The Hapless Teacher's Handbook

When Phil Ball left university with a workmanlike English degree to his name and no discernible ambitions, he wasn't entirely sure what to do next. So, like many before him, he thought he'd giving teaching a go. Why not? And so began a story of his encounters with other remarkable teachers and pupils, from the good, the bad, and the violent to the victimized and the clinically insane. Meet his first teaching practice nemesis - Alan Plant, who knows his dark secret - and the pupil who believes he is a reincarnation of the poet Andrew Marvell. It is a tale of the highs and lows of attempting to teach: from the joy of really making a difference to young minds to being physically set upon by a teenage horde. And that's just what happens in the classroom. Beyond it is the real world of teachers behind staff-room doors: desperate lives, unseemly professional competition, a diet of cigarettes, alcohol, and cold coffee, casual sex and general social dysfunction. Not a great example, but the truth.