From his first day of teaching in a school in one of the most deprived towns in the country, to the end of his career as headteacher of a large international school in London, Graham Lacey reflects on thirty-five years at the ‘chalkface’, through a number of specific experiences that helped shape his views, practical and theoretical, on educational matters. Whilst Graham is convinced there are certain prerequisites for a successful career in the profession, his tales illustrate that there can be no substitute for bitter experience. You thought you had taught a good lesson; or that your sixth form assembly had made a lasting impression on your audience; or that parents would be inclined to defer to your professional opinion; or that headteachers wielded autocratic power? Think again. His stories reveal the gap between the heady idealism with which Graham entered the profession, and the painful reality as he progressed through it, steadily narrowing. But beneath the educational jargon and mumbo-jumbo, he learned, lie a few basic principles, not least learning from experience, which Graham’s stories confirm need to be applied if the best interests of students are to be served as well as high professional standards reached. His stories are laced with humourand predicaments that will ring true to members of the teaching profession, and shed light on 
the human condition to other readers. In short, Graham suggests that a comical or chastening experience may turn, with humble reflection, into a salutary lesson learned. In that sense, Graham implies, the school classroom is perhaps no more nor less than a microcosm of the world outside it.
Publisher: Austin Macauley