I Was A Teacher For 12 Years. Now I've Written A Book About It.
“Brutal, honest and laugh-out-loud funny. Francis is doing for teaching what This Is Going To Hurt did for medicine.” – Jimmy Carr
Some of you may know, despite my best efforts to conceal it, that I used to be a teacher.
Please, hold your astonishment. It’s true. It feels good to finally say it.
For 12 years, I worked in some of Britain’s roughest schools, trying to teach Shakespeare and Marlowe to aspiring pupils who were more interested in throwing chairs at my head.
The stories I gained would make your hair whiten. Two years ago, I decided to put some of them down on paper. Before I knew it, I had a book.
This is that book.
(Un)educated is a telling of the most baffling, shocking and disgusting things that happened to me in those 12 years, when my professional life consisted of losing classroom turf wars to teenagers, refereeing grudge fights between East End grandmas and seeking to uncover who sh*t in the bathroom sink. Sparing no gory detail, this is an unflinchingly hilarious tear through the mire of teaching, a collection of tales that are only funny in hindsight and because they happened to someone else.
But it’s more than that. It’s also a polemic of our failing education system. Between the blood and the guts and the snot and the spit, I saw tragedy unfold. Well-meaning teachers driven to oblivion. Collapsing families, desperate to give their kids the best possible chance, dismissed by a callous infrastructure. Children left to drop by the only safety net they had left. This book acts as a brutal reminder of how badly our ‘betters’ have strayed, the results of their policies seen through the eyes of someone employed to enact them.
It’s not all doom and gloom. This is also story of triumph. Of teachers doing right by their pupils, parents making the impossible happen, and kids with no hope finding it again. Of how I pushed through the most difficult period of my life, found diamonds in the rough, learned to see the bright side, and made it out alive.
“A great subject covered by a guy unafraid to tell it like it is.” – Geoff Norcott
It’s out on May 28th, but if you want to pre-order it (and you know you do), it’s available here.
If you’re a non-reader, don’t worry; we haven’t forgotten about you – there’s an audiobook. Read by yours truly, no less. That’ll be available on Spotify and Audible on the same day. Now there’s no excuse.
