Teacher Man: Diaries of Life Inside a Primary School
Everyone around you says, ‘you’d make a good teacher’. That’s what I’m here to find out.
George Pointon asks his Year 1 class a lot of questions. What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you reckon your parents do while you’re at school? Can you put that down, please? JJ, the stapler – can you put it down?
He’s also got a few questions for himself: What am I doing here? Who was I kidding, thinking I could teach?
Exhausted by his Mum’s pleas for him to ‘get a real job’ and carrying a healthy dose of imposter syndrome for good measure, George Pointon finds himself in front of a class of primary school children, charged with trying to get them to learn something.
In Teacher Man, he takes us along on his first year inside the messy, magical world of primary school teaching. In the company of five-year-olds – who are somehow wisdom, innocence and chaos incarnate – there is always much to learn.
'Tales of primary school life told with wit and humour, and with a real feeling of warmth … George's account of his year as a primary school teaching assistant is full of memorable characters, drawn with genuine affection' Carol Atherton, author of Reading Lessons -
'[A] tale of [George] grappling with the first year of a job he’s uncertain about, starting work just as lockdown hits. His style is light and wry' Tortoise -
”'Documents the heartwarming, endearing and, at times, baffling events inside his classroom over one school year … It’s obvious that Pointon’s affection for his cohort and his passion for education is abundant” - Observer