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Teacher’s Mad

£5.00

SKU ebook Category

175 in stock

Description

By Christopher North

ISBN: 978-1-84991-844-2
Published: 2013
Pages: 130
Key Themes: Mental Health, Bipolar, Manic Depression, Schizo Affective Disorder

Description

Teacher’s Mad tells the story of a teacher struggling to assert himself in the classroom. He then begins to succeed and he grows in confidence but he can’t control his feelings and he becomes manic, delusional and falls in love. He is forced to resign from his position due to inappropriate conduct whereupon his delusions and psychosis become more and more intense.

About the Author

Christopher North was diagnosed as suffering from bi-polar disorder in 2004 after a year of illness following losing his job as a secondary English school teacher. He suffered from mania, delusions and psychosis. He was put of sodium valporate and olanzapine which ended the aforementioned episodes. Due to the dislike of side-effects such as weight gain, loss of libido and drowsiness, medical non-compliance has been a feature of his life post-diagnosis. Christopher has suffered two relapses since 2004 each time after returning to teaching work. On each occasion he has been sectioned; firstly for 28 days, secondly for ten weeks.

Book Extract

The car park was full and signs of life were returning to the school now that the summer break was ending. A bird could be seen hopping from branch to branch on the old oak tree that stood inside the grounds between the main gates and the main entrance. The school felt eerie without the children; corridors were empty, classrooms lay dormant, there was no one to shout at or to get in a tizzy over. It was just the teachers who collected in the odd room here, the odd room there.

Mrs Grouch sat Joseph and Ms Proper down at her desk and gave them their timetables for the new school year which was due to start in earnest the following day. Today they were in for training purposes and with them being new teachers they had extra information to digest and take on board. Mrs Grouch liked to run a tight ship that was high on organisation, schedules, speadsheets, planning and foresight. Everything had to be in its place. Every aspect of teaching, planning, and implementation had to be in its box and be clearly visible and presented in an attractive manner. She wanted her staff to be clear upon how things were done.

And so was the scene all over the school; The Head, The Deputies, The Head’s of Department, The Head’s of Year, were getting their staff ready for the morning influx. Joseph and Ms Proper sat with their files, organisers and diaries at the ready:

“Now the yellow file is your key stage three file and the red one is for key stage four,” said Mrs Grouch, “inside your files you will find your personal information, your timetable, the sanctions pyramid, departmental and staff meetings, your long, middle, and short term planning and the National Curriculum. Now you need to ensure all preparation is completed and kept up to date,” she instructed.

Mrs Grouch was in a fairly good mood because nobody had had time to make a mistake or fall behind in their work-load and duties. Mrs Grouch did have a sense of humour but unfortunately it was only allowed to surface if everything was ship-shape. If things fell out of place, if there was opacity, an anomaly or a question mark where there should be transparency, consistency and a full stop, she would become as unforgiving as Our Maker had been when He had given out her looks:

“Now you need to make sure that you cover each aspect of the National Curriculum and show where you have done it in your planning,” she continued.
Mrs Grouch was well past her best; she looked every year of her fifty-eight and perhaps a few more besides. She had little time for the twee and care-free for she had had to work hard in her life and she expected the same from everyone else in at least equal measure, and if that could add a wrinkle or a furrowed brow to the well turned-out, what could be better?

“You will need to set out each text type you will be doing for GCSE and ensure you cover the syllabus,” she continued further.


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