What is the best advice you have been given?
A parent, also in the teaching profession, pointed out that I could earn money and train to be a teacher at the same time on the Graduate Teacher Programme, which is employment-based teacher training. Had he not, I wouldn’t be teaching today.
What’s your proudest achievement?
I rearranged an entire wedding reception in six days after the original venue, Orsett Hall in Essex, was burnt to the ground just a week before my wedding.
What one thing would change your life for the better?
Not having a mortgage. I would like to have the option to spend the money on other things.
What’s the last book you read and how was it?
It was David Baldacci’s The Winner. A fast-paced and clever book. All his books definitely have Hollywood movie potential.
Who would play you in the film of your life?
I would love to say someone in the Brad PittGeorge Clooney mould; however that would need Lord of the Rings-style special effects make-up.
What’s the secret about teaching that the wider world doesn’t know?
A six-week break over the summer does not equate to a six-week holiday. If I hear one more wisecrack about the amount of time teachers have off or finishing work at 3.20pm ... We work hard during term time, at weekends and just as hard during our “holidays”.
Where is your favourite place?
Lourdes in the south of France. Each Easter my wife and I travel there with the HCPT Pilgrimage Trust, taking disabled and disadvantaged children for a week. It is the best week of my entire year. Through this I have made some of my closest friends, and my wife and I met on my first trip 10 years ago.
If you could meet anyone from history, who would it be?
Although an answer of Bobby Moore would nail my claret and blue colours to the mast, the thespian in me leans me towards William Shakespeare.
What do you wish you’d known when you started teaching that you know now?
Save up the glue sticks you get at the start of term and by about May you’ll be every other teacher’s favourite person. They appear to become more valuable than gold itself.
What’s the big question about life that you would most like answered?
What the hell is going on in Lost? I’m darned if I know.
David Roca-Mas, 28, teaches at St Augustine’s Catholic Primary in Ilford, Essex.
