‘No excuse for schools having bad teachers’
0 Comments | Hull Daily Mail, Jul 27, 2010 | by Nicky Harley
WHEN I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, what will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me …
Don’t be a journalist, the pay’s rubbish. How about a career in law? Well, I didn’t take her advice and I clung to my dreams of a career in writing in the hope of becoming the next Charlotte Bronte.
That was until at the age of 12, when I had the misfortune to meet my secondary school teacher Mrs Harrison.
foul In one week, she managed to shatter my dreams and, at the time, I believed she had turned me off writing forever. Mrs destroyed childhood In a one-off event, my school ran a newspaper for a week and Mrs Harrison, who had a unsurprising resemblance to Cruella De Vil, appointed herself the editor. dreams As I proudly rushed to get a copy of the paper to read my first article – about a war veteran who had won an award – my dreams were shattered.
It appeared in the paper with spelling mistakes, incorrect facts and had been totally rewritten by Mrs Harrison. It didn’t make sense – but it still had my name above it.
After fighting my way past my jeering peers, who were ripping shreds off me about the atrocious article, I found Mrs Harrison and angrily pointed out that she should have put her own name on the embarrassing, illiterate piece.
To which she told me I’d never make it as a writer if I couldn’t take criticism and have my work rewritten.
In one foul swoop, Mrs Harrison destroyed my childhood dreams and knocked my confidence.
It wasn’t until watching the film Dead Poet’s Society, years later, that I was inspired to give writing another crack
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