The boot’s soon on the other foot with class who put art and sole into lessons

EVERYTHING was ready. There were sheets of clean, white cartridge paper on each table and pencils were sharpened. The class of eight and nine-year olds were sitting still and listening, twenty-two eager faces looking forward to their first art lesson of the new term. I had planned the afternoon carefully and chosen a familiar subject: shoes. Everyone was going to draw his or her own shoe, and so I began to explain how to go about this; I wanted good results.

“Drawing is all about looking, really. If you look hard, you’ll see lots of detail on every shoe.”

I asked for a volunteer to lend me a shoe for demonstration purposes. A tall, bespectacled girl at the front nearly exploded with eagerness to oblige. She stood up and swiped at her raised foot in one frenzied movement, taking several involuntary hops towards me while trying to put up her hand at the same time. She yanked off a shoe and used it to break her fall as she crashed into my chest, winding me severely.

“Thank you, Bernadette,” I wheezed. The rest of the class guffawed as she disconnected her slender frame from my front and sidled back to her place, trying to hide the intense blush beneath her sandy hair. I attempted to recover my composure and regarded the shoe for a moment. It was a heavily scuffed and worn, brown lace-up of the deeply unfashionable “sensible” type. I picked it up gingerly; I had a suspicion that there may have been something distinctly unpleasant lurking on the sole, but I didn’t look. At least it wasn’t a boy’s shoe – a colleague had warned me never to tie little boys’ shoelaces for them, even if they really couldn’t manage themselves. She had once done so, wondering why the laces were wet, and then realised that the child had just returned from the toilets.

“As I was saying, it’s all about looking carefully, children. If you want to draw this shoe really well, you need to put in all the small things, as well as get the shape right. You need to draw the little stitches, and the lace holes, and the pattern on the edge of the sole there, too.”

I looked up. About one-third of the class were listening. Bernadette had taken off her 
sock and was picking between her toes with her pencil; she blushed again when I looked at her. A loaded clear of throat and call to pay attention allowed me to go on.

“There’s one more thing that I want you to try and do when you draw your shoe, Class Three. When I look at Bernadette’s shoe, what can I see that most of you can’t?”

A voice at the back whispered, “Doo-doo.” I chose to ignore the remark but, apart from this, the question was met with silence.

“ I mean, which part of the shoe can I see that you can’t see? “

A hand went up. “The front? “

“’But you can see the front, can’t you? “

“ Not really, Lee’s head’s in the way. “

I soldiered on. “Because I’m much nearer the shoe and I’m standing almost above it, I can see a different part to you – which part do I mean?” There was another silence and several children looked confused.

Eventually another hand went up – it was Bernadette. “The bottom?”

“ Bernadette, do you really think I can see the bottom of your shoe?” She shrugged, leaving me unsure as to whether she was serious or not. My voice was now becoming agitated so I gave the answer. “I can see the inside.” Several children looked completely amazed and those near the front craned forward, as if they needed to verify for themselves that this piece of staggering information was 
really true.

Fifteen minutes had now passed and not a single pencil mark had been made on a piece of paper.

“What I’m getting at, everyone, is that you must draw exactly what you can see: so if you can see the inside, draw the inside.”

Another hand went up, that of a serious-faced boy at the back of the class. “But none of us can see the inside of the shoe from ‘ere, Mr Seed.”

I tried hard not to look or sound as tense as I was. “Yes, Guy, but you’re each going to draw your own shoe – on your own desk.” A general “Ohhh” of understanding rose up from the class; I obviously hadn’t been making myself clear. Another question followed.

“Will we all tek off us shoe then, like Bernie?”

“Yes.”

“But there’ll be a bummer of a stink, Mr Seed.”

The tide of mumbling was now rising steadily, and so I attempted to regain control and get the activity started.

“Right, everyone, listen, please. Even though I said that you should draw the inside of the 
shoe if you can see it, don’t concentrate on that: you are going to be looking at it from the outside, after all. Well, you’d better all start.”

There was a huge scraping of chairs and a great rumpus as 21 shoes were removed and plonked on the wooden classroom desks. There were black plimsolls and heavy leather boots, shiny patent buckle-ups and tattered hand-me-downs, all in various shades of muddy greys and browns. The noise level rose once more as neighbours’ shoes were admired or ridiculed, or as others were slid across the tabletops for sport. After a few barks and looks of disapproval, I settled the children down yet again and made sure that everyone was sitting still with pencil in hand.

Given that my new class was bright, I had thought that this activity would be easy; but I 
was rapidly discovering that nothing in teaching is ever straightforward.

I was just about to congratulate everyone on their artwork when I noticed an empty chair next to a studious, red-haired girl called Nina. It was Bernadette’s. “Have you seen Bernadette, Nina?”

“Er, no, I don’t know where she is.” None of the other children had information either. I scanned the room and checked the stock cupboard, but there was no sign of her. Perhaps she had gone to the toilet, but it wasn’t like Bernadette to leave the room without asking.

It was at this point that something caught my eye through the window on the far side of the room. The classroom was a “mobile” – a temporary, pre-fabricated affair, separate from the main building, which had been brought in fifteen years previously when the numbers of children in the school were at a peak. It had long windows on three sides, set high into the flimsy walls, and at one of these I now stood, staring in disbelief.

At first I wasn’t sure what it was; a flash of light-brown materialising through the glass 
for a fraction of a second, but 
after it appeared three or four times in rapid succession, I realised that it was hair. The top 
of someone’s head. I walked forward for a better view of this odd phenomenon, hoping that none of the children in the class would become distracted from their work. I was about halfway across the room when it shot into view again: a human head pogo-ing outside the classroom. I moved nearer still – it popped up again and this time I could see that it was, unmistakably, Bernadette. What on earth was she doing?

By now a few children had noticed my concern and word passed round the room with the speed of light that Mr Seed had seen something strange outside. Chairs started scraping and bodies were raised for a better view. I silenced the initial hoots of laughter with a growly “Sit down!” and skipped through the door to intercept the bouncing child before a riot broke out.

At first, she didn’t register my appearance and I watched her for a moment. On the grass beside her was the pencil and a piece of paper resting on a large atlas. She was just winding up for another leap: knees bent, arms back, facing the classroom. She sprang upwards with clenched teeth and spine arching backwards for maximum effort, obviously straining to see through the window.

Her landing was less graceful, and she hit the grass with a clomp of long arms and legs before diving towards her picture and sketching a few scribbly lines. She was, I noticed, still wearing only one shoe.

“Bernadette, what exactly are you doing?” She twisted around and reddened for the third time that afternoon.

“Am drawing ma shoe, Mr Seed, like yer said.”

“ Where is your shoe, Bernadette?”

“It’s on ma desk.”

I could see a line of sniggering faces at the window, crouching and ducking desperately as I blasted a glare at them. “But why are you drawing it from here?”

“Well, yer told us to draw the shoe from the outside. “

“Welcome to the new term 
and your new class,” I said 
quietly, shaking my head and laughing.

All Teachers Wise and Wonderful by Andy Seed is published by Headline, £14.99. 
To order call 01748 821122. Postage £2.85.

Andy Seed – A teacher’s life

Andy Seed is an author and poet living in North Yorkshire.

He writes memoirs, humorous poems and non-fiction books as well as literacy materials for teachers.

His most popular book for adults so far is All Teachers Great and Small, the first of his “memoirs of lessons and life in the Yorkshire Dales”.

He has also published a volume of poetry for children called Razzle Dazzle.

After teaching in the Dales for many years he turned to freelance writing in 2000.

Married with three children, he divides his working time between writing, running school workshops to enthuse children about reading and giving talks about teaching.