Anon - The secret teacher: dispatches from the classroom

The alarms went off at 5.30 a.m. I had set three one on my phone, one on the travel alarm and one on the radio so when they all went off it was like an air-raid warning. Amy was incandescent; she had been able to get up and out every day without it being such a palaver. She put the pillow over her head and shouted, Youre only going in for induction! What are you going to be like when you actually have to teach? Just get out!

Thats nice, that is. I was doing this for her, after all. (She hated it when I said this. OK, maybe it wasnt all for her. Maybe for her and Dad. And Granddad. And me, kind of.) I was abandoning the world of bohemian flakery and uncertainty to become a man of purpose. A man of solvency. A man who wore M&S jumpers.

I hurriedly put on my suit, tie and turquoise M&S jumper in the dim, cold hallway. It had been so long since I had tied a tie, I throttled myself as the knot shrank to the size of a peach stone. I went down to the kitchen and tried to eat some toast, but my stomach was churning. I paced up and down, checking my briefcase repeatedly for the bounty from my Back to School Ryman ram-raid: yellow Post-its; Moleskine (hello, Hemingway); USB stick (empty); pink Post-its; multi-coloured dividers; orange Ryman Foolscap Square Cut Folder; Ryman Essentials Lever Arch A4 neon-blue enormo-file; lip balm; Travel Card; green Post-its.

I wonder if Hemingway used Post-its. For sale: baby shoes, never worn would fit on one. Go bullfight. Drink sangria. Write Post-it.

Lesson #1

Always Have a Stash of Post-its in Your Pocket.

Whenever you find yourself at a loss for a Plenary the last few minutes of a lesson when the kids have to summarise what they have learned just stick a Post-it on every desk and tell them to write something down. The kids stick them on the board on their way out. I got my job purely on the strength of a jazzy Post-it Plenary. Year 9: Writing to Advise. I said, Write me some advice on a Post-it and put it on the board as you go out. One said, Get an Xbox. Another, Get a new tie. Another, Come work here. Its the best school.

*

I squeezed my feet into my new brown brogues dclass to the City boys, raffish to the Inner-City boys winced and headed out. There were lots of grown-ups around, heading off to proper jobs, looking at their glowing phones, like monkeys pointing mirrors at the sun. I felt my vertebrae unfurling as I marched along with purpose and pride.

Here I go. To work. With my briefcase. Full of Post-its.

I found myself walking alongside kids on their way to school and gasped with joy.

Here they are! My base metal that I will turn to gold with my alchemy. My empty vessels, waiting to be filled with pure knowledge!

Buses hacked up great clumps of kids in Puffa jackets. The Puffas swam together into a large school, moving in formation. I was caught in the current, surrounded, and as the swish swish swish intensified, I began to panic.

This is it. Snuffed out before I have begun. Drowned by Puffa.

The Puffas darted right, sucked into the plughole of a schools gates. I stood on the pavement, bedraggled and relieved.

I walked along elegantly bombed streets, passing Volvos, delis, and an eternity of jerk chicken, until I reached a coffee shop with distressed architrave a ghostly reminder that it was once a butchers. Outside, hungover young men in stripy Breton shirts were tapping on MacBooks and scratching their half-beards. Yeah, I remember being one of those half-men. Half man, half jellyfish. A budget centaur. Hopeless, purposeless, dangling men, scratching around in the desperate freelance hardscrabble twilight. No structure, no routine, no human interaction, no dignity. Drinking endless coffees, sending thousands of emails, tapping into the void. Whole days spent trying to come up with catchy puns. The last one I did was for a competition to win a bed. I stared at the screen all day. Late in the afternoon, after a revelatory brownie, I came up with Beddy Prize. My boss didnt get back to me. I sent him a follow-up email explaining that it sounded like Beddy Byes. I never heard back.

Id like to stick Beddy Prize on a Post-it on his face. And Id say, Look at me now. No longer using my linguistic mastery to sell shit to morons, but selling Language, Culture, Art, Philosophy, Sociology, the Mysteries of Existence, the whole shitshow, to kids who really need it.

As I turned the corner, a large girl burdened by a huge rucksack was bent over, moaning in pain.

One of my charges. A youth in distress. My first act of salvation.

I asked if she was OK. Yeah, Im all right. My pussy hurt, dats all.

I entered the newsagents, clocking the sign that read NO MORE THAN 3 SCHOOLKID AT A TIME , before being confronted by a pair of tanned women who were buying bags of Haribos.

Only way to keep them under control at this time of year, said one.

Why do we bother? I mean, once theyve done their tests we should just let them go on holiday. I feel like Im some kind of gameshow host: And now for another round of Whos in the Bag?

I bought another pen and a banana. The newsagent pointed the banana at a half-naked woman on the front page of a tabloid.

I banana her, he said.

I looked at him, uncertainly.

You teacher? he asked.

Yes. Yes, I am, I proudly replied.

Nice teachers at your school. I want to banana them.

I pushed my thumbs up in the air and muttered an awkward Cheers, and left the shop.

The world is truly vulgar. I must beat it back. My classroom shall be a bulwark against the tides of corruption. An Edenic sanctuary. And lo, I shall deliver the Innocents unto Purity and Enlightenment.

I followed the two women up the road. A guy in a passing car wolf-whistled and made a gesture that seemed to indicate that he too wanted to banana them. I thought back to the teachers I had at school: old dishevelled guys with hairy ears and egg on their ties you would see wandering the streets talking to themselves. Here was the new breed: beautiful, tanned, coiffed, corporately dressed young men and women who walked with dynamic swagger to the sexiest job in town.

At the end of the road, in a crater surrounded by council estates and terraced houses, throbbed a shimmering glass palace. Well, most of it. Half of the old school building and half of the new stood each side of an enormous chasm. On one side of the chasm tottered the 1960s brutalist concrete comprehensive, grey and mournful; on the other thrust the twenty-first-century panopticon, shiny and garish. It looked like a spaceship had crashed into an NCP car park.

Outside the gate was a shiny zinc sign, embossed like a Silicon start-ups, with the schools name, the Heads name, a large space for an OFSTED quote, and the School Motto: QUESTING FOR EXCELLENCE .