The Daily Write

The Invisible Pupil

When teachers don’t invest in you…

June 2nd: Who was your favourite teacher or mentor growing up, and why?

I felt quite worried when I saw the 2nd prompt for the June writing challenge which in itself made me reflect on whether it’s because I have a bad memory or I sadly wasn’t blessed with a teacher or mentor who inspired me…

I think it’s probably a bit of both…

I was born in the late 70’s in England & spent the 80’s in primary school & the early 90’s saw me go up through secondary school.

I live in a rural area that’s famous for making shoes, for the iconic image of ‘Tor Hill’ & for hosting a festival on a farm in June.

Many of my memories of school are just based upon friendships & those whispering rumours of teachers having affairs…

There were a couple of relatable & memorable teachers, some funny ones as well — including an English teacher who was still ‘old school’ and liked to lob a wooden chalk-board rubber at the heads of non-compliant ‘pesky’ pupils as he would fondly refer to us.

He was probably one of my ‘favourites’ due to my love of English & how entertaining he was with his stories — unless he decided you were talking too much & dished out his unique punishment of 10 or 20 push-ups for the boys or sit-ups for the girls during the lesson, at the front of the class…

I was a pupil without a unique talent — I couldn’t play an instrument, although I had loved giving the trumpet a go I had to admit defeat pretty quickly… I wasn’t great at sports or art & I was not top of the class — not a low-achiever, but not outstanding you could say…

This meant that teachers didn't really invest in you — they didn’t really notice you other than to quieten you down. Whilst others felt encouraged due to their footballing skills, beautiful creativity or for their singing or acting talents, the rest of us just got on with it.

However, despite this lack of encouragement I had felt back then, I was able to return to education & funnily enough, I trained as a Teacher in my mid-twenties! Since then I have re-trained as a counsellor & achieved a Masters Degree (MA) with Distinction in Counselling & Psychotherapy Practice at the ripe old age of 44!

I do sometimes wonder if they’d be shocked at my progress over the years, so maybe that ingrained love of approval & praise remains

My influences:

I have always said that books were my teacher, and my love of music opened my eyes to things going on across the world — remember this was pre-internet for the most part (I’m now fondly remembering those big old computers in a small & dark classroom at the top of ‘Tower Block’ …)

Music & reading has undoubtedly been more influential for me than any of the teachers that I came across — I’ve lots of those I could talk about, but I’ll save that for another post 🥁

Lynsey 💚

KEY MESSAGE: Even if you didn’t have that teacher or mentor to encourage & believe in you, find that belief in yourself & never give up on learning.

💚 If you like what you read, you can buy me a coffee ☕️

💚 If you’d like to keep up to date when I publish an article, click here 📝

💚 To get paid for writing on here, you can join Medium here using my link:

https://medium.com/@lynseywall.uk

Some of my other stories: