This is the episode of the Coach in the Classroom where Martin Richards shares a moment very early on in his teaching career where he discovered the advantages of keeping an open mind and building relationships with students.
In this episode of the coach in the classroom, you will hear one of Martin Richards’ first lessons as Maths teacher, where he discovers what it means to enforce school rules.
The study group of five students had taken themselves off to a quiet room with their Applied Mathematics textbooks. They had been working for 15 minutes by the time I - a novice teacher - arrived to check on their progress.
We were discussing a ‘locomotive travelling uphill question’ (power, weight, friction and speed) when I noticed the young man sitting to my left was taking out a tin of Gold Flake. He flipped the lid off the tin and took out a Rizla pack. He slid out and gently flattened a rolling paper on the desk.
I looked at him and what he was doing. I was new to this teaching job and had no idea what to do or say, but this behaviour was probably breaking the school rule about smoking.
He took a pinch of shredded tobacco out of the Gold Flake tin and sprinkled it on the Rizla paper. Keeping one eye on me he licked the sticky edge, rolled the paper into a spindly cigarette, and put the twig in his mouth. He paused to look at me intently, he seemed to be asking a question but I was not sure what it was.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Zippo lighter, flicked the flint and held the flame to the end of his cigarette. I leaned over and blew out the flame. “No smoking”, I said.
He queried “But you didn’t stop me rolling the cigarette.”
“No,” I said “the rule is ‘No smoking’, not ‘No cigarettes’.”
He put the cigarette into the Gold Leaf tin, put the Rizla pack on top of the tobacco flakes, closed the lid and put the whole lot back in his pocket.
We continued the lesson with a deeper understanding of what it meant to be a student and a teacher.
We were firm friends during the rest of his school years, and even after he left school.
