The story behind 'What Would Miss Honey Do?'

Hi, I'm Miss M. I am a Primary School Teacher living and teaching in Lancashire.

I have been meaning to set up a blog for a while... so here it is!

The contents of this blog will vary from post to post. I will be writing about things such as...
- my personal experiences in teaching
- my views on educational issues / news / topics
- teaching ideas, lessons and resources that I have seen / used / found particularly fun or useful
- sometimes there will just be personal stuff that I want to talk about (just because I can, because it's my blog, so there). Like any travels or interesting happenings in the world of Miss M.

To start, a little more information about me - the teacher, the person, the blogger.
I have never written a blog before (which some of you may say is obvious) but am looking forward to putting some of my thoughts and ideas out there and I hope that they entertain, help or inspire a couple of people along the way.

The name of the blog - What would Miss Honey do? - is not based on my name. That's where the Miss M bit comes from. No, as some of you may have guessed it actually comes from the character of Miss Honey in Roald Dahl's children's book Matilda. She is a character that I aspired to be like as a youngster as I sat playing Schools with my eager little line of teddy bear students and a small chalkboard. She was so loved by her pupils and even her name just sounds lovely. (I am a little obsessed with bees too, which will no doubt become evident as I continue to post.) In my young, impressionable eyes Miss Honey was what a teacher should be. Miss Honey was what I wanted to be.

As I have got older and volunteered, trained, qualified and worked as a teacher, there are many people/teachers who have inspired me and my teaching style. The aspiration to be Miss Honey was something I forgot about as I focussed more on assimilating features from some of the outstanding teachers I have had the pleasure and honour to either be taught by or work with such as the immortal Mrs Lemon; a true teaching superstar.

However, Miss Honey recently came up whilst teaching my current Y2 class. Let me set the scene...
It is World Book Day. In the abstract world that is a Primary School this means that all of the staff an children come in dressed up as a book character of their choice. All of the KS1 teaching staff coordinated and dressed up as a menagerie of Mr Men and Little Miss characters (I was Little Miss Christmas; Christmas being another obsessions that is likely to appear as my posts continue). As far as the children's costumes were concerned, naturally there were many Spidermen, Batmen and whole host of Elsas from Disney's frozen, the concept of book character a little lost on a few of the children. One little girl in my class, however, came dressed as the original child bookworm herself; Matilda from Roald Dahl's Matilda. She was wearing a blue dress, little lace-up pumps and the classic red ribbon in her hair. She carried with her a little parcel of books tied with string. She looked great. Such a simple costume but perfectly executed. You could tell instantly who she was.

As the day went on the children and I asked each other about our costume choices. When our very own Matilda-for-a-day explained why she had dressed as such my heart just soared.
"I came as Matilda because I think Miss M is just like Miss Honey from Matilda. So I wanted to be Matilda and Miss M is like Miss Honey." This was emphasised when speaking with her mother later on, who was sick of hearing about me at home and how 'just perfect' I was.

Well that was it. Goal as a teacher achieved. I may have only been teaching for a year or so at this point but I may as well have retired then and there. There was no doubt that I wasn't in the right profession or that I wasn't doing a good job. My pupil thought I was like Miss Honey; that beats an OFSTED rating any day!

So that is the story behind the blog title, and I hope it gives you a little bit of an incite into who I am as a teacher. It's a busy, pressured, stressful profession, there is no doubt. But it is one of the most rewarding things that you can do, and I love (almost) every second of it.

Well, that is this post completed I feel. I hope it will be the first of many.
If you enjoy my blog/posts then please share it around and come back to read my future posts!
Thanks for reading; Miss M xxx

Images taken from...
www.aseanjournal.com  &  boldlygo.co