Another teacher poem.
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In 1991 I was excited
I was starting a new school and I was beyond delighted
To be leaving my old one.
I thought the next five years
were going to be golden.
Holding on to the promise that I was
Clever.
Even though
Top of the class doesn’t mean much
When your class is the class full of rejects.
And they swore to my mother that they didn’t stream it,
But all of the freaks
The boy who licked legs
And the girl who didn’t wash for weeks,
The truants, the trouble, the weirdos, the weak
Were all lumped in Y6R
Presided over by Mr O’Hagan
A sort of Lancastrian Fagan
Who between twanging bra straps of girls unlucky enough to need them
Liked to spot insecurities and feed them.
Reading aloud? He’d spot any stammering
Lead the whole class in a verbal hammering.
Mental arithmetic? He’d never ask a kid that might shine
The answer he wanted then was always mine.
But there was that one time
When he raised my self esteem
Because in his room full of losers
The innumerate clot always lost in a dream
Somehow turned up
The school’s first ever y6 reading test perfect score:
With a reading age of at least 15.
So when Mr O’Hagan said I was
Clever
I thought it might just be true
Because nothing would make him lie to make somebody feel good.
So when I left to start anew
I believed I might be
Clever.
And the next five years
Were going to be golden:
How little I knew.
Tom Juniper Poetry 