03 Dear Teacher Read Free

we’re like different-coloured crayons …’ said Rowena.
    ‘… But we all live in the same tin,’ said Katrina.
    At times like these I realized why I loved being a teacher. I might not have the best-paid job in the world but it did have its rewards.
    ‘Time for t’bell,’ announced Jodie Cuthbertson, our new bell monitor.
    It was half past ten and I had volunteered to do the first playground duty. I collected my coffee from Vera and walked on to the school field, where Jimmy Poole was standing all alone.
    ‘Hello, Jimmy. Why are you standing here while all your friends are playing with a ball at the other end of the field?’ I asked.
    ‘Becauth I’m the goalkeeper, Mithter Theffield,’ said Jimmy simply.
    Nearby, five-year-old Terry Earnshaw was taking his role of Luke Skywalker very seriously and he eventually defeated five-year-old Damian Brown, the nose-picking Darth Vader, by flicking the elastic on his mask on to his ears. Meanwhile, the Buttle twins, as the two androids, C3PO and R2D2, tried valiantly to save Jimmy Poole as the lisping Obi-Wan Kenobi. Finally, with a pragmatism that resided somewhere between the Communist Party and the local Co-Op, seven-year old Heathcliffe Earnshaw said pacifically, ‘OK, let’s all rule t’G’lactic Empire.’
    At the end of playtime I looked into Jo’s classroom, where a group of children had resumed their paintings as part of their ‘Seaside’ project. Six-year-old Hazel Smith was painting blue stripes across the top of her A3 piece of sugar paper.
    ‘Is that the sky?’ I asked cheerfully.
    She looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘No, Mr Sheffield, jus’ paint.’
    ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ I said, feeling suitably repri-manded.
    ‘An’ this is Mary the Mermaid,’ explained Hazel. ‘She’s got a lady top ’alf an’ a fish bottom ’alf. She’s a good swimmer an’ she won’t get pregnant.’ It occurred to me that children seemed to grow up faster these days.
    On a nearby table, Elisabeth Amelia Dudley-Palmer seemed to prove the point. She was busy trying to complete her School Mathematics Project card concerning long multiplication. Jo walked in, glanced at her exercise book and frowned.
    ‘You need to work hard at your mathematics so you will be good at sums,’ said Jo.
    ‘Don’t worry, Miss,’ said Elisabeth Amelia. ‘Daddy has an excellent accountant.’
    At twelve o’clock Jodie rang the dinner bell and I walked into the school office as Vera was checking Anne and Jo’s dinner registers.
    ‘What’s for lunch?’ I said. Anne Grainger leaned out of the doorway and sniffed the air. Her sense of smell was renowned. She could recognize a damp gabardine raincoat at fifty yards. Today, however, it was the unmistakable smell of damp cabbage. Anne, with the experience of twenty-five years of school dinners behind her, sniffed the air like a French wine taster. The merest hint of the subtle bouquet of Spam fritter reached her sensitive nostrils and she nodded in recognition. ‘Spam fritters, mashed potato and cabbage,’ she said confidently.
    While the sweet pear-drop smell of the aerosol fixative, used to prevent pastel drawings from smudging, was obvious to the rest of us, the higher echelon of school odours had really only been mastered by Anne and Vera.
    ‘Correct,’ agreed Vera, half closing her eyes in deep concentration, ‘with perhaps the merest possibility of diced carrots.’
    Jo stared in awe at this exhibition of advanced sensory perception, folded up her wall chart of ‘Seaside Shells’, and walked into the school hall to join the queue for her first school dinner of the year.
    I followed her and saw Heathcliffe Earnshaw pushing into the front of the queue. ‘Go to the back of the line, Heathcliffe,’ I said.
    ‘But there’s somebody there already, Mr Sheffield,’ replied Heathcliffe, quick as a flash.
    Just behind me, Anne Grainger turned away to stifle her laughter while I scrutinized the cheerful face of the