Bators
by Robert Furlong

 

“Okay, guys,” the teacher said.  “Now I want you to think of something that separates you which is caused only by the environment, not your genes.”

The lads were piss bored.  It was a hot day and the sun was shining brightly, yet here they all were in a stuffy biology lesson.

Even the teacher, Mr Kershaw, was finding the lesson dreary and was rapidly running out of ways to engage a group of sixteen-year-old boys on such a glorious summer day.  It didn’t help that an OFSTED inspector was sitting dourly at the back of the room, making copious notes on his ‘Excellence for Betterness’ clipboard.

“Any ideas?” Mr Kershaw asked his class a little desperately.

“Maybe… er… whether or not we wear glasses?” gozzy-eyed Brian McCluskey tentatively suggested.

“No – eyesight is primarily genetic,” Mr Kershaw told him. “What I’m asking for is something that isn’t determined by your DNA.”

They’d already been separated out by which hand they write with – genetic variation – and then by the size of their muscles – caused by genetic and environmental factors.  Both times the boys had been photographed standing gormlessly around in their different groups so they could put together a wall display which Mr Kershaw hoped would tick one of the inspector’s boxes.

So then Thomas Parker, always a smart-arse if given half a chance, piped up with, “What about whether or not we’re bators?”

“Bators?” Mr Kershaw asked over giggles and titters from Parker’s mates.

“Yeah,” Parker shrugged, looking like this was just your everyday sort of answer.  “I mean, whether or not the guy is jerkin’ his junk off already.”

If the lads had expected Mr Kershaw to be embarrassed or annoyed, they must have been disappointed.  Old Barraclough would have gone apeshit over that sort of filth-talk, but Mr Kershaw was in his twenties and still cool enough to take a joke.

Except he didn’t take this as a joke but rather as an opportunity to work some sex ed into the lesson, well aware that making cross-curricular links was worth extra brownie points on the OFSTED tick-list.

“Oh, I see!  Bators as is in masturbators!” Mr Kershaw chuckled, throwing a glance towards the inspector who peered back quizzically over the top of his half-moon glasses.  “Okay… yes, I suppose that’s an example of environmental variation.  We can work with that if you guys are all happy for us all to know who is and who isn’t… er… shaking the mayonnaise bottle.”

The more assertive lads, who liked to think they spoke for the group, glanced around and shrugged at each other. It wasn’t like it was some big whoop deal, was it?  Some guys were whacking off already, some guys weren’t; at the end of the day, who gave a shit?

So, pleased to have what was passed off as universal assent, Mr Kershaw divided the lads into bators on one side and non-bators on the other.

The inspector, he noticed, was scribbling furiously on his clipboard.  No doubt the guy was impressed at how nonchalantly Mr Kershaw had handled something which could have caused, in less capable hands, the lesson to degenerate into lewd rowdiness.

“How can you tell if you’re a bator?” whined McCluskey, caught in the middle of the two groups, with his jam jar glasses making look even more stupid than he actually was.

“It’s just a question of whether or not you masturbate,” Mr Kershaw told him, but McCluskey’s fuckwit face told him he hadn’t a clue what that word meant.

Michael Sanders chipped in, talking down to him like a primary school teacher explaining something to the class idiot, “When you go to bed each night, McCluskey, do you rub your little peepee until the milkshake shoots out?”

The lads all chuckled as McCluskey obediently nodded.

“In that case, you’re a bator, mate.  Welcome to the club!”

Brandon Stonehouse couldn’t decide if he was a bator or a non-bator: “How often do you have to… er… ‘bate’ to be a bator, sir?”

“I’m not sure,” Mr Kershaw shrugged.  “It’s up to Parker to make the rules. He was the one who suggested this as a form of environmental variation.”

Nice one, Andy mate, the teacher thought to himself.  Give the students ownership of the task in front of the inspector: that would surely put his score up another couple of notches.

“At least once a day,” Parker decreed.  “And it’s gotta be full-on floggin’ off wi’ a proper spunk-up at the end of it.  Not just fiddlin’ wi’ yerself through yer trouser pocket or givin’ yer dick a few jerks after yer’ve taken a piss!”

A couple of the bators, including Stonehouse, sullenly moved across to join the non-bator group.

“Does it count if I just rub myself against my pillow every night?” asked little Johnny Clarke who was so short and scrawny that one could more easily imagine him playing with his superhero toys each evening rather than banging away at his pillow with his prick on full bone.

“D’ya shoot yer muck on it?” Parker asked dubiously.

“Of course I do,” Clarke replied.  “I ‘ave to tell me mam it’s me nose runnin’ what’s dirtyin’ all ‘er pillowcases.”

Parker chuckled and nodded.  “Then yer a bator, mate.  Come over ‘ere wi’ the big boys – congratulations on joinin’ the knuckle shufflers!”

When all the queries had all been answered and everyone’s nocturnal habits had been appropriately classified, the lads looked around keen to see how the class had divided itself up.

A lot of the guys who’d joined the non-bators were the nerdy, swotty types who almost certainly did crank their shanks (probably over the A+ grades they got on their homework) but were too stuck-up and prissy to admit it. A few of the others in that group had squeaky voices and smooth unshaved faces, and perhaps hadn’t yet discovered the pleasurable combination of hand and penis.

But among the non-bators were some of the bigger lads like Chris Matthews and Jordan Thompson who probably did enjoy a good sweaty bout of self-loving, but didn’t do it regularly enough to fit Parker’s rule of a fully-fledged bator.

Lads have different sex drives, Mr Kershaw mused, and you can’t really tell from outward appearances which of their wrists have cranked up the highest mileages.  So just as Gary Parkinson with his tree-trunk neck and sandpaper stubble clearly didn’t salute his flagpole often enough to consider himself a bator, on the other side were little pipsqueeks like Harry Turner and Greg Miles who must put far more energy into churning their cream than they would ever devote to gym-class.

Just then Ian Hargreaves spotted his mate among the non-bators and called out, “Hey, what are ya doin’ in that group, Donnelly?  Yer always on about sex you are!”

Ed Donnelly sneered and said, “Got mesel’ a girlfriend, aven’t I mate?  I mean, why would I bother beefin’ off when I’ve got ‘er servin’ up the real deal?”

The lads fell about and Mr Kershaw was pleased: rarely had a group been so engaged in a genetics lesson.  He’d have to mention his intention to include this activity in future lessons on the self-evaluation that he gave the inspector.

As the lads established themselves in their respective groups, Mr Kershaw was interested to observe a sense of fraternity developing among the boys in the bator group, who seemed to feel a genuine kinship with each other just because they all happened to give their foreskins a good yanking every day.  The lads were just about slapping each other’s backs, sharing with each other how often their hands got to work, and even quiet Danny Elliot – normally so clean-cut with his wire-framed glasses and his gelled-up hair – admitted blushingly to the others that he was a three-times-a-day kind of guy.

“Morning, noon and night, eh?!” Parker laughed, patting Elliot affectionately on his arm.  “Yer a man after me own ‘eart, mate!”

Mr Kershaw chuckled at the way Elliot beamed so proudly on receiving Parker’s praise about his masturbatory frequency.  The two lads might have very little in common otherwise, but it was nice to see them form a bond of sorts on account of both managing to find the time to pop their yoghurt three times a day.

While some boys were eagerly comparing how often they ‘bated’, Mr Kershaw noticed others seemed pleased just to be part of the group.  It was as if they were grateful to be alongside other lads who shared their recently-discovered hobby, or perhaps they’d been worried about how normal it was to be so often cuffing their carrots.

One or two threw self-satisfied smirks over at Mr Kershaw, like they were revelling in letting everyone know how manly they were.  Paul Kemp and Simon Lowe seemed especially smug to be showing off how virile they now felt and Mr Kershaw, noticing how the fronts of the two lads’ trousers were protruding conspicuously outwards and that they were deliberately parading their large bulges towards the non-bators, wondered if they’d grown aroused to be strutting about as out-and-proud bators.

Martin Ashbrook cut through his musings by quietly asking, “If you had to get into one group or other, sir, would you be one of the bators?”

Mr Kershaw smiled.  Ashbrook looked a bit embarrassed that he’d joined the bator group and that his clasmates – and perhaps more significantly his teacher – now knew him to be a regular jerk-off artist.

“I would definitely be a bator, yes,” Mr Kershaw chuckled.  “Twice a day seems to do it for me.”

Ashbrook grinned back at him, pleased that not only did his teacher share what he’d thought of as a slightly shameful habit, but that the two of them were white-knuckling themselves with about the same regularity.

Then Borland called out, “You should get over wi’ the non-bators, Quigley, ’cause fingering yer butt doesn’t count as jackin’ off!”

Quigley just snorted, probably wishing for the thousandth time he hadn’t told Paul Adams that he liked to play with his bumhole.  Stupid gobshite had gone and told the whole fucking school.

Borland persisted, “Seriously mate, chewchin’ yer brown ring doesn’t make you a bator!”

“I wank off too!” Quigley came back with.  “I play wi’ me dick loads more than I play wi’ me arse!”

The lads all laughed but Parker nodded for him to stay.  Quigley was accepted as a bator, even if one who sometimes did it with a decidedly whiffy finger.

Mr Kershaw noticed that, while the bators were developing a cosy camaraderie on finding that they all liked to pound their peckers every day, the non-bator crowd were bonding together in their own way too.  They seemed neither self-conscious nor self-righteous that they didn’t masturbate regularly enough to be classified as true bators, but instead laughed together that wanking was for wankers and that they found jerking off boring and had more productive ways to spend their time.

The two camps started flinging playful insults at each other: the bators claiming that the non-bators weren’t proper men yet and didn’t have enough spunk in their nuts to need to release it every day.  The non-bators retaliated that there was more to life than mindlessly bashing the candle, with Thompson pushing himself forwards to frantically flog his fist against his crotch, pulling a face like an imbecile, eyes vacant and mouth dribbling.

The bators hit back by pretending to masturbate themselves, thumping their wrists back and forth in front of their trouser zippers.  They were gasping and panting to show that being a bator was so incredibly pleasurable, crying out ‘Oh God, yeah, this is so good!  You guys don’t know what you’re missing!”

Mr Kershaw called order and told the lads that it was neither ‘manly’ to be a bator, but nor was it unhealthy to do it regularly.  “Everything in moderation, guys,” he told his class.  “That goes for booze and fast food, and it goes for tickling the pickle too!”

This was turning out to be a such a great lesson, he couldn’t help but tell himself: the boys weren’t just learning about genetics, but there was loads of PSHE stuff finding its way into their heads.  Mr Kershaw was so pleased that he had an OFSTED inspector sitting at the back of the room: there was no way that a lesson like this could warrant anything less than an ‘outstanding’ assessment.

“We need a photograph of us for the display, sir,” Johnson, a non-bator, reminded him.

“Yeah, and we should act out what makes us different,” added Perkins, a bator.

Mr Kershaw nodded; that was a good idea.  When the lads had been separated by which hand they write with, they’d taken photographs of the two groups holding their pens in their different hands.  Similarly, when muscle size had been the trait being looked at, the lads with bigger muscles had been photographed arm wrestling with their biceps bulging, while those who weren’t so muscular had been snapped as if they were struggling to pick up small objects like pencils.

So the bators were photographed pretending to beat off, with their hands at their crotches pounding proudly up and down as they worked their imaginary cocks.

Mr Kershaw chuckled at them as Matthews took the photos: they were oblivious to the fact that they were inadvertently revealing to the camera how big their boners were.  Parker, he could see, was very well-endowed: his wrist was moving up and down in a seven inch arc and the girth he was pretending to hold in his fist was so thick that his fingers didn’t reach around to his thumb.  If this was how he wanked he must have a cock like an overfilled bratwurst!

Borland, on the other hand, must have a tiny little weenie, as he pretended to jerk off by using just a finger and his thumb, and the movement of his hand was barely more than a few centimeters.

Sanders called out, “Hey, Quigley!  While we’re pretending to beat off, you should turn round and bend over so he can get a photo of you shovin’ your middle finger into yer butt-crack!  I mean, that’s how you whack off, isn’t it – by friggin’ yer arse?”

“Shuddup, Sanders,” Quigley blushed.  “I do it the same as you guys.”

“Er… no singling anyone out,” Mr Kershaw called over.  “We all have different sexual tastes and that’s something to be celebrated, not ridiculed.”

He glanced over at the inspector, hoping to see him ticking the box about adherence to the school’s anti-bullying policy, but the man just stared at him with his eyes gaping wide.  No doubt he was overwhelmed by the standard of the lesson he was seeing.

When the bators had been photographed and everyone had laughed at the pictures of them with their hands bashing against their trouser fronts, the non-bators lined up to be snapped on their side of the classroom.  They chose to hold their hands up as if gesturing ‘no’ which wasn’t as funny as what the bators had done, but it would make a nice contrast between the two groups for the display.

Then Borland said, “How about we take some more photos, but just for laughs – not to get put on the wall with the others.”

“What did you have in mind?” Mr Kershaw asked.

“The same as before, but with our flies down and our dicks proper out – us bators all wanking off for real and the non-bators with their knobs danglin’ down, just standin’ there all prim and proper, not touchin’ them or anything.”

The rest of the lads, even the non-bators, loved the idea and became quite animated telling each other how cool it would look.

“You could use it wi’ yer other classes, sir,” one lad suggested.

“Yeah, it’d really help ’em remember that environmental validation thing you were on about,” another said.

Having never seen his class so enthusiastic and pleased that the inspector’s jaw was by now hanging open in utter astonishment, Mr Kershaw agreed to take the photo himself.  He got the two groups standing alongside each other and the lads all pulled their cocks out through their zippers.

The sizes and shapes of all their different knobs showed a huge range of variation – an interesting extension task, or so Mr Kershaw pondered – and while most were floppy or barely running semis, only Quigley’s organ stood upright on full, proud erection.  Quigley looked around at his mates’ cocks and, realising he was the only one was running a boner, he blushed an even deeper red than all the jokes about him fingering his butt had and quickly moved behind someone to conceal it.

“Do bators have bigger dicks, sir?” McCluskey asked, peering through his thick lenses at the non-bators’ more forlorn-looking pricks poking out through their flies.

“Yeah, look at that!” Sanders chortled.  “Our knobs are longer and thicker than theirs!”

Even Matthews in the non-bator group noticed the difference.  Although his big hefty cock was bigger than most of the bators’, he glanced around at his compatriots and agreed, “Yeah, some o’ these guys’ wangs are like half the size o’ yours!”

Mr Kershaw chuckled and intervened.  “I think what it is, lads – and there’s an important bit of biology here – is that masturbation improves circulation to the penis, and so the bators’ dicks have grown faster than the non-bators’ have.”

He looked over at the non-bators and added with a reassuring smile, “You guys will catch up in time, don’t worry about that!  The adult size the penis is genetically controlled and so just because the bators have given their development a boost by regularly stimulating their dicks, yours will continue to grow long after theirs have reached full size.”

The lads reassembled so that Mr Kershaw could take the photo.

“Okay, so the bators have all got to have proper bonk-ons,” Parker commanded.  “It’s gotta look convincin’ if it’s gonna be funny.”

The lads in the bator group grabbed their cocks poking out through their flies and all started beating their hands up and down them.  They found that hilarious and laughed raucously at the sight of their mates openly wanking their pricks off, making fun of each other’s techniques and the wide variety of all their differently-shaped bell-ends.  Some boys proved to be flagrant exhibitionists and made a show of parading their masturbatory prowess, standing brashly with their legs open wide and thrusting their hips back and forth in time with their beating fists. Others like quiet Danny Elliot were more restrained in their self-pleasuring, stroking their stiffening shafts more gently and slowly as they smirked naughtily at each other.

Gradually their differently-sized cocks lengthened and hardened until they were all jerking away at a wonderful assortment of erections, poking upwards from their trouser flies and giving off a sharp, zesty whiff.

As Mr Kershaw had anticipated, Thomas Parker’s manhood was by far the biggest of those being brandished by the bators.  The thing was easily eight inches long and as thick as his forearm, and he wanked it hard and fast as he glanced around at the lesser specimens of his peers.

The other biggest cocks were more surprising in who they belonged to. Gozzy-eyed McCluskey was squinting down at a monster piece of meat just an inch shorter than Parker’s, and little Johnny Clarke, the pillow porker, had curving upwards from his gaping zipper a huge fuck-off schlong that was just about as big as he was.  Both boys pumped their overgrown cocks with great gusto, grinning at their classmates who gasped at them in awe.

Even lads who had the smallest dicks, like Borland and – more surprisingly – six-foot-tall Melvin Cunningham, pulled enthusiastically at their pert little peckers with their wrists beating noisily against their hips because of how short and stubby their shafts were.  Borland grinned at Mr Kershaw, as if proud to be showing his teacher that, even though his cock was smaller, he still enjoyed wanking it just as much and as regularly as the other lads with their more impressive hard-ons.

Suddenly Sanders shouted, “Oi, look at that!  Quigley’s touching his butt!”

The rest of the lads looked over and Quigley, his face reddening again, quickly withdrew his left hand from where his fingers had been nuzzling between his cheeks.

“I was just… er… scratching an itch,” he tried to explain.

But Sanders laughed, “He was looking at everyone’s knobs and rubbing his areshole like he wanted one up it!”

“Oi, settle down lads!” Mr Kershaw called over.  “I need to take the picture if we’re going to be finished by break.”

The two groups stood together with the bators on one side, bating at full crank, and the non-bators on the other with their knobs dangling with an attractive floppy fullness from their open zippers.

“That’s great!” Mr Kershaw laughed, looking at the screen on the camera. “Go on, guys, really jerk your dicks.  This looks absolutely hilarious!”

Just then David Colbrook, a well-brought-up young man and one of the non-bators, broke rank and moved across to join the bators.  “I wank off every morning on the loo,” he admitted, blushing.  “I just said I didn’t ’cause I thought it sounded dirty.”

“There’s nothing dirty about masturbation,” Mr Kershaw smiled.  “However you do it – even sitting on the toilet – it’s a natural and healthy thing to enjoy.”

The bators exuberantly welcomed their new recruit, if not with open arms (on account of one being occupied) then at least with back-slapping grins and a hearty salute of their cocks.  Colbrook took up his place among his new brethren, whacking his hardening dick with the best of them and smirking proudly at his new bator mates.

“I wank off on the bog too,” Max Olson told him.  “It feels better when you’re… you know… doing your thing…”

Mr Kershaw snapped a few photos of the bators bashing fervently at their cocks while the non-bators stood alongside looking smug and proud to be showing more self-restraint.  They crossed their arms firmly to show that they were resisting the temptation to reach down to the chunky phalluses which were drooping in a variety of semi-aroused states from their trouser flies.

Then Martin Ashbrook called out, “You’re a bator, sir – you should be in the middle of us!”

“Yeah,” Matthews agreed.  “You were sitting with the right-handers when we took that photo.”

“And you were with the guys with the thicker muscles when we did that one,” Thompson added.

“Okay,” Mr Kershaw chuckled.  “I’ll set the camera to auto.  It’ll take a photo every five seconds.”

He joined the bators and pulled his dick out through his fly.  The lads all looked on eagerly, keen to see how big the teacher’s meat was.  Half-hard it was about six inches and not even as thick as Borland’s, but as he jerked his foreskin back and forth across his big shiny helmet, it grew quite rapidly and fattened up in his hand so that soon it was bigger and thicker even than Thomas Parker’s.

He wanked it proudly at the front of the bator group, acting almost as their mascot flaunting his huge man-cock on full wood.  The other bators jerked themselves even faster with him standing alongside them, laughing at how cool it felt to have their hands slamming up and down their horned-up pricks right next to the teacher.

Danny Elliot called out, “Hey, Quigley – stop pushing your bum against my knob-end while I’m beefin’ off!”

Quigley pulled away and blushed once again.  “It was only an accident.  I haven’t much space!”

The non-bators grinned over, watching their mates jacking off with their teacher in the middle.  Some of their cocks were really stiffening up by now, with one or two standing up at full totem.

Then Harry Turner called out, with his scrawny arm hammering back and forth like a steam locomotive, “I tell you what’d be awesome!  If we get a picture of all us bators spunkin’ up!”

“Yeah,” Sanders laughed.  “Wi’ the non-bators gawpin’ over at what’s shootin’ out from our dicks!”

With most of the group agreeing wholeheartedly and with the inspector’s eyes now just about out on stalks, Mr Kershaw said yes, the final photo could be of the bator boys ejaculating.

Ed Donnelly rushed over from the non-bator group, saying, “I know I don’t wazz me knob that often but if you guys are gonna cream off for the camera, I want my spunk in there too!”

They hastily assembled themselves into a row, every lad’s elbow jabbing into whoever was standing next to him, and tried to time it so that they climaxed together.  Two or three would slow down to hold the inevitable at bay, while others would clobber their cocks like boxers to try and coax their orgasms nearer.

Mr Kershaw was still out front, nerking his big man-sized fuck-stick as hard and fast as even the most active of the boys behind him.  He grinned at the camera, clicking away every five seconds, as his hand made long, curving strokes up and down the wide girth of his shaft arching gracefully upwards from the front of his trousers.

This was going to make such a fun picture, he was thinking to himself.  The bators all in a row letting rip all at once with their sticky white fountains, and the non-bators standing alongside them gasping in delighted astonishment.

The best part of the photo for him – apart from all the spunk that would be snapped flinging upwards – was the way it would show how a dozen or so male organs, all in a state of flagrant arousal, could be so intriguingly dissimilar.  Indeed, the only constant among them was the hands that were busily bashing away at them.  It was incredible that just a dozen or so young men were packing such a huge assortment of cocks down the fronts of their trousers.  Not only did their fully engorged shafts vary greatly in their length and thickness but some were delicate and smooth, while others were prominently etched with countless weaving veins.

To add still more variety to the already disparate mix, the lads’ stumpy bell-ends were also vastly different in their sizes, shapes and colours. Thomas Parker, he noticed, was flaunting a big shiny purple helmet, while Michael Sanders’ foreskin was rolling back and forth across a small pale mushroom.  In between those two was a broad spectrum from pink to maroon, some more conical and tapered in appearance and some more rounded like bullets, so that every lad was brandishing in his hand something which was fascinatingly unique.

“Come on, guys,” the teacher chuckled.  “Three more clicks and we’ll see if we can all nut off!”

The non-bators, whose smaller pricks were by now all poking upwards from their flies, perfected the expressions of shock and surprise that they were going to assume for the camera as the bators’ cocks exploded in unison. Quite a few of them were desperate to jerk off themselves but they held off from even touching their hard-ons, keen for the photo to show them as aroused but chaste.

“Two more clicks, lads,” Mr Kershaw told his class, making all their hands speed up as they started down the home-straight.

He glanced over at the inspector who was staring at him masturbating with his face ashen.  He tried smiling amiably at the older man – finding it difficult to look as cordial as he would have liked with his cock rising upwards from the front of his trousers and his hand sweeping rapidly up and down the long thick shaft of it – but the inspector just gaped unseeingly at him with his eyes agog.

Mr Kershaw wondered if perhaps he ought to have asked the inspector if he’d have liked to join in.  Some inspectors like to get involved, others prefer to just sit and observe.  He figured the guy would almost certainly have joined the non-bator camp, but it would have been fun to have seen his big saggy cock dangling out from the fly of his light grey suit.

“Last click, guys,” he said, looking back at the boys.  “Get ready to nut next time it goes off.”

The row of lads started frantically jacking off with Mr Kershaw out front, leading the fray.  The non-bators were mesmerised to see a dozen or so choppers being yanked together with the same hard, fast rhythm; a row of synchronised elbows with wrists pounding up and down, the whole group of bators flogging together in unison.  The bators looked across at each other, grinning at the way their hands had become co-ordinated on their differently-sized dorks and enjoying the rapid hammering thuds their fists were beating out against their trouser fronts.

“Cor, ya can really smell their wanked off cocks,” one of the non-bators said, and then abruptly Mr Kershaw’s broad slit started erupting and long white strings of his chowder were flung upwards into the air.

“Come on lads,” he gasped, “make yourselves cum!”

Almost immediately Parker’s big purple helmet started shooting its spooge, followed quickly by all the other lads’ hand-beaten members, the whole lot firing off into the air in quick succession.

Click went the camera.

And the whole class let out a cheer.

After they’d wiped themselves down with blue lab-roll, and all the bators’ floppy cocks and the non-bators’ stiff ones had been stuffed back away behind trouser zippers, the lads gathered around the camera to see what the final photo looked like.

It was even better than they could have hoped for: most of the bators’ knobs had spunk firing out of their stubby chub-ends and those who’d started nutting off a bit early still had goopy trails of the stuff dribbling out of their slits.

The break bell went and the lads gathered up their stuff, joking together about how awesome the lesson had been and that the environmental whatever-it-was was so much cooler than the other stuff.

As they bustled out of the room, making fun of each other about what their orgasm faces had looked like in the picture, the inspector gathered his things and came to join Mr Kershaw at the front of the class.

Mr Kershaw smiled at him brightly, almost glowing from how successfully he felt the lesson had gone.

“In thirty-five years of teaching and inspecting, Mr Kershaw,” the inspector huffed, “I’ve never witnessed a spectacle like that.”

“Oh?”

“I think we need to talk about your future in teaching.”

“Do we?”

“And I think we need to do it as a matter of urgency.”

“Really?”

The inspector stared intently into Mr Kershaw’s eyes and told him, “I’m staying in the Kingston Arms Hotel.  Do you know it?”

“I do, yes,” Mr Kershaw replied.

“Well perhaps you could join me this evening for a bite to eat in their restaurant and then we can retire to my room to talk about your… er… teaching strategies.”

“Oh right,” Mr Kershaw nodded.  “I hoped you liked them.”

“Yes I did – very much so,” leered the inspector.  “And I’d like to see a good deal more of them.  The… er… learning objective you revealed towards the end of the lesson was particularly impressive.  I greatly enjoyed watching you… er… facilitate it so magnificently.”

“Oh I’m glad you appreciated my techniques,” Mr Kershaw grinned.  “I realise they were a little… well… unorthodox.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of horseplay,” the inspector scoffed, waving a dismissive hand.  “All boys together, nothing more than that.”

“Oh absolutely,” Mr Kershaw agreed.  “I’m so glad you see it that way.”

“Meet me in the hotel lobby at seven,” the inspector advised.  “We can talk about what I’m sure is going to be a very bright future for you, and then we can go up to my room and see what… er… activity-specific approaches we can demonstrate on each other…”

“That sounds great,” Mr Kershaw beamed.  “I’ll be there at seven on the dot!”  His wife had a baby on the way in the autumn so his career really could do with a boost right now.  Better still, the stuff he could pick up about teaching and learning from a man with so much experience of education could prove really helpful in the long-term.

“I’ll see you then, in that case,” the inspector said, clipping his fountain pen into his inside jacket pocket.  And then, throwing the younger man a sly smirk, added, “I’m already looking forward to it!”

Mr Kershaw smiled and nodded.  This was certainly going to turn out to be a memorable evening!

 

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