagues listening to staff leaving speeches – the best reminder that teachers are a special breed and that they can tell the best stories against themselves. One of my favourites from last week was about a teacher working with a Year 7 lad who had never finished reading a book in his young life – an accolade he clearly intended to cherish for some time. He underestimates his teacher when he says, ‘You can not really expect me to finish this book Miss when I am so distracted by your grey roots’. His teacher absorbs this follicular feedback with good grace and returns the next day with a ‘can do’ attitude and not a grey hair in sight saying, ‘My roots are now sorted and I will not be retiring until you finish this book.’ Needless to say, her mission is soon accomplished and she is last seen pointing said student in the direction of the school library as she leaves the site to enjoy her refirement.

For anyone considering a career in education it is best not to take yourself too seriously . Last summer my heart melted when a Year 11 student dropped into my office before leaving school for the last time. Over her years at the school we had endured enjoyed many happy hours trying to locate her on site (not in lessons) and then responding gracefully when she told us to, ‘go and do one’. She turned it around in her last year, and, when she popped her head around the door on her last day and said, ‘Miss, there is something I want to say to you before I leave,’ I was quietly emotional and felt confident that there may even be a thank you on the cards. Instead I heard, ‘Miss, I have been meaning to tell you that the lipstick colour you wear it absolutely vile and it has to go.’ It did. No surprise that this student is now studying Hair and Beauty at a local college and that I am learning to wear a more subtle lipstick hue.

A few days on from the end of term I realise that I may soon run out of ‘You Rest and I’ll Cook Supper Vouchers’ from Himself, so rally to attend my own old school reunion on the South Coast. Since my oldest friend (not the oldest as you well know, but the friend I have known for the longest time) not only lives close to the school we went to over 50 years’ ago, but has also returned to work there, I have the perfect excuse to simply flip my sorry backside from my sofa onto a sun lounger in her back garden; from here we persuade her lovely husband to crank up their pizza oven while we disappear down a rabbit hole of old school memories.

My main learning from the actual reunion later that evening is how absolutely shocking my memory is. I seem to have blanked out a lot of my school years and realise, that in comparison, my peers were clearly living their best lives and were much more adventurous than I was; I must have spent all my spare time in the library, so no wonder no-one can find evidence of me smiling in an old school photo.

I am almost heartened to discover that – in some cases – my poor memory for faces may be on account of the little time that some of the year group seem to have spent on the school grounds – there was no fencing and so (unless you were a rule follower like your’s truly) you could come and go as you pleased. I seem to be the only person at the reunion who was oblivious to the existence of a ‘Smokers’ Hut’ and believed that school contraband was stealing my dad’s small change to make good use of the chocolate vending machine, rather than taking a swig of something another student may have smuggled in to smooth the edges of an abrasive school timetable.

I had such a close relationship with this chocolate machine that I should have anticipated the following response when I sidled up to a fellow ‘Sixty Something’ at the reunion to ask if he remembered our Year 7 French lessons together ; ‘Oh I do remember you. You were that sturdy, solid girl with the tom boy hair cut’.

As I say, do not enter the world of education – whatever your age – if you take yourself seriously.

I need not have worried about my appalling memory for, by the end of the reunion evening, I have been reminded of many things:

• I never had a detention
• I never missed a day of school
• I pretended to be a Blue Peter presenter when delivering a group project at a Sixth Form retreat (how was this five day retreat ever funded?)
• I appear in a press cutting about a local garage who unwittingly agreed to let my art class loose and paint a mural in their showroom. (No-one can remember the actual visual and the local newspaper felt it too irrelevant to photograph). No surprise that the business no longer exists (apologies, but thank you for your community support).
• I never wore trousers to school or college (I find this baffling knowing that I once had my school regulation elasticated skirt pulled down to my ankles in the school lunch queue).
• I was persuaded to become a ‘Rat Keeper’ by the science technician, taking my duties very seriously and blissfully ignorant that I had been coerced into ‘growing’ a dissection project across the summer holiday. Looking back I wish I had been brave enough to risk a detention and stage a lab break-in to free the rats (apologies rodents, but thank you for your community support. I am now vegetarian).
• I was never picked for a school sports team; you would have thought my solid, sturdy frame would have assisted recruitment into the athletics crew for shot put, but I must have skulked back to the library via the chocolate machine. This may be why I was never invited to share some Malboro Red with my fellow inmates inside the Smokers’ Hut. (Apologies dad for stealing your loose change and not even saving you one single square of Cadbury Whole Nut).

There must be over 35 of us at this school reunion and I think this may say something about how our teachers shaped us in ways that we would not have realised. I expect that our teachers – working in a brand new school – would have been learning as much as we did/didn’t each academic year. I know I do this every day even though I am nearing the end of my teaching career – perhaps now so more so than ever. The life lessons written deep into this lovely crew of ‘Sixty Somethings’ is heartening and a useful reminder to me that you can actually take a book outside the library and read it absolutely anywhere. To stretch the metaphor, you can even put the book down, refuse to finish it because it is not for you, or complete it when the time feels right. I am grateful that school gave me my love of books and that the school of life is allowing me to realise just how interesting these stories are – and how they are interpreted uniquely by different readers.

Every day is a school day – holidays included. I will remind myself of this in September once I have caught up on my summer reading and invited myself back to revisit Oldest Friend’s pizza oven for a second serving of excellent hospitality and nostalgia. I promise to bring chocolate if I can rustle up some loose change.