In the four years I spent working as a library assistant for my local council, I didn't once utter the sound 'shhh'. It would have been futile. Local libraries are more like crèches or youth centres — the staff; part-child minder, part-social worker. You shelved books only when you had a spare moment and there weren't many of those.
Libraries are not places of studious silence. In the evenings, they are full of children who can't or won't go home. In our branch we'd sometimes find ourselves in a staff of two plus one service supporter officer supervising a group of up to thirty children, ages 5 to 16.
A massive difference in ages, the children weren't nicely separated into classrooms, they were one block of kids fighting over a handful of computers, a pile of colouring-in sheets. It rarely occurred to them to explore the thousands of books they were surrounded by.
We were once given a Playstation to add to the mix but within a week the controllers were stolen.
We had a particularly rowdy pack of lads who would burst in in a maelstrom of hormones, shouting and cursing and throwing books across the room and it was up to us to ask them to stop. They knew as well as we did that we weren't allowed to touch them, threaten them or even take a step in their general direction. So picking up the phone and pretending to press 999 was the only way we had of getting them to go outside, where they'd spent a further half hour throwing stones at the windows.
It was a standing joke between the staff and the kids that when they complained of being bored (going home not being an option), we would suggest that they read, and they would groan and screw up their faces.
We organised craft sessions and competitions and fun days — all centred on a surreptitious effort to get them to read. Other nights we'd bribe them — three chapters of a book with a convincing verbal report on what happened in the story, and they'd get an extra hour chatting to each other on MSN Messenger (while sitting right next to each other).
Or find three facts on Romans from a book in the non-fiction shelf and they'd get the same. Once, the shameless bribery accumulated in a go on a mobile climbing wall (donated for free) if they took out a book a week all summer.
So, my advice to anyone looking for a glimpse of what it might be like to be a teacher without doing a PGCE, volunteer at your local library.
And don't expect any peace or quiet when you get there.
