A beautiful narrative that will shed some light on the lives of many of our youngest adults.
How do you show the world how much your job means to you? How do you convince others that your job is more than a simple 9-5 office job? If you are teacher Brendan Murray then the answer is to write a compelling and highly emotional story that weaves together the lives of not only teachers but the students in their care.
Murray is a teacher at a government school in Victoria and his 10+ years of experience have seen many students sit in his classroom who have affected him and his worldview in an extraordinary amount of ways. Murray teaches Year 12 Literature in Victoria (the highest English subject on offer in Victoria) and his passion for teaching this subject, as well as middle school, has seen him deal with a lot of issues that affect teenagers. The students love him—highlighted by his class
Whilst The School is ostensibly a memoir, it is written in a style that would, no doubt, impress Mr. Carey himself. At times, it reads like some grand fiction and Murray makes clever use of the students’ stories to take the reader outside the classroom and into the difficult lives that many students are forced to lead. The heartbreaking story of Kelvin, who finds out he has stage 4 cancer at age 14, and the rigorous treatment he goes through is told so vividly that you can feel the injections going into the fragile young man. There’s also Connor who undergoes a radical transformation from class clown to advocate for the underprivileged in less than a year, or Wambui who faces incredible trauma in her homeland before she eventually arrives in Murray’s classroom. These are but a few of the many wonderful characters that sit in Murray’s many classrooms over the course of the year. Teachers of secondary school will undoubtedly find much of Murray’s prose highly relatable and will indeed recognise many of the student types in their own classrooms.
Along the way, Murray poses many important questions about our young adult learners. There is, to no great surprise, a strong argument against NAPLAN in its current form but then he proceeds to highlight the massive issue with student ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Record) scores, how they are reached and how far too much importance is placed on them. It is the kind of persuasive writing that would most likely get him top marks in any English classroom. He also finds time to question the amount of pressure forced on year 12 students to achieve in their final year of formal schooling.
There is a surprising lack of “woe is me” content in this. He loves his job despite the many extra hours he puts in week after week, year after year. He is also quick not to put himself on a pedestal or pat himself on the back too much—the best teachers never do.
This is, at times, some of the most moving and emotional writing you are likely to read on the subject. Like all the best prose, it comes from the heart as well as from personal experience. Whilst there are many messages for our leaders that can be taken from this book, the real message is this: our students are extraordinary. They live lives that most of them should not have to and, as educators, we need to not only be aware of that but help them navigate through those difficult years.
This is a wonderful, and compelling read and one that every secondary teacher (and parents of secondary students) should put on their “must read” pile.
Reviewed by Rodney Hrvatin
Twitter: @Wagnerfan74
Distributed by: Pan Macmillan
Released: 25 May 2021
RRP: $34.99
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