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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Nell Frizzell

Aged 41, I’m back at my secondary school – but this time they’ve let me in the staffroom

‘I am genuinely as excited about reading Macbeth with a group of teenagers on plastic chairs as I ever was about speaking to a bookshop full of paying attenders.’
‘I am genuinely as excited about reading Macbeth with a group of teenagers on plastic chairs as I ever was about speaking to a bookshop full of paying attenders.’ Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

You know those dreams when you’re back at school? And you’re sitting at a desk reading a GCSE exam paper? Only you don’t recognise anyone around you? Well, I am living that dream. Because, at the age of 41, I have gone back to school. And not just any school. I have gone back to my own secondary school. Only this time, I am allowed in the staffroom.

That’s right: a short 25 years after walking out of those concrete and carpeted halls, the smell of polyester jumpers and canteen chips heady on the early summer air, I am back. But now I’m training to be a teacher.

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