Edmund Irons

Edmund Irons spent his first year in teaching 'all over the place': on supply, on short-term contracts, daily assignments, in nearly a dozen schools, in three different counties. No matter where he worked, pupils seemed to use similar 'tactics' to interrupt his lessons. A subsequent full-time career in state secondary schools only served to confirm his early observations.

It was while 'On Supply' that another frustrated teacher quipped 'they must all go somewhere to learn how to wind us up'. From this seed of an idea Summer Skool developed. Over the next two or three years, the author started to make brief notes of tactics used during his own lessons, giving each a made-up name eg The Double Bubble.In all he found around 50 common playful wheezes that pupils regularly use to interrupt lessons. Plus another 20 or so 'cruel' tactics used on himself and other teachers (too cruel to publish).

Rather than write a book blandly listing the 50 tactics, he decided on a whimsical, fictitious approach describing a secretive Summer Skool teaching boys the rudiments of low-level distraction, with tactics sufficient to break up a lesson without them getting into too much trouble.

Assuming readers do not take its ironical approach too much at face value, Irons hopes the book will encourage those new to the profession, reassuring them (especially NQTs wondering where they are going wrong)that we all experience at some time the same annoying classroom distractions, while amusing the more experienced colleague who has seen it all before.