HiLzisme

The biggest insult I've ever received was when I was called in to Mr Ducker's class, one of the English teachers at my school, where he asked me if I had written my Year 10 English coursework by myself or if someone had helped me. We were tasked with writing a story based on a jacket that your teacher would place wherever they felt like and you would create a whole world around that jacket. I proceeded to tell Mr Ducker that I had indeed written that story all by myself. He said that all the teachers responsible for marking our coursework couldn't believe that my story had been written by me as it was too good to have been written by a child. He also added that it was the best story they had ever read in the history of my school. 

Now, whilst that was a great compliment, I felt very much insulted by what I saw as a backhanded compliment. Shoot me for having a vivid imagination and loving and enjoying the English language as much as I did. What a terrible shame that my English teacher who was voted the best English teacher in the country that year who Sir Trevor McDonald came to school to interview him on his achievement had done his job so well and helped to unlock my imagination. He was excessively unconventional, swearing, standing on desks, removing his boots and placing them in the centre of our desks and letting students spit out their gum into his hands amongst many other peculiar yet wonderful things he did. He taught my class not to be held back by anything and just write anything that came to us without giving it any thought. We wrote all manner of nonsense and highly unacceptable language in our books through his encouragement to just be natural. He taught us to be free with writing and not try to direct it but rather let it direct us. His lessons led me to that amazing story. It's just a shame I do not have a copy of it to see if it really was that great.