Read in 2024 - 3: All Teachers Wise and Wonderful

All Teachers Wise and Wonderful

by Andy Seed

This is the 2nd book of Andy Seed's memoirs about his life as a primary school teacher in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1980s. I read the 1st one in January and reviewed it here.

Once again, the book follows an entire year from the beginning of the new school year, the 2nd at Cragthwaite Primary School for the young teacher who has only moved into his first own home the previous year and started a family of his own with his wife Barbara.

Their son Tom is now a toddler and soon becomes big brother to another baby boy. The young parents experience all the lack of sleep, worries about colics and how to fairly divide work in and outside the house that I suppose all young couples are familiar with.

As before, Andy comes up with all sorts of great ideas for his class. Activities in the classroom are sometimes as adventurous as out - be it the launching of bottle rockets in the field next to the school or a trip to Whitby (complete with Dracula experience). An Egyptian mummy plays an important role, and Sports Day is made really successful by an additional event a week or two later. 

One new girl is very different from the rest of Andy's class in that she causes trouble for herself and others constantly, and no approach seems to reach her. What she gets up to and how her teacher, the Head and even some of her long-suffering classmates try to help her runs through the entire book.

Just like before, each chapter has the name of one child as its title, and while the chapter may cover many other events, the focus is on that child. I enjoyed this way of writing about a school the first time round, and it was no different this time.

The third book is already on my kindle, but I am reading something else first, to make a change.