As someone who is definitely in the lower height bracket I revel in any opportunity to wear heels. 

Indeed, in the current pursuit of my teaching career, heels have become a necessity. Nothing worries me more than the prospect of an eleven year old towering over me as I am trying to take ownership of the classroom. The tap tap of my heels down the corridor have become a source of comfort to me, I'm not aiming to be Cersei, more of a Daenerys who has a distinct ability to control even the most petrifying of beasts. 

However, the children are unaware of the perpetual fear brewing inside of me. The fear of: A) them just ignoring me; B) them not learning anything; C) falling over in said heels and breaking my ankle. Surprisingly, it is C that keeps me up at night. The constant tap tap is accompanied by the jingle "do not fall, do not trip", repeated incessantly round my mind every waking minute at work... Maybe this is a subconcious, subliminal message: "do not make a fool of yourself in front of these children, they will not let you forget it". Or perhaps it is a signifier of how much we as humans care so much about our image, both professionally and socially. 

For me, when I squeeze my abnormally wide feet into a pair of River Island Court Heels every morning, I am reminded of the fact that I am merely a child myself, feigning responsibilty in a twenty-one year old's body.

These heels come in all colours and styles, much like a teacher, I have a "lazy" pair, which I wear when I have had a particularly stressful week and cannot be bothered to be on my tippy toes all day (a personal favourite). A "sassy" pair, which incidently I stole from my Mother's wardrobe and am yet to tell her about my theft, a "I should be working in the city pair", because they are wholly in practical for walking up and down the corridors all day and I usually reserve these for PE days as I can change into my trainers at lunch. And, lastly (but by no means final, as I am a bit of a heels hoarder) a "wild" pair, these are the tallest heels in my work collection, ashamedly I have only worn these once to work as I am certain I will fall head over heels - not in the way I'd like to as when I go out at the weekend.  

The relevance of these heels as to my capacity to be a good teacher is probably none. Yet, I feel far more confident bounding (well, by 3pm hobbling) up the corridors in a pair of heels than I do in my loafers. It is not a theory I would encourage everyone to pursue, everyone is different and what gives me confidence is not necessarily the right move for someone else. The fact of the matter is, despite feeling most of the time (and I pray teachers new and old to the profession agree with me here) that I am a fraud and a child myself in so many ways, that there are devices out there - heels, exercise, wine - that allow us a reprieve either during the working day or at the end of it, which encourage us to keep on walking up those corridors. 

A school corridor can, in essence, present a microcosm for adult life. Never ending...leading to a class that you do not particualrly wish to enter sometimes, however, we must and we do. Everyday we walk up those corridors until eventually we break into our heels and we bound up them. 

Who knows, maybe by the end of the year I'll be in slippers.

The first day of school is always received with dread, excitement and curiosity. Now imagine transitioning from the place of the pupil to the teacher all within four months...

 After leaving univeristy I was unsure about many things, the one thing I knew was that I wanted to work with young people. However, it took a lot of encouragement from those around me to persuade me that teaching was the career for me. This taught me that sometimes in life you have to jump without any indication of where you might land (cringe as it may sound, I firmly believe now that there's a lot of truth in this). 

I was prepared for many things as a teacher, having spent the last few summers working in a school setting, yet the one thing that shook me to the very core was grammar.

As an English graduate I always considered that this would be an aspect of teaching that I wouldn't struggle with. Oh how wrong I was. I had never heard of fronted adverbials, the progressive tense, how to identify the past perfect, the list goes on and on. It was a terrifying prospect that I believe most people from my generation can appreciate. I never learnt any grammatical terms whilst at school, aside from the terms of nouns and verbs (I discovered that any reference to a verb as a 'doing word' is sacrilege), so the prospect of delivering weekly Grammar lessons to ten and eleven year olds was utterly petrifying. This was when I discovered that teaching is all about staying one lesson ahead of the pupils.

I stood in front of that class, knees knocking together with the palms of my hands sweating and I uttered the words "so what is a contraction?" Thankfully, the TA who works alongside me quickly noticed my lack of explanation and guided me through those first thirty minutes of what can only be described as an utter disaster. For those of you, who were like me, a contraction is a word that has been shortened from two words. For example 'don't' is the contracted form of 'do not'. Again a term I had never come across in all my own years of education.

As the weeks progressed I began to learn how to mask my own fear. Children are like Blood Hounds, ready to pounce the moment they sense any weakness, I challenge anyone who thinks it's easy to teach a Grammar lesson. Despite Maths being my weakest subject at school I am yet to experience that same fear that I did, and admittedly still do on occasion, in those first few Grammar lessons of my first term. 

After many a night pestering my mother, previously a Deputy Head, I slowly began to grasp the concept of KS2 grammar. I now head into those lessons with less trepidation - that is until a pupil convinces you they are right even though you were certain you were correct. So it seems a Grammar lesson is not too dissimilar to life, you aren't expected to know everything and you will get it wrong, yet resilience is vital to progress.

I can now safely identify fronted adverbials and the past progressive tense.