It is extremely frustrating to learn that your observer has missed a magic moment. So when the PE colleague I was due to observe suggested I take part in the lesson, I felt morally bound to - there is no better way to experience the pupil’s perspective. (I also secretly hoped to show our pupils that I might be old in their eyes, but that I was not yet past it.) The lesson format was straight out of the how-to-teach-PE manual: the aim is not to complete the fastest lap, but to set yourself a challenging target time and achieve it. So what did I learn during my two laps - the first at a moderate pace and the second, which followed a rest and some serious discussion on athletic target setting, at a far harder pace?

First, that 400 metres is far further than it sounds. Second, that knowing what you can do comfortably - the first, gentle lap, in my case - is essential in helping you establish high but achievable goals. Third, that competing against yourself has much to recommend it, whereas racing those significantly weaker or stronger than yourself does not help you improve. And that knowing you have performed well against yourself is immensely rewarding.

But what struck me most as I gasped for breath, bent double after completing the distance in an outstanding time (well, outstanding for me), was just how much exceptional learning comes from exceptional teaching. All the Year 10s that day, along with this I-wish-I-was-still-size-10, were desperate to please our PE teacher. She drew from us a belief in our capacity to extend ourselves which less naturally gifted teachers would never be able to match.

I had worked in a school with a similarly gifted PE teacher in the Eighties. The BBC’s Panorama programme had heard her department was doing “very interesting things” and wanted to make a documentary. Understandably, the school, in a deprived area where the greatest personal challenge in PE had previously been how to get out of it, believed that its work in encouraging pupils to participate willingly in PE lessons was worthy of a wider audience.

The scheme of work included a lesson to teach the importance of pacing oneself, where the winner was not the first pupil to complete a lap, but the pupil who crossed the finishing line exactly two minutes after setting off. Any pupil who had been taught the lesson by that committed department could confirm its benefits.

But as the programme went out we realised we had been stitched up. Overnight, we became responsible for the failure of the English football team to regain the World Cup, the death of team sports, and a whole host of other irredeemable British sporting disasters. Letters to The Times singled out a young, hapless member of the PE department whose clumsy answer to a single question made us infamous for 15 minutes.

The programme makers neglected to point out that the inexperienced PE teacher had deliberately been given no time to produce a considered response. “In a moment we’ll ask you a question aboutI” the interviewer had said, crossing her fingers that her trap had been successfully set.

Most schools today are far more wary of the media. But if you know a senior colleague ready to receive reporters with open arms, just quote from Wendy Cope’s poem How to Deal with the Press: She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.

Be careful, courteous and cool.

Never trust a journalist.

Jenny Owl is a pseudonym. She is a head of department in the north of England