What Page Sir: The Joy of Text in a Secondary School Classroom

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

'If Mr Pickering had done his job well and taught me the right syllabus, maybe I would have studied English at university. He didn't and now I'm a full time drummer who loves Pride and Prejudice. I guess it worked out in the end' - Femi Koleoso, drummer (Gorillaz and The Ezra Collective) 'An infallible guide to the pleasures and pitfalls of teaching the strange canon of texts selected for this annual trial by ordeal. Sharp critical insights combine with hilarious anecdotes... Highly recommended' - Professor David Duff, Queen Mary University of London What Page, Sir records the hilarious and sometimes painful experience of an English teacher as he struggles through some very familiar literary texts with some very unenthusiastic teenagers. Alongside the comedy that a teacher could really live without, is a fresh and irreverent look at the stalwarts of the school curriculum. Featuring An Inspector Calls, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, plus the obvious works by Jane Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare texts that seem to have been the staple for secondary schools forever, and, in some cases, remain a drag for everyone involved. But beneath the buffoonery in the classroom, this book makes a more serious point about the education we are serving up for our children and whether it's finally time for change.

Author Bio

What Page, Sir is Simon Pickering's fifth book. He began writing in 2016 on the train home from his job as a school teacher - an antidote to difficult teenagers and pointless government and Senior Leadership initiatives. These are both explored in Ambassadors and Zombies - A Teacher's Guide to Schools and Teaching. As Adam Tangent, his alter ego, he has published Those Who Can't - A Teacher's Gap Years, based on his two years pretending to be a lecturer in post-communist Poland at the start of the 1990s. Simon is still a school teacher and lives in Hertford with his wife and two children.