When I consider that I became an English teacher, I marvel at the irony, and the way fact can be so much stranger than fiction. English was my worst subject at school. I was far more comfortable in mathematics, the sciences, or economics, where truth could be more easily calculated. English, by contrast, was elusive. It asked questions that were never settled, and that frustrated me.

It took me some years to learn that this discomfort, this failure to neatly define truth, was not a flaw in the subject; it was the point.

What I came to love about English is that those questions in pursuit of genuine knowledge inevitably lead to dialogue and interplay. Questions about the concepts of justice, identity, responsibility, and freedom do not submit easily to formulas or rubrics. Literature does not rush us toward certainty; instead, it slows us down and asks us to pay attention: to language, to other people, and to ourselves.

Some of the most important moments I have witnessed in English classrooms as a student were not moments of instruction at all. Instead, they were moments of recognition. Like when I realised that a character’s struggle with identity felt uncomfortably familiar. Or the presentation I planned with a fellow student, where we refused to allow our question to be settled by a single “correct” interpretation. Or even the conversations that happened once the “teaching” finished, and the de-centered classroom discussion began. These moments are relational. They happen between people, and they cannot be scheduled or planned, but they are often where real learning begins.

There is a scene in my favourite novel, one I read with an old teacher in cafes during summer, outside of class, in which a man argues that people do not truly want freedom. What they want, he suggests, is certainty, order, and the relief of having difficult choices made for them. The scene appears in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, in a chapter known as “The Grand Inquisitor”. The argument is unsettling because it is not easily dismissed. Freedom is supposed to be what we all want. Yet freedom, Dostoevsky suggests, is in fact demanding. It asks more of us than comfortable certainty ever does.

Education lives inside this same tension. Schools rightly value structure, clarity, and shared expectations. These things matter. At the same time, learning, particularly in English, often requires students to sit with uncertainty, to wrestle with complexity, and to encounter perspectives that disrupt easy conclusions. English is uniquely placed to hold this tension because it does not seek to resolve questions. And there is something that resonates within me when I consider answers that are dynamically alive with that uncertainty. Because truth is not defined, calculated, or measurable, it is a relationship. Much like our Christian faith.

This is also why relationships matter so deeply in English classrooms. Students are far more willing to take intellectual and emotional risks when they feel known and respected. A question without a clear answer can feel threatening unless there is trust in the room. Teaching, at its best, is not the transmission of information but an invitation into a conversation that has been going on long before we arrived and will continue long after we leave.

Of course, schools must measure learning. Assessment provides accountability, direction, and equity. But in English, these measures are always partial. They can tell us something important, but never everything that matters. As Head of English, my hope is that our classrooms continue to be places where rigour and curiosity coexist, where students are taught to write clearly, read closely, and think carefully, but also where they are given permission to ask questions that resist easy answers. 

I read a lot of books this summer. Some I enjoyed, some annoyed me; but interestingly, it was those which annoyed me that lingered. Texts that unsettle, or discussions that help us see differently, are those worth seeking, as they challenge, sift, and unearth truths and perspectives in a meeting of minds, sometimes across centuries. This is learning.

Those moments cannot always be captured in assessment grades, but they linger.

Steve Watson, Head of English