Teaching is a powerful and passionate enterprise. Teachers run the gamut of emotions from elation to despair on a daily basis, so it’s no surprise that poets so often look to school life for their subject matter. While not quite up there with love and nature, this is fruitful territory. Shakespeare’s “whining schoolboy with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like a snail Unwillingly to school” (As You Like It) has a fine pedigree, which reaches to the present day via William Blake’s “School Boy” in Songs of Innocence (“But to go to school in a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away”). Some of the following poems also echo the ups and downs of “this teaching life”.

The ad says “Nobody forgets a good teacher” - and poets have better memories than most. Hence John Agard’s geography teacher (from Get Back, Pimple, Puffin pound;4.99) who will “dance on the globe In a rainbow robe. I’m not settling for river bedsI want the sky and nothing less”, and Adrian Mitchell’s teacher, Michael Bell, who “shone the light of peace on meLike a green thought in a green shade” (in On the Beach at Cambridge).

Michael Rosen’s poetry often takes the child’s point of view - the little hurts, arguments, rivalry and japes that occur in classroom, assembly hall and playground, but he also writes hilarious poems from the harassed teacher’s standpoint. Then there’s the martinet who would yell, “NO BREATHING! And you had to stop breathing right away.The naughty ones used to try and take quick secret breathsUnder the table.” (from “Strict” in The Hypnotist, Scholastic pound;6.99) Gareth Owen, a former teacher-trainer, often casts a wicked eye over schooldays and, in “Miss Creedle Teaches Creative Writing” (Song of the City) over progressive teaching.

”‘This morning,’ cries Miss Creedle, ‘we’re all going to use our imaginations, We’re going to close our eyes 3W and imagine.

‘Are we ready to imagine, Darren?’” Many poets turn their attention to troubled pupils. Wendy Cope’s latest collection, If I Don’t Know (Faber pound;8.99), includes “The Teacher’s Tale”, a narrative poem about the difference good teachers can make: “His teacher noticed that the little ladWas often serious, subdued and sad. And, when she met the parents, she could seeWhat they were like, and that they might well beThe cause of his unhappiness. She triedTo help the quiet boy who never criedAnd felt he always had to get things right.”

Sophie Hannah, another humorist, makes a serious point in her painful poem “Your Dad Did What?” (in Leaving and Leaving You, Carcanet pound;6.95):

“You find the ‘E’ you gave him as you sort through reams of what this girl did, what that lad did, and read the line again, just one ‘e’ short: This holiday was horrible. My dad did.”

Charles Causley, whose day job for most of his working life was primary teaching, rarely sites his poetry in the classroom, but he gave us a memorable troubled pupil in Timothy Winters: “Timothy Winters comes to schoolWith eyes as wide as a football pool,Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters: A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.” (from Collected Poems for Children, Macmillan pound;9.99).

Teachers regularly draw on Roger McGough’s poetry (books in print are listed on www.rogermcgough.org.uk). One of his most moving yet funny poems is “First Day at School” (from his first children’s collection, co-written with Michael Rosen, You Tell Me, Puffin pound;4.99): “A millionbillionzwillion miles from home Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?) Why are they so big, other children? So noisy? So much at home they must have been born in uniformLived all their life in playgrounds.”

Adrian Mitchell’s stance on schooling is often tough. Every collection begins with an “educational health warning” banning any of his poems from being used in an exam. His collections for young readers include angry poems like “Back in the Playground Blues” (from Balloon Lagoon, Orchard pound;7.99) are in collections for young readers: “Well you get it for being JewishYou get it for being black Get it for being chickenAnd you get it for fighting backYou get it for being big and fatGet it for being small Oh those who get it get it and get itFor any damn thing at all.”

Mitchell’s collection for adults, Blue Coffee (Bloodaxe, pound;8.95) includes “The Olchfa Reading” in which he describes performing to a bored secondary school audience on a Friday afternoon “in a hall the size of a Jumbo Jet hangarThey seemed as multitudinousas the armies of Genghis Khanbut they were larger and hairierAnd less interested in poetry”. Other poems hark back to his own schooldays, such as “The Bully” and “To the Sadists of My Childhood” who “left me in the gripof old fear”.

There are plenty of anthologies about school life for younger readers. Popular anthologists include John Foster and Jennifer Curry. The most famous school-life collections are, perhaps, Allan Ahlberg’s Please Mrs Butler, followed by Heard it in the Playground (Puffin pound;4.99). In his most recent book, a collection of football poems called Friendly Matches (Viking pound;8.99), the school playing field is often the field of dreams. Ahlberg was a primary teacher himself , so he brings great authenticity, affection and compassion to his account of school life and sees things from the teacher’s point of view: “As the moon comes up and the first owls glide, Puts on her coat and stands outside.In the moonlit playground, shadow-free, She stands on duty with a cup of tea.” (from “The Ghost Teacher”) Teaching is a wonderful profession, but no one says it’s easy. Finally, here’s McGough with some “Concise Hints for New Teachers”, from Bad, Bad Cats (Puffin pound;4.99):

“On your first morning, don’t confuse the Head Teacher with the Caretaker. The Caretaker will never forgive you.Practise scratching your nail down the blackboard - the kids will hate it.Bring sandwiches.”

Morag Styles is reader in children’s literature at Homerton College, Cambridge