This is a collection of twenty-four of the first Correlation Streets, nine of which have appeared in the pages of Mathematics Teaching. I hope I have been faithful to my initial brief - I’ve included stuff that I think is fun, mostly suggested by my irrepressible students at Paston College in Norfolk, but there are also moments of danger where I feel as though I am risking my career with every word. I had not reckoned with the psychic liberation that results from writing a column like this. I am free to revisit every moment of my life as a mathematics teacher, celebrating the ups and redeeming the downs. Of course, that could mean upsetting one or two people along the way.
So is what I write here the truth? I can safely say that half of what is here is fictionalised documentary, while the other half is fact-inspired fiction. Correlation Street is a mixture of what happens, what I would like to happen, and what I am glad does not happen in my classroom (or thereabouts).
There will be some who read these pages who will wonder if they can see themselves portrayed in a character here. I would only say to you that there is a bit of everyone in each character that I draw, and that no one character is wholly based on a single real-life person. Names have been changed, locations have been disguised, and misdemeanours have been reassigned.
Above all, I hope that these pieces are on the side of the ordinary classroom maths teacher, a description that I am proud to apply to myself. Every day we hear stories of the entry-level practitioner being hit by piles of dense paperwork, being harassed by unsympathetic management, and being beaten over the head with league tables and inspectors’ reports (and all this before they even open the classroom door). To me, those who commit to the classroom are the real heroes amongst those who earn their living in education, and I hope that this ebook provides for them a few moments of relief from the daily round. Certainly writing these pieces has provided that for me.