Kate Clanchy is a novelist, poet, playwright and also a teacher, who has worked in schools in Oxford, Essex and Scotland. She won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2020 for her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, and has also published several other award-winning books and short stories, including The Not-Dead and the Saved, which won the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award.

She spoke with Tes for the My Best Teacher podcast about her time in school, the teachers who made an impression on her and a rather memorable French exchange trip.

1. Where did you go to school?

I went to a very large, grant-aided private school in Edinburgh called George Watson’s College. At the time it was the largest school in Scotland, I think - 2,400 pupils, which is a lot.

Some people go into teaching because they want to recreate the experience they had, some go into it because they want to make something better. I wanted to make something different and better.

2. And who was your favourite teacher?

I had good English teachers and a great Classics teacher, whom I liked very much, but the teacher I remember the most fondly taught me biology - she was called Mrs Smith.

I am not very good at biology or science but she explained things very clearly, and she taught me to be secure. Most of my education was overshadowed by my dyspraxia, dyscalculia and dyslexia, all of which were undiagnosed.

People thought I was just a clever person who was holding out on them or not trying very hard but, actually, there were a number of things I couldn’t do at all, so I was always trying to cover that up.

Sometimes I was very good at things and didn’t understand why, and sometimes I made a complete mess of things and didn’t understand why.

But in biology, it did appear that if I attended what Mrs Smith said and followed what she was telling me, I could learn and feel very secure in the learning process.

3. Are there any lessons you recall particularly well?

We did a lot of experiments. We did

chopping up the rat, which I can still remember - with the rat’s little jewel-like innards and its neat little face - and we did popping out the lens of a bull’s eye.

I understand what is going on with the Covid news much better because of Mrs Smith.

4. Did you ever keep in touch with her afterwards?

It wasn’t that kind of relationship and I think that is one of the things I liked about it. I had teachers who liked me too much and it was oppressive. Of course, to some extent it’s nice to be warm and see yourself in pupils.

But to invest in your students, and want them to imitate you and be your disciple is very dodgy, and I think having a highly appropriate distance was something I also learned from [Mrs Smith].

5. What was it like going to school in that part of Scotland?

My school was very good at taking you out to the Scottish mountains and they did special projects in Year 9, where everyone went for a couple of weeks and stayed in rough hostels and ran up mountains. It taught me how to be safe on a mountain and how to choose boots and be confident. That was something [the school] did very well.

Almost every second weekend you could go on some trip or other, [such as to] Skye and the Highlands. I don’t know whether health and safety would intervene now but those were very good times and very good learning experiences.

6. What about any overseas trips?

I went on a very good French exchange. I was sent off for three weeks to a lycée in the middle of Paris and we had to speak French. That was a tremendous learning experience.

Three weeks is a lot of time but we thought it was normal. We did three weeks in Paris, and the French exchange students did three weeks in Scotland. God knows what they thought.

I remember how sophisticated and beautiful some of the French students were. Edinburgh and Paris are comparably beautiful but I think that those students were much more sophisticated and relaxed and better dressed than we were.

7. Were there any memorable moments during those exchanges?

There was a girl called Natalie who had a small rose tattooed just below her left buttock - and the queue of boys who wanted to take her to our school dance…

She said “ooh, la la” just like they did in the French books. It must have seemed extraordinary!

8. Given your success as a writer, did you enjoy English at school?

I was good at English and I had very enthusiastic English teachers [but] although I was in private education, we were in a class of 30, sitting in wooden desks on iron frames, in alphabetical order, and writing essays about Macbeth. It wasn’t this discursive, lounging-about subject that people imagine, like in The History Boys, for example.

There was no place for creative writing. There was an element of [creative] writing but it wasn’t taught. I think I regret that, for myself and so many kids, that you can’t do more creative writing.

Young people can write and they learn through writing, and I think it’s a shame that English has been narrowed down to literary criticism. Literary criticism is interesting but it’s only one branch of English. There are so many others, and writing is so much more natural and organic and right for kids to do.

We should be doing more but it’s almost forbidden. It’s not quite illegal but there is no reward for writing any kind of poem in the English exam system.

9. Do you think you were an easy pupil to teach?

I was overly emotional, weepy, bullyable, occasionally enormously stubborn - so not that easy, no!

I told people they were wrong. I told my French teacher he shouldn’t throw chalk, I got into a huge row about that and said that was wrong. I told my history teacher his methodology was rubbish as well. It must have been very annoying to suddenly have the weird person at the back of the class telling you that you were wrong.

10. Did you ever break the rules?

I did occasionally run away from cross-country running. You’d start the cross-country run and then go down the shops with your friends and have a little stroll, and come back and run in at the end. I think people expected you to do that…it’s not the worst sin that was ever committed!

Kate Clanchy’s latest book, How to Grow Your Own Poem, is available now, published by Pan Macmillan. She was talking to Dan Worth, senior editor at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 26 March 2021 issue