There are three kinds of teacher who join a staff band.

The first I’m going to call the “real musicians”.

Typically, this is a music teacher, or perhaps a teacher who can play a real instrument such as the clarinet or the cello.

Real musicians don’t often get involved in the kind of staff band I’m talking about - the low-down, blues-rock covers staff band formed out of the broken teenage dreams of rock stardom.

Most real musicians can often see this for what it is, and they run a mile. But some can’t help themselves.

Don’t you know who I am?

The next type of teacher who will sometimes get involved in a staff band is what I’m calling the “show-off”.

The term “show-off” has deeply negative connotations, but I have great respect for this kind of teacher - they’re often the most fun, and they’re the ones who lift the mood at even the most earnest of middle-leaders’ meetings.

One staff band I was in morphed into a backing band for an English teacher who wanted to sing Let It Go in a huge blue ball gown.

He was most certainly a show-off, and his performance was a massive hit with the students.

I could have been someone...

The third, and most tragic, type of teacher to get involved in a staff band is the “failed rock star”. To clarify, this is not to suggest that all of these people actually tried to be a rock star.

Some of the failed rock stars failed in the sense that, as a teenager, they never quite made it out of the bedroom.

The only guitar they played was made of air, and the only audience they ever manage to captivate was their own reflection in the bedroom mirror.

However, most of the failed rock stars are the sad remnants of half-baked cover bands that never quite made enough money to cover the rehearsal rooms, let alone the equipment.

We just needed the right person to hear us

They probably have a demo tape somewhere - and it probably is a tape - which they play once a year after an evening of solitary whiskey drinking.

There’s something about design and technology teachers which means they are over-represented in the failed rock star category.

When you think about it, D&T teachers often operate on the fringe of the staff community (either geographically or metaphorically), often assuming that the rules don’t really apply to them.

They’re the rock’n‘roll of education.

Reader: it’s me 

But here’s my confession: I fall firmly into the failed rock star category. Yes, I’m really that tragic. And yet, I’d like to finish with some words in defence of the staff band.

Firstly, it brings together teachers who might not normally spend time together, especially if the band is made up of the different teacher types. It’s true that this can sometimes cause communication issues.

One band I was in included a real musician (the music teacher) on keys and two failed rock stars (an English teacher and me) on guitar and vocals. I lost count of the number of times this kind of conversation happened as we learned a new rock cover:

Real musician: “Hold on, what chord are you playing there?”
Failed rock star: “I don’t know what it’s called, I just play it.”
Real musician: “But that’s an Em7 with a suspended 5th!”
Failed rock star: ”…”
Real musician: “You can’t play that chord in this key!”
Failed rock star: “Tell that to Scott Gorham.”

Keep on rockin’

I like to think that we all learned something from these conversations. I learned what some of the chords I’d been playing for 20 years were actually called.

And the music teacher learned that the rules of music can be bent almost out of shape, without necessarily breaking.

Secondly, the staff band is a creative process that’s all about connection.

And connection is fundamental to the human condition - it’s what makes us feel good (especially when playing Johnny B Goode, the quintessential staff band cover).

And lastly, and most importantly, there’s the incalculable amusement it brings to the students.

What are they doing?

I’ve never played to more hysterically appreciative audiences than a hall full of students.

They are part amazed that their maths teacher is trying to sing like Ed Sheeran, part horrified that their D&T teacher is rocking on stage like an old punk and mostly overjoyed that a bunch of old blokes (and it is usually blokes) are laying out their broken hopes and dreams in front of them in some kind of cacophonous but ultimately fascinating performance.

So, to all the staff band members - real musicians, show-offs and failed rock stars - we salute you.

Aidan Harvey-Craig is a psychology teacher and student counsellor at an international school in Malawi. His book, 18 Wellbeing Hacks for Students: using psychology’s secrets to survive and thrive, is out now. He tweets @psychologyhack