teachers

there have been quite a few articles in the press recently about how many trained teachers are no longer in the profession. one caught my eye today in the times. it made me laugh:

'i know why i left teaching - i earned enough as a writer not to need the money anymore. but where are the other quarter of a million former teachers? are there train drivers out there giving their tardy passengers the baleful eye and telling them it's their own time they're wasting? is a store manager at john lewis likely to snap at any minute and tell a vexing customer that if it's so funny, perhaps they'd like to share the joke with the rest of the shop?'

the article carries on in the same vein, until the final paragraph, where the writer (natalie haynes) explains why she left the profession:

'i once went to a job interview ... which precipitated my exit from the profession. it wasn't the hopeless trudging of the children around the corridors that did it, or the dead-eyed stare of the head [of department]. it was the fact that they'd brought biscuits into the staffroom in honour of us, the interviewees. now, don't get me wrong, i'm a fan of biscuits. but the staffroom lit up with excitement purely on account of these biscuits. in that moment, i realised i couldn't spend another second in the company of people for whom a biscuit was the genuine highlight of their day'

luckily my school is a happy place to be most of the time. but it is still spookily true how excited teachers get about biscuits and cakes in the staffroom.