Circle of being, with additional thanks to Mr Volke!

When I was a very new mother I read loads of books about parenting. Most I kept little bits of and discarded the rest, many I have since come to decide were not worth the paper they were written on and really I only paid heed to the ones which suited me anyway. But one which always stuck in my mind and I have actually recommended to someone in my new professional capacity at the library is by Susan Jeffers and is called I’m okay – you’re a brat! . I have to concede that plenty of what it says doesn’t sit so comfortably with my parenting views now, particularly since I decided to Home Educate but there were elements of it which I really liked and help with the balance of the whole ‘I blame the parents’ guilt over every single litle trait and behaviour your child might demonstrate. It talked about a ‘child’s circle of being’ and said that during a child’s formative years there would be all sorts of influences on them as well as their parents and that it was impossible to gague or control who had what level of influence too. It mentioned peers, family members, friends, teachers, church leaders, neighbours and so on – basically the extended circle within which your child moves through childhood aswell as fictional characters, celebrities and heros. I think that while true to a lesser degree for a Home Educated child and without trying to shirk any parental responsibility this is very true. It can be a very chance meeting or encounter with someone that shapes someone’s life and whilst there is no denying your parenting plays a big role in who you are / how you see the world I know that were I to list the 10 people I feel have had most influence on me (so far) they range from people who touched my life briefly and have long since left it to people who don’t even exist as well as my parents and indeed now, my own children.

I blogged a while ago about people you wonder about from time to time or refer to when talking sometimes. I was reminded on Saturday at the Writing Day about a teacher I had in 1984-5 – I would have been 10/11, the second to last year of junior school. He was the first male teacher I’d had – no idea what the ratios are like now but when I was at school make teachers were very much the minority, particularly when I reached senior school and was at an all-girls school anyway where only Science was taught by a male teacher. I guess primary and juniors are less likely somehow to attract men? Anyway, he was a large, loud man, married to a woman who did occassional supply teaching in the same school and with a young daughter several years behind me. This was back in the days before National Curriculums when who your teacher was depended on what you were taught, following their passions and interests to a large degree. Mr Volke covered Maths but it was pages out of the Nuffield textbooks and Science was taught down the corridor by someone else, PE was another teacher again as was music. What we had a lot of in Mr Volke’s classroom was Art and English. We would regularly start our school day with him writing up a choice of ten story titles on the blackboard and being told to choose whichever one we wanted and write it. I recall stories I wrote entitled things like ‘How Embarassing!’ and ‘Stone Me!’. We ended every day with him reading a story aloud to us, something you don’t get a lot of by the time you are 10/11 and we were allowed to either put our heads down on our desks and just listen to him reading, or we all had a plain paper exercise book which we could draw and colour in while we listened, often the stories he read inspiring our art. He also encouraged what he called a ‘Think Book’ which was a diary of sorts – filled with thoughts, ideas and pictures. None of these items was ever collected in and marked or even had to be shared with anyone else if we didn’t want to. Another activity we spent a lot of time on in Mr Volke’s class was projects – on any subject of our choice with loads of time allowed for concentrating on these works. We would present them in project folders and had to do research, using the school library, written work, illustrations etc. My last project was on all the teachers in the school – I wrote a poem about each of them (I imagine you can guess the sort of style they were written in! 😉 ) and drew pictures of them all. Mr Volke made me take it round to show them all and got me to ask them to all sign it to keep as a momento – most of them asked for copies of the page on them and I imagine it is still somewhere in my parents loft. The year I spent being taught by Mr Volke was easily my happiest, most productive school year of my life. I was encouraged, praised, developed and given autonomy in subject matter, output and method of learning. If schools were staffed by armies of Mr Volke’s and the NC didn’t exist I imagine not only would Davies and Scarlett be attending them I’d probably want to be teaching at one myself!

Rumour had it that Mr Volke wrote or illustrated for The Beano although I’m not sure if any of us in the class ever asked him. I wondered last week what had become of him, having cited him over the years as both the best teacher I ever had and a major source of inspiration and motivation for pursuits I still get much enjoyment from today (writing and drawing) so I spent some time googling and looking at friendsreunited and my old school website earlier this week. I didn’t track him down but it cannot be a coincidence that there is a children’s author, with many books published by a publishing house in West Sussex and a fair few books written for classroom use with the same name. I’m very inclined to contact the publishers and ask if it is the same person and if so just drop him a line telling him what a great job I thought he did as my teacher – if ever I have something to boast about in terms of my own creativity I may well do so and offer him some of the credit for it! Whenever I write something I am proud of I often picture him enjoying it and praising me for it.

I don’t think I can be both Mother and Mr Volke to my children although I don’t think I’m preventing them from meeting their Mr Volke by not subjecting them to school – to be honest I’m not even sure the other 10 years I spent in school were justified by Mr Volke for that one year, infact I think there is far more change of meeting inspirational, motivational people out and about in the world today that stood infront of an ‘interactive whiteboard’, particularly listening to the teachers I come into contact with in various places who wouldn’t have a hope of giving the sort of education I was lucky enough to recieve for that year. Days when I fret about whether I am exposing the children to everything they need to spark fire in them for the path in life they will tread I remember Susan Jeffer’s Circle of Being and Mr Volke on my list and know that when those key people come along in my childrens’ lives they will all find a way of getting across the message they were sent to deliver and recieving it loud and clear, even if at the time they don’t recognise it as having the gravity it will one day hold.