My favorite teacher in high school was Mr Grey, and I was in his English class for two years. He was a tall, really imposing looking man who had served time in the army, and he could silence a room just by standing up. But he was also kind and funny and and prone to making a lot of dad jokes and even the wild child students who were always one more fuck up away from being expelled really liked him. He believed in them you see.
I always remember the one year when one of the lads from 6b, Graham, was put into our class, because his own teacher couldnāt control him anymore. Graham hated being in our class, with all the āposh kidsā and he hated it even more that he had to sit on the edge of Mr Greyās desk. After a few days of refusing to read from the book he was supposed to, Mr Grey brought him another book to read. It was a childās book intended for ages 5 years and upwards, with lots of pictures and easy words. Where the other teacher had just surmised that Graham was a lost cause and didnāt want to learn, Mr Grey had realized that he couldnāt actually read very well, and spent the next two years helping him.
He made him a part of our advanced class, getting him to write on the board and type out our lesson plans on the one class computer in the corner. Heād sit with him in quiet moments when we were all writing, and youād hear him quietly sounding out the words with Graham, smiling and nodding whenever he managed something complicated by himself, and smiling and nodding when he couldnāt because asking for help was better than throwing a wobbler.
By the end of the first year we had to stand up and do a presentation in front of the whole class and talk about a book we really liked. Some did it on Shakespeare, others did it on Hemingwayāwe were the advanced lit class and were supposed to be reading and writing at a university level, so there was a lot of books that we might not have actually liked on the list, but knew we had to study regardless. I did mine on Pratchett, surprise surprise. Graham didnāt have to do a talk, but he sat listening intently. I still remember walking past his seat and the way he turned to me and said āthat was puir good likeā and I said āthanksā and smiled. It was as good as getting an A, praise from the trouble maker boy who every other teacher had given up on.
The following year we all had to do another presentation, this time without the aid of notes. I did another Pratchett book, drawing parallels from Shakespeare and highlighting the need for genre fiction to be taken seriously, to which Mr Grey agreed, applauded and eventually gave me an A+. And just when we thought it was all over, Graham stood up and the whole class went silent. He had an a4 piece of paper in his hands which shook, and he was staring at it like it was his lifeline. He looked up at Mr Grey and said āI canātā¦ā to which Mr Grey said āYou canā and there was more silence. And then Graham began to read.
āThe book that I read was also by Terry, and itās called Truckers, and itās from the much larger Bromeliad trilogy which I havenāt finished yet but so far is dead good. Itās about these little tiny people rightā¦ā
And he stood there for about ten minutes, talking about what the book was about, why he liked it, and even going into what he had read so far in the next book, Diggers, and what he liked about that too. When Graham finally stopped and looked up, giving us all a little nod as if to say āthanks for not laughingā the whole class went wild with clapping and shouting. And Mr Grey was beaming with pride, clapping harder than anyone.
He was a kind and patient man who respected us and in turn we respected him. He didnāt try to be our friend like a lot of the other teachers did, but he did make sure we knew we could turn to him if we had to. And we did. He was the kind of teacher who you wanted to make proud, but he was also the kind of teacher who wanted to help you be proud of yourself. And that has always stuck with me.Of course he was also the teacher who used us for social experiments and told us to come to class āprepared to surviveā after weād finished reading Lord of the Flies, but thatās another story.
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