HIDDEN LESSONS by Mehreen Baig, read by Mehreen Baig - audiobook extract
b"Hilarious and heart-warming and utterly compelling, Hidden Lessons lets you in on the life secrets all teachers know.\\n\\nYou're in at 7 a.m., there until 7 p.m. and marking into the late hours. You've got one student who's a full-time carer, another who's pregnant and a third who's just joined a gang. You haven't got enough textbooks to go around, and one of the parents just called you an 'extremist'. You've just gone through a devastating heartbreak, and you have to teach Romeo and Juliet to 30 hormonal 14-year-olds. \\n\\nWelcome to life as a teacher.\\n\\nThis is a world that all of us know, but most of us have completely forgotten. It's a world where you're working 50-hour weeks, but you're still just a part-time teacher, because the rest of the time, you're a security guard, a nurse, a counsellor or a friend. It's also a world where you spend all day with some of the most interesting people you know. And even when the lesson plan has been abandoned, you're still learning. \\n\\nMehreen started teaching at 21, and by the time she left 10 years later, she'd learnt a bit about teenagers and a lot about life. This is her story."