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At the chalkface: Of Mice and Men and Gove

Curriculum Teaching staff English
Good classes and difficult classes – especially difficult classes – were mesmerised. Wild boys, who never read a book, listened, rapt. I never got bored reading it for the umpteenth time and they never got bored hearing it for the first.

I taught Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men for nigh on 40 years, man and boy. It was a set text for the 11th years. It never failed. Good classes and difficult classes – especially difficult classes – were mesmerised. Wild boys, who never read a book, listened, rapt. I never got bored reading it for the umpteenth time and they never got bored hearing it for the first.

I honed it down over the years to near perfection. I was good – shameless, big-headed and melodramatic. I’d unleash my best Woody Guthrie or Bruce Springsteen on the lucky pupils and ride roughshod over Ofsted silly criteria.

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