Out of my Comfort Zone

I've never really been part of a team. At school, P.E. was about as far from my favourite subject as it could possibly have been. My idea of fun during lessons was a really heated debate about the intentions of the author Graham Swift when he wrote 'Waterland'. So, it made social sense that I was never going to be a member of such a popularity-affirming group as 'the netball team'. I was a member of the lacrosse team for a few weeks but the thrill of being able to don a P.E. kit and say that I was 'sporty' soon gave way to resentment at having to cut short my lunch-times in order to feel uncomfortably out of breath for an entire forty minutes. Ever since, I have at no point come close to being a member of a team in the sporting sense. I was a member of an orchestra for a few years (the preferred 'sport' of the geek collective) but I wouldn't call it a team - more a group of eccentrics thrown together and let loose occasionally to busk on the streets of Austria and try very hard to get drunk in the evenings. All as part of an organised tour you understand.

So how is it that, a mere ten years on from the heady and hedonistic days of the Friday night regional orchestra, I found myself sniffing at being gathered into the arms of a team? This is surely something I should have welcomed. You'd think. However, it seems that I've not only lost any grain of desire to gain access to such group activities but I seem to have developed an almost physical aversion to them.

The Teaching Taster Course was a late-night discovery. Several email-checkings, another Guardian job search and a quick browse of the Topshop website into my evening of web-surfing and I was struggling for time-wasting fodder, something to graze on while I tried to feel even slightly tired for bed (it was pushing 2am but I've never been able to get to sleep early). The Teaching and Development Agency, I thought. I'll read some more case studies of other journalists who had defected. OK, it's my imagination that there are more of us but I find it comforting to tell myself these fibs. Once on the site, I noticed an ad for a Teaching Taster Course 'for those who are still undecided about teaching - and it's free!' Well, I could be doing with a freebie and something to fill three days. And, if I'm honest, I fit the criteria exactly. It sounded like a counselling service for career-changers. I signed up. It was now 2.30am so I'm not even sure I filled in my address properly. But a few days later I received an application form. Application form? I thought I could just sign up! How bloody pretentious, I answered back to my arrogant self. I filled it in (it was fairly comprehensive - GCSE and A level results, professional experience, all of that) and sent it off. A couple of weeks later I was informed that I had a place.

I turned up on Monday of this week surprised and comforted to see that I was one of 16 people who were similarly undecided as to the path their life was going to take next. In fact, it was very reassuring. The ages ranged from 20 to mid-50s, included university professors, engineers, a couple of bankers (no surprise there) and a joiner. We were a real mixed bag: people whose jobs had ended, relationships had ended. And there we all were. Sitting in the conference room of a local Catholic girls' secondary school, looking to teaching as some sort of salvation. If this is all future generations of children can expect out of their education - life's unfortunates, the worriers, the undecided ones, the divorcees and the made-redundants - then I feel sorry for them.

"Morning team!"

The course leader dramatically revealed herself to us from behind a door.

Team? This is new.

"Lovely to see you all. Now, before we start let me just go through the essentials. Oh, actually, no, before we start that, please help yourself to biccies and nibblets! Oh yes, we're very generous here! [I eyed up a lovely plate of flapjacks, luxury jammy dodgers and huge cornflake-covered biscuits. I love a novelty biscuit.] Right! [she had raced to the front and was now pointing at a power point presentation on something known as a Smart Board.] First off..."

And off she went. It was a real attack on the senses. For someone who has spent the last few weeks mostly alone and communicating with the outside world via email, this was all a bit too much. Then there was the flashing. The power point slides flashed up, changed, paused, flashed again.

"And, of course, you will be needing to know where the Comfort Zones are."

The what? Are we in a spaceship? What could she be referring to? Massage rooms? Hairdressers? That could be very nice. Ohhh... As my brain tuned into the new conference speak that surrounded me, it clicked. Toilets. Great. That's what they're calling them now. Since when did toilets become a dirty word? I'm going to have to watch my language if things have got this bad since I was at school. I found myself longing for the sardonic quips of my former journo colleagues. I thought wistfully back to a time when effs and blinds were exchanged affectionately. It was just all too easy on the ear. Almost excruciatingly easy. Then: "Now, I've left the door open in case anyone is interested in getting some fresh air...but I can close it if you're too chilly? Now, over the next few days if anyone has a question, please feel free to take a post-it - you'll find them on your desks [points to the yellow sticky pad on each table] - and scribble down your question and then just stick them on the wall and I'll try to answer them as best I can." Stick them on the wall? I just didn't understand. I felt like an alien unable to comprehend the social niceties of my host planet. I wasn't cold. I hadn't even noticed that the door was open. And I wondered what sort of a question would be that complex that it couldn't just be asked and answered in the middle of a very small conference room and instead needed to be written down, stuck up and ruminated over before being answered. I was confused. When was the lecture going to start? Pen poised over the sad, uncomfortably blank pages of my 'Reporters Notebook', I sighed. A man on my table shouted something out at the wrong moment and everyone laughed. I was missing out. I strained to involve myself but the effort drained me and I slumped back into my chair and let the laughter wash over me. I began to doodle a dress in my notebook. Maybe I'll start doodling and my doodles will become designs and those designs will reveal a talent for fashion and then I'll become a bit like Stella McCartney and I've always liked clothes and..wow that would be great...

"Chhh-arlotte is it?" Huh? What? I'd drifted so far away from this room that I hadn't become aware of someone craning their neck right into me to get a good look at my chest. What had prompted this invasion? Then I realised that my chest was in fact where my name badge had been stuck. I find name-badge-pinning to be a rather taboo subject. Where to pin? Chest or waistband? Chest or waistband? Either one could attract the wrong kind of attention. Face is out, knees are too low, so belly is the only other viable option. But who ever heard of a name badge being pinned onto a belly? "Yes, Charlotte. Hi. What's...your name?" And off we went. Some small-talk, what were you doing before this?, would you like another tea? oh no, thanks very much, what's our next session about? The Curriculum? Lovely. I managed admirably and, afterwards, felt like a cold-hearted witch on account of my steely first impressions towards the whole experience.

The second day passed much better. I actually got into the swing of the lingo, the acronyms, the information about GTP, PGCE, Extended Schools and the G&T programme (which I learnt was not a diploma in drinking but in fact stood for Gifted & Talented). I observed some lessons and even found myself in demand among keen linguists who wished to practise their speaking presentations on me. Had they been bribed into appearing so keen, I wondered? The high point for me was explaining the incredibly fascinating (for me) structure of the word 'franchement' in French and how it's just like the English 'frankly', really. From the smug expression on my face upon having imparted this jewel of knowledge to a group of Year 9 girls, you'd think I'd just told them the secret to eternal youth. I have to admit, it was gratifying.

By Day Three of 'Crash Course in Teaching', we were pretty well versed and ready for the big guns to come to speak to us - the teacher training tutors. These were the guys who decided whether or not we could cut it in the world of pedagogy. Enter Simon Cowell look-a-like. This could be fun. A voice boomed its greeting. It was so deep and booming in fact that it was almost out of my hearing range. The polar opposite of a squeal - a dull, booming, air-shuddering sound. This man was the teacher training hot shot. We'd been on a journey, he said. Had we enjoyed it? [Doesn't wait for an answer] What had we learnt about what makes a good teacher? [Oh god, we're not back to this are we? Someone answers. I squirm] That's right, he says. That's an excellent point to take on board, he likes that, that works for him [Oh no. This is not pleasing to the ear. Someone asks a question] OK, he says, what he'll do is go back down into that question and come back out again [Sounds dangerous. Where are we going again?? My head feels light and foggy] He's saying something about touching base, throws in an 'ergo' and a 'per se' and he's finished.

Phew. What exactly was that? I had no idea. But I knew it didn't have anything to do with teaching. Staring at this orange-faced, bellowing man, I realised that it wasn't me who didn't fit in around there, on a Wednesday afternoon in a small lecture room in the middle of a secondary school - it was in fact him. If I didn't have a clue what he was saying in his bellowing spiel, then I could guarantee that a classroom full of hormonal 15-year-old girls wouldn't. I was no expert - by a long way, I hadn't wanted to be a teacher from birth, and I might not even do it forever, but I certainly felt that I might be capable of communicating with a class of students. I felt that I had something useful to offer and that, if during five minutes I had successfully conveyed a scrap of knowledge - albeit only one word - to a group of students, then I couldn't be a complete misfit in this profession after all.