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–A blog I did not feel like writing, but one I knew I had to write….-

A true personal story about one teacher who did not deserve my silence then, so now I speak. For myself, now that I have finally found the voice the fifteen year me did not have ❤️

A little background first: When I was in secondary school, (Amsterdam) I think the second or third year (and about fifteen years old, not older, perhaps fourteen) one of the compulsory subjects was Dutch literature. Our teacher R.A was a published author, something I only found out later. Unknown and not famous to us (nor very known in general) but he had published novels. He must have been around 50 years old.

I have no memories of his classes before this all started. My first one is that we received an assignment to write an essay with arguments to support a case. I always loved writing and we were free to choose any topic. I put a lot of effort in, did research and was satisfied with the result.

I wondered if I should have picked a different, easier topic to write about and I cannot even remember why I chose it, but it does not matter for what I wish to convey.

When we received our grades, mine was rather low compared to my past successes and what other pupils scored. I showed my parents as they asked about it and I remember my mother wanted to know his reasoning for the low score and how I could have improved it. I would much rather have left it at that (…) as I had never questioned a grade before and would have been happier to make less waves, but they were adamant to pursue it.

After what they thought would be a friendly chat with the teacher (part of it happened in a hallway with the headmaster, I am not sure why, but it was the only time when I was present and where I had wished for an invisibility cloak) they concluded that his personal opinion about my essay’s topic possibly clouded his judgement from details I do not fully know until this day.

Something that should not have mattered at all in his professional capacity, did. I used articles from the library and some personal, documented facts about what happened to an ancestor of mine. How is a fifteen year old supposed to have well-formed, mature opinions to write about?

My parents then decided to go a step further and asked for a second opinion. Their request was accepted by the school. My work was assessed for a second time, now by a literature teacher who did not know me. This time, the same essay, received a higher grade (one I had expected in the first place, taking previous writings into account)

The whole situation caused me a lot of embarrassment and anxiety, now worrying how I was to continue classes with this same teacher, but I hoped we could forget about it all. The essay was how it started, but what ensued was worse.

I was only fifteen. A very shy, quiet girl who would sit at the front desks in each classroom, doing her work.

The literature class from that moment on was different. Sitting at one of the front desks of the classroom, R.A started to make constant eye contact with me. At first I tried to ignore it, but soon I realised it was very intentional. There was no denying it, no matter how hard I tried by diving into the books in front of me. You could feel the stare. Every single class, it was like I had suddenly become his favourite pet, but in the sense of a deranged person’s animal who he lovingly strokes and then violently chokes.

He had a preference for certain authors and would always read excerpts from their novels . His favourite parts were the vulgar ones (…) that would cause a stir in the group.

One time, I vividly remember, he was reading one such passage, were the author mentioned the genitals of a cow (I cannot remember the context but remember the word well) and when uttering the word(s) describing the genitals in detail (!) he looked at me with intent as if addressing only me and formed the words so deliberately with his lips and tongue, while holding his gaze on me. I would shudder and look away. He was only doing this with me, not with the other pupils/students.

Reading this graphic content would have the teenage boys howl, which would encourage him to emphasise it even more (!) There was no literary reason whatsoever to talk about such things or this particular novel in such detail nor to choose this vulgar book, except a predator’s fantasy at work.

I literally have no memory of talking about this with schoolmates, nor that anyone said anything to me. Difficult to imagine it was never discussed as it would have been impossible not to have noticed (and we talked about all teachers at length as you do) I have no memory of who sat next to me and what their reaction was, if any. Although my memory is foggy on this part, I must have been worried about the work I yet had to do in his class (would future written work be judged in a biased way or not) and other pupils could not have been blind to his manipulative ways and must have feared him too.

There is more. At other times, during class and this is something I recall vividly to this day, he would walk around and suddenly sit down on my small desk, his back towards my face: his behind just a few inches or less from my face (!) while he was lecturing. A very awkward situation: it had to be seen to be understood how inappropriate it was. Sometimes he would stand next to my desk, an inch away from my arm, uncomfortably long.

My fifteen year old self did not have the capacity to (loudly) object to this unacceptable behaviour. I was frozen, dissociated, scared. I am not describing a leaning position here, I mean fully sitting his bum on my desk, so close to me that there was no escape. The embarrassment was a full body experience. Why did I not complain to the headmaster? (the one who understood our request regarding essay-gate) It was not his word against mine: I had thirty witnesses after all. It never crossed my mind. If it had happened in this day and age it would have been recorded on a phone by someone.

I was outspoken in my essay, but silent about his treatment.

This went on until the next schoolyear when I got another teacher. The staring and sitting on my desk, loudly mentioning my name in class, in front of my peers, over and over again, making my name rhyme while asking for my opinion on random things. Possibly other things I have forgotten. It left me terribly embarrassed and humiliated. Classic bullying, openly, mostly with either a slight sexual undertone or a blatantly obvious one.

I told my parents about my grade that time, but never mentioned what happened after it…..Never. I don’t remember if I even considered telling them. I might have dreaded another confrontation. I thought I had put it behind me once I had another teacher (a completely different experience) and graduated the year after, until one day, many years later, I heard something on tv.

I wasn’t paying attention and doing chores, when, out of the blue, I hear the teacher’s name mentioned. The way a famous Dutch author (bestseller writer) was describing him, quite heated, had my full attention:

“R.A? He is such an arrogant, stuck up literature teacher!”

That was the first time I heard his name after many years and on tv! It was live or I would have listened to that comment a few times. What did he just say? Around the same time, my mother brought me the newest book written by this teacher. We had both never read his work and she found it on sale. I was quite curious actually and did not know what I was about to read.

The novel was about a 32 year old literature teacher who starts a relationship (sexual) with his 17 year old (or 19, cannot remember, but could have in reality been a 15 year old and masked as older….) pupil/student who wears a hijab. He describes in detail how she would “only take off the hijab during their sexual intercourse.” I don’t know how this, to say the least, provocative book, was received in the media nor if his other novels had similar themes.

The story made me sick to the stomach. They say that authors often write about themselves in their characters and if so, this one was too obvious. In his real life, I found out, the teacher himself was married to an ex-pupil (..I was not surprised…) I recognised him in every single word he wrote: his provocative speeches, the bullying, mocking, perverted and predatory behaviour. His sudden change in attitude, exaggerated mannerisms, narcissism, phony friendliness towards me and comments that put me on the spot in front of all pupils. How he tried to degrade me, punish me and how it was visibly turning him on.

I dreaded going to his classes and seriously must have been dissociated to make it through them. Feeling like the centre of unwanted attention for an hour or two, felt like an eternity.

I started thinking how many pupils he must have treated in the same way and possibly more horribly . I had been lucky to have escaped worse sexual harassment. But….he had also been ‘lucky’ on his part. I now realise he was clever and very manipulative. His sense of entitlement was through the roof. He was careful and careless at the same time; never alone with me but also the verbal harassment in front of all my peers, with that constant sexual undertone, both subtle and shameless. Seen from my current perspective he was a classic pervert and narcissist and it was a turn on for him.

He was very unattractive (physically and character wise) and what could have been if he had been very good-looking? (Although as a figure of authority, which a teacher is, often, physical attractiveness does not even matter and girls are manipulated and seduced by the ugliest of predators due to their authority status….)

I have waited to write about if for years; being reminded of it is still triggering.

If this was today, the chance of me speaking up would be much higher than my fifteen year old self ever could, although we never know in a situation like that. I have had many a daydream where he would sit down on my desk as usual, just to land on my opened, very sharp, pointy compass. Where my thirty witnesses did support me, loudly through the hallways and where he was fired, leaving the school with his disgusting books.

R.A., well….I heard he has long passed away since. Even if he had not, I would not have wanted to meet and confront him. I have met others, later in life, who sang from the same song sheet. One cannot communicate with a narcissist.

This is for the fifteen year old me. ❤️ This is for all the girls who are or have been in similar situations and, sadly, more dangerous ones. Where the teacher was the predator instead of your support, as should have been. It was never your fault ❤️ I wish you healing, your strength to come back to you, peace and safety and to be fully free from that evil. May the predators face their deeds forever.

Silvia

Do you know that Vincent van Gogh quote: “If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint”, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”?

It is something I think about a lot. My daughter (8) likes to draw. Now, you see, she likes it very much and is always drawing. Observing her and the freedom she has to do it, in her own time and on her own pace, without judgement, comparison to others/peers or disapproval, is something special. Just encouragement, joy and freedom to explore, develop and pursue what makes her heart sing.

Something that has never crossed my daughter’s mind regarding her art, is something that has always been in mine: I believe I cannot draw, still, to this day. This was ‘planted’ in my mind, first as a little seed, then spread as ugly tentacles, decades further. I was told over and over, from childhood, to my student years, that I cannot draw . One look at the drawing I worked at or the painting I made would be enough for them to know. The disapproving looks, sometimes pity and even loud critisism in front of my peers. The others, whose portrait-noses did not look like bananas, also received loud comments in front of their peers, but of praise.

This wasn’t about those rare moments where you would actually get good advice how to improve your work. That little push you needed to overcome the fear of the blank paper staring back at you. This was about doors closing. “Not good enough and that’s the end of it.”

Each comment of the “professionals”, (art teachers mostly) seemed to cement the belief deeper. “I cannot draw at all!”. I did not realise yet, at the time, how destructive these comments were and how my inner critic was parroting it. I believed them, I believed the voice and all the joy of creating that was left, trickled away after every disapproval. I even started making fun of how ‘untalented’ I was: (since I was now being perceived as not being able to draw by literally everyone) “I can’t even draw a circle!”, I would exclaim, accompanied by a smile. I thought they were right. My drawings looked like the erased Whistler’s mother painting in the Mr.Bean movie…..after the ballpoint stain and his fully devoted, but clumsy and futile attempts to save it. There was no way I could draw from a bird’s-eye perspective, like some so easily could. Dimensions, landscapes…animals, cities…and the toughest of all: portraits…The assignments they gave were just out of my league.

My discomfort did not come from my toddler-like-art. It came from how it was approached.

You cannot draw? The “cannot draw”, is hardly possible. How could it be? Everyone can draw with functions in tact. What it is, is that someone thinks you don’t draw according to their demands or expectations. Not everyone needs to be a Rembrandt. A Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir. Mediocre is good.(some less than mediocre artists earn millions) Enjoying the process of creation is even better.

The art teachers who made me believe this lie, consciously or unconsciously, had something elitist about them and were very bad teachers. Not much teaching was happening at all. An Art is for the few-attitude (cue very posh accent) “Not everyone is or can be an artist!”  I wonder how they perceive the “Peanut butter on a carpet” that sold for a high price….. The paintings that are just one big blue canvas. The glasses left forgotten in a corner in a museum that made visitors think it was part of an exhibition……. The Mondrian painting that hung ‘upside down’ and no one knew for decades……Artificial Intelligence paintings……

Or…what about…The people with disabled limbs painting with their mouth or feet? The non-verbal man who draws entire cities from above, just from memory? The microscopic carving of items done in between heart beats? Three dimensional art on a lift floor that makes people hesitate to enter?

I read something, somewhere, saying:

-Perfectionism is about the creation, not the creator-

This stuck with me. The perpetual disapproval made me forget, entirely, about ME. They changed my inner voice, but they did not make me into them. I treasure all my daughter’s drawings. They did not make me believe that I am not creative. I always knew I was. I think I should start again, after decades of barely drawing, inspired by my daughter being free of those chains that held me for too long. Not to be underestimated, this will require hard work and persistence. Deleting the ugly comments of the even uglier people, one by one. Erasing the internalised lie and dismissing that jury once and for all.

Children drawing and painting with joy? Oh…let them….! Encourage them! May they never have to filter out nor battle the internalised lie.

For all you of out there still hearing the critics voice: Let’s be free, make art, good enough, ugly, mediocre or great, as a celebration of no judgement, an “I can draw- party”, an I’m good enough-celebration and a middle-finger to the failed art teachers. Get that pencil/brush to work and start with a…circle? 🙂 ❤️ 

(replace “art teacher” with any other subject and realise what happens to children, worldwide, on a daily basis and what impact it has on their future…..)

While I have very few memories of my primary school years (hardly any between 5 and 10 years of age and those I am starting to recollect are not pleasant) I have many of secondary school. I reckon not less traumatic, but there were some characters along the way that brightened those dark days and left me with some nicer memories too. (For context, I was about fifteen years old at that time)

One, perhaps the most memorable character, was my geography teacher Mister Thay.

He was a born storyteller and we would never know beforehand where the hour spent with him would take us. Interesting as the subject was Geography! Growing up in Indonesia and having travelled far and wide, he had many stories to tell. He was fair, very direct, chaotic, creative and had a great sense of humour.

Sitting front row with my friend, we had the best seats in the house. He would always sit while teaching, while playing with his keys.

He would usually start with the topic of the day, let’s say topography of the African continent. He would then, in the middle of an exploration of vegetation, make a connection to an experience he had, growing up in the Indonesian countryside. He would bring up grandma’s cooking. Describing the ingredients she used, his face would change expressions as if he was there again, for a brief moment, taste testing her freshly made sambal and grandma would be asking for her little boy’s approval, asking: “hot enough?”, which would come with just a firm nod and smile of his fiery red cheeks and lips. Coming back to reality, he would mention a tribe in Papua New Guinnea where they made a similar side dish that was still nowhere near his grandma’s creation. This would be followed, every single time, by a loud exclamation of “how did I get to this point?!“, “I digress!” or “who distracted me?!”

His classes ignited my, at that time, obsession for maps and topography.

One time, he told us a story of a teambuilding day he had with all teachers from the school. I cannot remember why he shared it with us, just that he clearly enjoyed talking about it and I am so glad he gave us this little peak behind the curtain. He described how these days made him feel as:

“I was bored out of my mind”

and later I came to realize that this sentence summarised my entire schooling, student-years and most of my job.

He told us about his partner-in-crime on those days and it was colleague Mrs.Shim . Now, at this moment, my friend, sitting next to me- and I looked at each other in total disbelief. Mrs. Shim was the physical education teacher, the Victorian sports lover with her spartan methods (see a few posts below for a few words about her) Her hair looked like a white, unused mop and she was thin as a stick. As I knew, in my attempts to avoid the P.E lessons I sat next to her often, she smelled of old attics and unwashed second hand clothes that were stored for a while. A possible friendship between her and our beloved Mr.Thay was as unlikely as anything.

She was Mr. Thay’s partner-in-crime?

He continued with his story about that day. Mr.Thay and Mrs.Shim were both bored out of their minds on the teambuilding day, while other colleagues seemed to obediently do what they were told: follow the planning of the day, participate in the activities in groups they were placed in. Now, these activities are often so generic, without taking experience, personal interests, nor individual preferences into account. Our bored duo, with both over two decades of experience under their belts, had no intention of wasting their time on making spider-diagrams all day. According to Mr.Thay, they always had ideas to beat the boredom.

Mr.Thay would go down to reception (it was always being held in a shabby yet large hotel) and make up a story for an emergency message to be broadcast through the intercom (apparently the hotel’s conference hall had such a system) The message could be: “Will the owner of a blue Ford Taunus, registration XP-14-LD come down immediately please, you are blocking the exit in the garage.“ The Ford Taunus being Mrs.Shim’s car. She would run down, knowing full well her car was not blocking any entrance.

In another instance, Mrs.Shim would have hotel staff tell a certain colleague there was a call from their vet’s office. Resulting in confusion, at times. He continued- Before the lunch buffet, they would replace shrimps with tiny pink marshmallows. They would put funny badges on instead of their names, ‘out-of-order’ signs on all lifts and ‘wet paint’ signs on the stairs. It beat the boring activities by far.

I listened to his story, breathless, laughing at times and all the while signaling to my friend, in disbelief, how this could be the same Mrs.Shi, our dreaded P.E teacher. Mr.Thay confirmed it was and calling her by her first name now made our confusion reach a climax.

I think of this still, till this day. Firstly, as we perceived teacher Shim as a Dictator with hair like a mop on a thin stick, an entity devoid of all emotion. This experience made her….. somehow….a bit more human. Someone with a pet perhaps, a love for fine wines, strolls on a Sunday morning? Reading detectives, gardening, playing scrabble, jazz music?

Although I had trouble believing that this same person could be so witty and fun to be around, with a mind of her own, hearing this made her a little human, no matter how much I detested her lessons. No matter how this alter-ego was hidden for us. I wish she would have showed that side more to us and wondered why she never did. But now I knew it existed inside her. Secondly, when I experienced team building days myself, later, when I was a teacher (albeit primary school, but same thing) I realised the ‘bored out of my mind’ scenario..I wish I could have had a partner-in-crime this funny, during my entire career.

In the last school I worked there was a colleague with a similar sense of humour and on such days, if we had the luck to be in the same group, while doing some pointless activity, (there might have been a point to it for some, but not for us) we would howl with laughter, while others would get irritated as we were not serious enough with the activities (those that bored you out of your mind) or uncomfortable, because they were too scared to stand out from the crowd and we reminded them of it.

Mr.Thay would have been a great asset on those days and now that I think of it, perhaps his style rubbed off on me: I tend to jump from one story to the other as well.

I could see him and Mrs.Shim, now a little bit more human, sitting on a bench in the shabby hotel lobby, chewing on marshmallows instead of shrimps, plotting their next prank, to get through the boring days. It reminds me of a time, a decade later, when a pupil, while I was teaching my own class, that one time, saw me eat instant noodle soup (they would usually only see me eat fruit and salads as it would be early in the day) He looked at me and said: ” Oh, I’m so happy to see you eat a warm meal for once!” Perhaps, for a brief moment there, he saw me as a little bit more human.

Dedicated to Mr.Thay, who made me see, early on, that learning never can, is not, nor should ever be boring.

❤️

I’m Simi, formerly a primary school teacher and tutor (Europe) of nearly fifteen years, turned passionate home educator, home educating my only child. We are based in England. In this blog I will tell you stories of my experience in a system that was meant to be broken and of the wild ride from forced mainstream teaching to unschooling.

~”And now it feels like full circle. My daughter has always lived life without school, but I hear the stories from fellow home educators and their children, who were in the system but left….the stories of their children crying on the kitchen floor on a Sunday evening, because they dread going back on Monday…and facing their bullies…The world becoming stranger and more dangerous, upside down and backwards….and their relief when they take them home….to live, to learn….in freedom.”

This is our journey of a learner.

I write about both my experience as a teacher and as a pupil and the thread that takes me there and back, again and again, connecting to the now, the why of my choices and the journey I am on with my daughter.

Follow us on instagram @thejourneyofalearner for more visual storytelling and our daily adventures.

1) As the author of the blogs you will see ‘thechronicpainchallenge’; this is my ‘admin signature’ here – it is my other page with the story of my chronic pain journey. Do take a look if that speaks to you as well: http://www.thechronicpainchallenge.org

2) I am not very technical and post all of these myself, there might be clumsy mistakes along the way 🙂

3) English is not my native language (=third) You may notice…or not 😉

Simi.