You’ve seen the movie with Danny DeVito where he has to teach those kids that don’t want to learn Shakespeare Shakespeare? Or the one with Michelle Phiffer essentially doing the same thing? Or more recently, Mariah Carey was doing it in the Bronx in that movie Precious… Well, I’ve kind of being doing something similar, but also different. The main difference being the kids that I’ve been teaching are awesome, they totally get it all and they actually volunteer, in their own time, to receive extra teaching, which I find incredible.

So, If you haven’t guessed, I have this new Saturday job. I had the interview for it a few weeks ago, and I’ve been going in every week for a month now. The job is part of a pilot scheme, in which students from the University act as mentors to secondary school children who want a little extra help. I’m helping a group of students prepare for their GCSE exams.

It truly has been a great experience so far. At first it seemed so strange to be calling the shots- to be teaching instead of being taught - but it is such a steep learning curve you soon get the hang of it. So far I’ve been helping my students prepare for their poetry and prose papers: trying to get them to structure their answers and help them with their close reading and analysis. What amazes me is some of the things that they spot in the poems! It is so inspiring.

I guess it’s because I’ve been doing it for a while, but for example I looked at poem the other day and thought ‘Oh, this is a post-colonial poem about the silencing of the other, it’s about loss of identity and oppression’ and on of my students said ‘It’s about a woman who is afraid to die’. And I looked back at the poem, and it absolutely was! I wasn’t wrong, but on a thematic, emotional level he was more right than me. It just reminds you, there is so much more to learn- so many different ways of looking at everything…