This was necessary to protect the innocent, or perhaps the guilty. So, I’ve taken all my memories of different educational settings, classroom events, teachers and pupils, and metaphorically thrown them in the air, letting them come down thoroughly jumbled up. I’ve been careful to say that it’s an account of a ‘typical’ year. You’ve been keen to market this book as a memoir, and I’m wondering how you would define that? Also, how true is it, in terms of factual content? Fascinated by her experiences of secondary teaching, different to my primary ones, I interviewed Fran about the book and her motivation for writing it. Stuck at home during Lockdown and actually missing school after 50+ years in class, child and adult, this book was a welcome reminder for me of the best and worse of our school days. Particularly when not all of our memories are good ones. Fran Hill shows how different versions of ourselves, forged in childhood, that most pervasive of identities, can rear their heads again and again as we witness the agony and ecstacy of being young. Lucky enough to have reviewed a pre-publication copy, I can tell you this memoir is tender, warm, honest and very, very funny, a kind of fifty-something Bridget Jones Diary meets Adam Kay’s This is going to hurt.īut the book is more than a laugh-out-loud, affectionate dance through the joys and frustrations of working with wayward kids and crazy colleagues. If not, it will give you a fascinating glimpse into a world necessarily shadowy and often closed to those outside it. If you teach, it will have you nodding with recognition. Charting the life of a secondary English teacher over the course of an academic year, the book is testament to the patience, resilience and humour of those who choose to enter this most noble, though often maligned profession.
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