Mehreen Baig is a former teacher turned BBC documentary film-maker, with shows such as The Truth About Getting Fit at Home and Islam, Women and Me, shown on BBC One.

She also hosts a radio show called The Secret Life of Teachers on BBC Radio 4 and has written her first book, Hidden Lessons, which is out in September.

She spoke to Tes about her time in school and moments that have stayed with her, why she went from model pupil to wayward student (and what it taught her), plus why presenting a television show watched by millions is a doddle compared with teaching a class of teenagers.

1. Where did you go to primary school?

In Tottenham, which is where I went back and became a secondary school teacher when I was older.

I actually moved school a lot when I was younger and went to a couple of different primary schools, but the one where I spent the most amount of years was in Tottenham, and I have really fond memories - it was brilliant. I remember being devastated when, for whatever reason, my mum said, “You can’t go to school tomorrow,” and I was saying, “No, I can’t miss a day of school - I have to go in.”

2. Is there a teacher there you remember?

There was a teacher I had in Year 1 and I won’t say her name but I can only describe her as being like Miss Honey [from Roald Dahl’s Matilda]; she was really gentle, and super-kind and soft.

But then I remember we had her again in Year 3. She came back after the summer holidays and she had chopped all her hair off and dyed it bright red and had it spiked up, and she was just different.

At that point, I didn’t understand, but now I am older, I think she must have been in her early twenties and I guess she was “finding herself ”. Obviously, when you’re in primary school, you think teachers are all 100 years old and have their stuff together.

3. What about secondary school?

At secondary school, I had an English teacher who was also really lovely. One day, though, she was absent but when she came in, she told us she’d been in a car crash.

She stopped the lesson and gave us long speech where she said that when she got into the car crash with her children and her husband, she thought at first, “I really don’t have time for this right now - I can’t afford to be paying for the damages,” and so on - but then she said she stopped and thought, “Thank God no one was hurt”.

I was Year 7 and, at that point, I didn’t really understand the seriousness of what she was saying, about worrying that she couldn’t afford it and all these adult problems.

But it really stuck with me as I got older, and when I am going through something difficult, I always think back to that moment where she reminded herself to be grateful that no one was hurt.

I was 11 then and to think that, as a 31-year-old woman, I remember that and apply it shows what a massive influence you can have as a teacher - that even a throwaway comment really does stay with your students for the rest of their lives.

4. That is a big responsibility, isn’t it?

It’s a massive responsibility. Teachers are human and, during the pandemic, so many are struggling in their own lives.

To have the responsibility of looking after the mental health of hundreds of young people and know you have such an influence on them and the way they view life - and the way they view situations and experiences and people - is huge.

5. Were you a good student?

Ha! Well, I was a model student up until Year 11. I spent 15 years of my life being incredible - I mean, I never ever got in trouble, I just did everything that was asked of me. I went above and beyond; my homework was always done. I was that annoying kid who did seven pages for the teacher to mark and so on - schoolwork was my life and I loved it.

But at 16, in Year 11, that’s when things got a little bit tricky. I discovered make-up and boys, and I started rolling my school skirt up a little bit so it was a bit shorter - I had a bit of a blip.

I got a little overconfident, I think, and I thought, “I don’t need to study anymore”, and started thinking I was too good for school - and I was wrong.

When I got my A-level [results], I didn’t make my offer [of a place at university] and that is when I thought, “Ah, should’ve stayed humble”.

6. Presumably, during that time, you had a few detentions?

In Year 11, I was bunking off PE and went with a friend to meet a boy I liked at the local chicken shop to have a little date.

One of the teachers from the school caught me there and said, “I will call your house and tell your parents that you have been caught bunking and hanging out with boys”.

So I was there crying and shaking, saying, “Please don’t tell my parents!” Thankfully, she didn’t, which I was very grateful for.

But, to be honest, a lot of my bad behaviour came out when I got my A-level results, so they sort of found out anyway.

7. You presented a BBC documentary about fitness. Were you sporty at school?

When I was younger, I was super-sporty and we’d go to the park and play cricket and so forth. But then the teenage years came along and I became a lot more girly and not interested, as PE meant messing up my make-up and hair, and it felt like a total waste of time, so I often mysteriously had period pains or didn’t turn up.

When I became a teacher, there were so many female students who hated PE and that did make me laugh because that was so me. But, of course, I would send them to PE - I tried to teach them through the error of my ways.

8. Which is scarier, presenting on TV or teaching?

Someone said to me once, when I first started presenting, “I don’t know how you do it - it must be so scary”, and I said, “I used to stand in front of 30 teenagers per hour and perform to them; nothing can scare me now!”

Teaching is not frightening, exactly, but the effort you put into preparing a [lesson] and doing that six times a day every single day - there is no better preparation for public speaking. On top of that, you are doing this in front of 11- to 18-year-olds, where you have to keep them on side and deal with confrontations.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel uncomfortable talking to a camera and it’s not easy - and sometimes you feel self-conscious - but it’s different.

9. Can you tell us a bit about your own teacher-centred podcast?

With the show [The Secret Lives of Teachers on BBC Radio 4], I wanted people to hear the sorts of conversations that occur in school staffrooms.

I wanted people to get an insight into that and, during the pandemic, when everyone had opinions on teachers - whether they should be doing more, whether they should go back into school, and so on - I felt it was right for teachers to have a voice and to show people what it is really like being a teacher.

I wanted teachers to have that platform to say, “This is my what my job is like; this is what I do every day”, so people could really get to know them while they were all busy on Twitter talking about them.

10. Can you share a secret from your teaching days?

In my first couple of years in teaching, I was in school and, at breaktime, the head of English came into my classroom and said, “Mehreen, you’re going to have to go home”. I said, “Why, what’s the matter, what have I done?” and she said, “What you are wearing is really inappropriate; you’re going to have to go home and change”. So I, as a teacher, was sent home to go and change my clothes, and then come back.

Mehreen Baig was talking to Dan Worth, senior editor at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 14 May 2021 issue