Even teachers cry · Sat Sep 9, 08:51 by Eleri Straker
A former colleague died last week. She was the head of English at my present school when I first taught in England.
Kim was an old-fashioned English teacher who loved literature and Shakespeare. She told me once that one of her ambitions was to see every play the Bard wrote at the RSC in Stratford. At the time, she had apparently only King John left to see. Then, I didn’t really understand her passion. Now I do.
I spoke to a friend, a long-time learning assistant at the school who had worked with Kim over the years and she said how Kim had introduced her to Shakespeare and woken an unaccustomed passion in her. She had initially been rather frightened of her: Kim was efficient and sometimes brusque and certainly didn’t suffer fools gladly or otherwise. But once you got past that occasionally forbidding exterior, she was warm, friendly and understanding. Both staff and students who needed help, either emotional or academic found her generous to a fault.
However, Kim herself seemed unable to ask for help. I remember watching this strong woman eventually crumble under the weight of grief for her dying mother, a grief that she tried hard to ignore. She would not ask for what she herself would willingly give to others: patience, understanding and tolerance.
I liked and admired Kim. She knew her job and did it well. But more than this, she loved what she did. She had no qualms in showing emotion if she read a piece of literature that moved her. She believed that students should see that teachers are capable of emotional involvement in books, that some pieces of literature are so wonderful that they can touch your soul. I understand this and seeing that someone like Kim could be so open in her response to literature made me realise that I too could do the same thing. When Othello makes his last speech about the ‘base Indian’ or Ralph weeps for the loss of innocence and the fall through the air of a true wise friend called Piggy, I too allow my students to see genuine emotion. Kim made it permissible to openly express a love of words, and that made me realise that I could do it too. And that is part of her legacy to us in the department and in honour of her memory, I will continue to share my passion for books with my students and let them know that even teachers cry.
