Who Actually Calls Rain Precipitation Anyway? (The long Story)

I missed a LOT of my primary education. A lot. Whole terms sometimes, days off here and there which often turned into weeks at a time. This was the pattern from P1 to 4th year.

Except for Primary 7.

The reasons for the absence were myriad, not important for what I'm going to try and say. When I did turn up at school I was "behind", noticeably and humiliatingly. Poorly hidden tears dropped on to pages of squares in maths jotters. I internalised my teachers’ frustrations and worried I was just frustrating.

I can still feel the panic at the tobacco tin of words, and what it felt like when my classmates had words in their books and mine had few. Spot the Dog picture books. I hated that little Labrador puppy.

So how did I "catch up" assuming I'm actually caught up that is. Being University Educated might count in some people's books, but I only learned what precipitation was when I was 23. Some gaps remain

Presuming though I'm "caught up" I've often wondered if there is anything in my experience that is broadly applicable or was my journey through education peculiar to only me? I've wondered this before, you know BC (before covid) and come up with a few theories from time to time. So for what it's worth here is what I think might have helped me "catch up".

I think it started in primary 7. My teacher was what would be called "old school". For me it was a happy, calm classroom and while I don't know if the approach worked for everyone it definitely worked for me. The routines were predictable, and the way to succeed was clearly laid out, nothing fancy and nothing hidden. We wrote every day, learned our tables by rote and recited them in speed competitions. We had weekly spelling tests from lists we were expected to learn at home.

My first question is how on earth did I go from a non attender, non enthusiast and engage with this uninspired regime? Take home the lists, practice tables in front of the mirror, write out spelling words endlessly? Had my home life become more settled? Conducive and supportive? Nope. In fact it was probably now harder to get to school. I had to take two buses then walk the half mile to the school gate. All under my own steam. From setting my alarm, laying out and often hand washing my school clothes. Yet I barely missed a school day in primary 7. I couldn't wait to get there.

Every day class started the same. We would write in silence. I could hardly wait for the question she'd come up with. Occasionally I had the impression she'd only just thought of the topic but I'd hang on every word of the brief explanation and every day filled my page with my attempt. Always in the hope that you'd win "the prize". Her reading the "good ones" the next day.

She had a teaching stick too. We'd sit in a circle and she'd point it at us as she asked us mental maths questions. If you got it wrong you had to sit down. The excitement was electric, like a really intense sporting event. We all felt it, and she seemed expert at making sure her questions were just tricky enough for whoever was in front of her so we were all participating and totally invested. I didn't miss a day of her class if I could possibly help it. I squirreled away my bus fares or would walk to a relative's to borrow money if I needed to.

One day while standing at my primary 7 teacher's desk (in what would be called "wasted time" these days). I'd sit on the little footstools and look at my work, sometimes I'd get up and go back to my desk because I'd seen something I needed to change and didn't want her to see it first.

Well one day I'd gotten to her desk and was watching her pen eagerly as she marked my jotter and she let down her guard, and said quietly. "How come you are here every day when you used to miss so much school?". I thought my heart would burst out of my chest. I was uncomfortable being confronted like this. But I told her in a whisper "I like primary 7", and in an even quieter voice still "and I like you."

She didn't prolong it, I wasn't even sure she'd heard me. She closed my jotter and gave me my next instruction as if what had gone before never occurred.

On another day, she'd asked me to wait behind with a friend before lunch. She asked me to play the fairy godmother in the school play-the staring role and my friend was to be Cinderella. I was excited but terrified and told her that, but when she told me she knew I could do it I believed her.

It wasn't all plain sailing. One day as the class lined up outside the music room one of the boys in my class misjudged his come back during some semi-friendly banter when he said "ha your dad's dead". I swore at him very loudly-the f bomb was in there and I hit him...or kicked him...one of the two.

Which obviously all caught my teachers attention. She came down hard and wouldn't listen to my teary protestations/explanation. She demanded I not say another word. I bit back tears as the now silent class moved toward the door but instead of turning right into the classroom I kept walking. I didn't stop till I'd reached my grans house 3 miles away.

My teacher didn't speak to me for about a week after that, she wouldn't even look at me. You better believe I worked to get back in her good books. I've no idea what I learned from that and who was right or wrong but she didn't lose my respect, not one little bit, quite the opposite.

Primary 7 didn't get me on the straight and narrow though, not by a long chalk. High school wouldn't go much better than the rest of my primary career. More attitude and rage and lots more absence. I really think I had no clue that 3rd and 4th year had any significance whatsoever.

I'd been absent for the second year tests that determined your "set". I remember completing the English test in a cupboard. Somehow I was put into the top English class and second top maths class. I didn't last long in the maths class I just couldn't keep up, my lacklustre attitude and sporadic appearances just weren't cutting it. I was swiftly put in a lower class, which apart from the brief walk of shame at the start of the class, registered with me not a jot!

And the English class? Well despite my best efforts I stayed in that class! Mrs R she was called, the English teacher. Anything I ever wrote she covered in red, no one spoke in the class and everyone seemed to want to...well work.

One day I approached her and asked if I could be put in a different class because it was too hard (more to the point all my friends were in other classes). She point blank refused to let me go. Though that refusal was lost on me then, its been a life lesson I've returned to and appreciated since.

So let's start wrapping this up and getting to the point. So my 4th year prelims were a disaster. 6s and no awards a 4 here or there. (The scale back then was 1 to 6, 1 being an A).

Between my prelims and final exams (roughly 5 months) something happened. The short version-I was brought in to a stable home and that triggered a series of epiphanies. I worked hard to turn the prelim results around and got into Higher classes the following year.

I'd asked my biology teacher if I could do the Higher (those prelim results had been 6's) she actually laughed. Like out loud, in my face. I promised her I'd get the mark. I managed to keep that promise and got straight ones. She hugged me when she found out. I left school in 5th year and went to University to start Teacher Training.

So what's my point here? Am I a genius? Unusually clever? I like to think so. But alas nope I don't think it was that at all. I think something of the secret and this is just a gut feeling, was to be found in that P7 classroom. A classroom that by today's standards might not do well in an HMIe inspection. But for me, in that class were flakes of gold, which I gathered. They helped me recognise and collect more when they were offered again, till eventually I had enough to make a nugget of my own.

Mrs T, her name was. Hair and nails perfectly manicured, she drove a black Rover that she loved and called Ronnie.

She and one or two others like her made the difference.

I found some of those daily writings she had us do years later. Some of them mounted from being on the wall. My spelling was terrible, punctuation sorely lacking and the syntax could have used some work too. I was really surprised with just how bad they were. She'd given me the impression I was an excellent writer.

And there it is, I've heard it said that with some people (the special ones) you won't remember what they said you'll only remember how they made you feel...and that was it. She made me feel like a learner. I was clever because she thought I was. I had something to offer because she invited me to share and wanted to hear it. Her teaching was unhurried, predictable, repetitive even. That made me feel safe, relaxed and open to growth and she seemed to just know when and how to challenge.

So if anything is to be extrapolated from my experiences, and quite possibly there isn't, but if there is I can't help but feel like education might not be exactly how it's always portrayed. Maybe it isn't delineated, linear or cubic. Knowledge to be poured from one receptacle to another then regurgitated, weighed, measured and compared. And maybe it’s not reserved for a classroom.

Maybe gaps don't take a pre-determined time or precise set of variables to fill, as much as they might just take experiences, patience and love. Because let's face it, I've not used the word but Mrs T loved me and I loved her too and that opened me right up.

To me education is love. And some other things. It's belief. In self, in others...and disbelief. Education is being taught to think critically, question and challenge. It's hope, optimism. Interest and curiosity. An awareness of what you might not know, the confidence to ask and a sense that both are ok.

And if you can leave school with all that unharmed, not squeezed out of you, I can't help thinking it'll all be ok in the end. And if you get the bits of paper to go with it? All the better (saves time later for some paths). If that's not to be though, with all that other good stuff intact there's a very good chance you'll still find a way to open closed doors. Maybe the gaps wont matter so much. Maybe some will even take care of themselves. I mean who actually calls rain precipitation anyway?