My 60 Minute Writer course was inspected recently. I have long been of the opinion that inspectors should just drop in, unannounced. As it was, I didn’t prepare a special inspector lesson (I don’t believe in that sort of thing), but I did spend several days experimenting with the lighting in order to achieve a chiaroscuro effect (the high contrast black and white photography seen in film noir), which I thought would make me me look more dynamic over Zoom.

In the end I gave up, determined to rely on my meticulous planning, my sparkling personality and my students’ support. I really do plan meticulously. There are 11 sessions, and the slides and handouts were prepared for all of them, and scheduled, before the course even started. I have been sending out additional materials in response to what has happened in lessons and my growing understanding of the students’ interests, and anything interesting I happen to have come across.

I say all this because on that night, of all nights, it all went wrong. The first thing was that the mouse on my Mac computer needed charging. There was no warning of this. Moreover, the charging socket is on the underside of the mouse, meaning that you can’t use it while it’s plugged in. Quite clearly it was designed by one of those graduates whom Nicholas Nassim Taleb called I-Y-I — intellectual yet idiot.

So, a quick rush downstairs to get my laptop instead. I tried to log in to Zoom, and ended up having this conversation with the program (this may not be a strictly verbatim account):

Program: And you are?

Me: Terry, City Lit. I log in every week.

Program: Sorry, squire, never heard of you.

Me: Look, you fool, City Lit, Terry, course starts in two minutes.

Program: Talk to the mouse.

All the while, the Mac was pinging as more and more people queued up to be let into the room. Well, I managed to start on time, just about. But the final straw was the breakout rooms: the last one didn’t show up on my screen, so I didn’t go into that one at all. (
I like to pop into all the breakout rooms, giving the occasional snort of derision and asking if they’d ever considered taking a different sort of course.)

The biggest let-down was the students. I had told them the previous week that an inspector person was coming in to observe me, and asked if they could say something like “Terry is such a wonderful teacher” whenever the inspector person appeared in a breakout room. I advised them to spend time during the week practising in a mirror, so that it would all seem completely natural.

And did they say anything like that when the inspector lady was present?

Don’t make me laugh. (On a serious note, the students were brilliant. The atmosphere was vibrant, they were clearly enjoying the session and taliking about what they feel they have learnt so far. I think so much depends on the calibre and brilliance of the teacher in these kind of circs, don’t you?)

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