Episode 3 - Motivations of a published author with Piers Torday

Good evening, Pye Corbett.

Where have you been this week? What have you been doing?

Well, one of the sad things about leaving a school, and I'm thinking back a very long time now, it must be... 46 years when I can't be.

That's ridiculous.

But I think it is actually 43 years.

It is when I left my headship is that you miss the end of your plays.

And I know that sounds odd.

because everybody groans about the end of your play and it's all such hard work.

And then you have that amazing thing when they do it.

And the kids, my experience, they always rise to the occasion and the parents are loving it and there's thunderous applause.

And you stand there, you know, with the lump in the throat and the tears in your eyes because the kids have risen to the occasion.

And some of the children who...

You know, found things difficult, suddenly show a different side, etc.

Well, I went to the local village up in the village or the local village school one.

And being a village school, it is it's a motley crew from mums and dads and families who live in very large Cotswold houses.

all the way through to waifs and strays who come from other communities and haven't been accepted in.

But like so many village schools, in our local school, there's very much a place for everybody.

So it's a mixed and somewhat peculiar bunch.

But my goodness, Mel and I had, we sat there and we had such a good time.

It's lovely to see, because we know the children.

I do writing workshops in the school.

Mel

hears reading and brings her expertise in as well, three or four mornings a week.

And it's just so lovely to see, as I said, that other side to children, where kids who find maybe academic work difficult or actually behaviour quite challenging and haven't fitted in elsewhere and have been rejected, suddenly seeing them contributing communally to this big effort and singing together and acting, it was just a great joy.

It was one of those wonderful things which actually when you're doing it, is very, very hard work, quite stressful.

And you have those moments where you think, why on earth do we decide to do Wind in the Willows? But when you see them doing it, it really was a thing of joy.

And I know because one of my daughters is a teaching assistant, they've just done their annual, the Year Six play, which is a big thing.

It's a big school.

So the Year Sixes do their play.

And she phoned up and was absolutely buzzing with the whole thing and how kids who she was telling me actually about some kids whose parents weren't able to come.

And there's one kid in the end said, oh, it was all right, said to my daughter.

It's all right.

I could see you smiling at me.

And that really got me, really got me, you know.

So it's that old thing, Jabe, isn't it, that for some kids, it's really important that we're there for them.

That's a really big thing in their lives.

And I know from children getting in touch with me on Facebook and things like that, some of those things last a lifetime for them.

People who are sort of kids with,

you

know, 40 years old or whatever, got their own families and they've written and said, oh, you know, you were really important to me.

You looked after me, that term, et cetera.

Because schooling is a human activity, isn't it? And in the end...

I think the primary thing, certainly in primary school, what we teach is who we are.

Yes.

I think that's what stays with kids.

Same in secondary school, actually.

The ones you remember, the great teachers, they saw something in you.

They brought the subject alive.

There was something about them that was attractive to them.

and inspired you and made you want to be a little bit like them, perhaps.

So it's a human activity.

So that's what's been firing me up this week, that end of year do, which I'm so happy to be part of because there was a space when I wasn't and I was sort of bereft at the end of each term.

But now we're in the village.

It's a lovely thing to go and see.