A couple of years ago my wife casually dropped into conversation that she would like an airing cupboard on the upstairs landing. With little DIY nous, I thought, incorrectly, that the only course of action open to me was to construct her one as a surprise.

I purchased wood, screws and other building materials as I styled it out in the local Wickes. Heck, I even attempted to have a conversation about dry lining. A few days later I excitedly unveiled my creation: yes, it was an ugly monstrosity and ok, maybe the door didn’t quite shut correctly, if at all, but I had scaled the DIY peak and could now class myself as a jack of all trades and a master of storage.

The airing cupboard soon got nicknamed ‘the coffin’, due to it looking like a coffin, and my wife to this day outlines her desire to get a professional in to upgrade my handiwork.

Alas, I am not a builder but a teacher. I like to class myself, as we all do, as competent in my employ. It has taken many years of hard slog to get to the point where you can drop into a class and intellectually nourish 30 kids, who are initially looking for any chink in the armour with which to test your pedagogical mettle.

The job can be fantastic on one hand and fraught with difficulty on the other. Arguably, it is now as much about building stakeholder relationships, so you all buy into the vision and the end game, as it is about teaching.

Now working from home, with sporadic trips into work to look after key worker children, the emphasis soon turns to structure and a schedule in order to home school my two girls, a sight that has been repeated millions of times across the UK since the inception of the ‘lockdown’. I spent hours, using my work training, drawing up ‘differentiated’ timetables for the bairns. Proud of my toils, I presented the final copy to little fanfare and it went down like the proverbial sack of the brown stuff.

We had tears, tantrums and verbal attacks as they point blank refused to engage in the work of art which I gifted them. Wounded, yet undeterred, and with the aim of introducing some structure to the long home-arrest spring days that had been thrust upon us, I persisted. On day one, after an hour of upset, I sat my eight-year-old down to watch a ‘do now’ activity of a six-minute interview undertaken by a child with the Prime Minister. She lay on the sofa, thrashed around, completely disengaged and did all in her power to disrupt the learning experience. Despite wearing out the Sky pause button, 40 minutes later we got there before embarking on a spot of geography.

It was at this point my wife pointed out that the teachers at both of their respective schools had issued some work, and we placed them in their rooms where, after another five minutes of angst, they sat in silence for two hours and buckled down. The eight-year-old wrote a fact sheet about 'Tigers’ and proudly presented it to us, as daughter the elder worked on some science.

They fully engaged and the next day both eagerly volunteered to go to their rooms and do more of the same, only to be busted when the 12-year-old was found on WhatsApp whilst the younger was busying herself counting the contents of her piggy bank.

Then I ventured online. Mothers and fathers were posting pictures of Bobby who, aged six, is now allegedly one of the world’s leading experts in King Henry VIII, and Geraldine completing a university-level maths conundrum as they gloat as to how it has all been a raging success.

I guarantee they are all being economical with the truth: putting a brave face on as they subconsciously attempt to cast aspersions on teaching professionals by purporting to now be one of them. This is as far from the truth as is possible: there is no marking, scrutiny, inspections, grade entry or any of the other time-heavy tasks that those of us in situ must go through daily.

The truth is that with home schooling we are now all on the same page and I am as clueless as any non-teacher. It is a painful episode should you get too involved: let them get on with it and ask for help if needed, but don’t do as I did and thrust it upon them, as they will switch off and dig their heels in. Take the tech off them, if possible, as they need any lame excuse to revert to text, and, rule zero: make it fun! Adults are suffering, so imagine what anguish furnishes an eight-year old's mind.

Although some level of structure should be sought, the most important aspect at present is them garnering some enjoyment and making the best of what is a trying situation. Prioritise the cooking, trampolining and artwork with sporadic public appearances of the maths and science big guns. They will thank you for it, as will your sanity.

Oh, and don’t call yourself a teacher. You are instructing, not teaching, much the same as I am not an airing cupboard carpenter, as much as I wish it were true. Now where did I put the sledgehammer and crowbar as I have a bit of coffin demolition to undertake as the kids get to grasp with Pythagoras' theorem and the joys of quadratic equations.

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher