The Courage to Wipe the Slate Clean

When I look back at the teachers who shaped me, there is one who stands out in a way that still influences how I lead today. He was my first male teacher, a man whose presence carried both strength and fairness. At the time, I was still finding my place, often clumsy in how I expressed myself, quick to act without thinking. Yet he showed me something that has stayed with me ever since: the courage to forgive and begin again.

The incident that followed me

I remember arriving in his class already carrying the weight of a reputation. One incident in particular seemed to follow me like a shadow.

It was a lunchtime tennis competition, one of those class-versus-class matches that carried far more weight than they should have. I was up against a player who was simply better than me, and frustration boiled over. I lost the match, and in my anger I hurled the racket across the court. That in itself was reckless, but I didn’t stop there. I picked it up and I slammed it deliberately against the side of a building, the sound ringing out across the courtyard.

It was not just a moment of frustration. It was an act of defiance, two acts of violence that marked me out as a boy with a temper. Mr Pickup saw it all.

He called me over, demanded my name, and I can still feel the chill of that moment. My stomach dropped. I knew I was in trouble. I knew my name was now written in his mind for all the wrong reasons. It was terrifying, because it wasn’t just about that day. I believed I had branded myself forever.

Waiting for the verdict

The next year only heightened that fear. On the first day back, all of us sat in the hall waiting to be placed into classes. The tension was unbearable. I knew the reputation I carried. I knew the mistake I had made. Sitting there, I whispered to myself, almost like a prayer, “Not Mr Pickup. Please, not Mr Pickup.”

I was convinced that if I ended up in his class, he would never see me as anything other than the boy who had thrown a racket and slammed it against a wall. I imagined him shaking his head, rolling his eyes, already resigned to dealing with me.

When my name was read out for his class, the terror was overwhelming. I shuffled to a desk in the back row, sat down, and tried to make myself invisible. I thought my fate was sealed.

A moment that changed everything

Then he stood in front of the class and spoke. Calm, steady, and with authority.

“It does not matter what came before. In this class, we start fresh.”

He was looking around the room, but in that moment he looked directly at me. I knew, without a doubt, that those words were meant especially for me.

The relief that washed over me was unlike anything I had felt before. I had braced myself for judgment, for punishment, for being written off. Instead, I was offered forgiveness. A clean slate. A chance to begin again.

That simple act of grace was transformative. It showed me that a teacher’s courage is not just in setting boundaries, but in letting go of first impressions. It is easy to let a mistake define a child. It takes real courage to see past it and say, “You are more than this.”

Lessons that lasted

When I later went to teachers’ college, I had to write about the teachers who had shaped me most. Phil Pickup was the first one that came to mind. When I tell stories to my own students today, I often share this one, because it carries a message that matters: we all make mistakes, but what defines us is whether we are given the chance to start again.

“Every year I begin my class with a clean slate, because I was once given that gift myself.”

Yet honesty requires me to acknowledge that not everything Phil did sat well with me. Even the best teachers are human, and there were moments when his emotions got the better of him. One memory in particular has stayed with me.

A boy in our class refused to remove his skivvy for physical education. It was a school rule, but he was a big lad and I believe now that it was body image that made him uncomfortable. At the time none of us had the language for that. All we saw was someone quietly standing his ground. Phil grew frustrated, and in that moment he lost his composure.

I do not believe it was defiance from the boy and I do not believe Phil intended cruelty. It was simply a moment where anger and pressure overcame his usual fairness. Seeing that taught me something important too: even the teachers we respect most can falter. What matters is what we learn from those moments, both as students and, later, as teachers ourselves.

Those experiences also intersected with my own fears of punishment. I was lucky. I never received the strap at school, though I knew it well at home. My father was a saddler who crafted them. Every cut, every stitch, every layer of leather was built with precision. He understood how to use them, and I experienced that discipline growing up. It was part of how he had been parented, and in many ways he was doing the best he knew with a boy who was very different from himself.

That fear carried over into school. For a long time I was terrified of being strapped, but here is the truth: no teacher would ever have disciplined me in the way my father did. Once I realised that, I think I would have been worse at school, not better. The fear that kept me in line would have gone, because I could have handled what they would dish out. It was the shadow of my father’s discipline that made me fear the strap at school, not the teachers themselves.

The fear of the strap was real, but in a strange way it also showed me the emptiness of punishment. What lasts is not the sting of leather. What lasts is connection, fairness, and the gift of forgiveness.

Closing the circle

Years later, after I had been teaching for some time, I returned to my old intermediate school to talk to Phil who was now the principal of the school. I was teaching senior students, exactly where I had always wanted to be. I had the chance to sit down with him and tell him what his example had meant. I told him that his words had never left me, that every class I had ever started began the same way: with a reminder that the past was behind us and that we were beginning anew.

To be able to give that back to him was one of the greatest moments of my teaching life. It felt like closing a circle.

“The courage to begin again is not about erasing mistakes. It is about believing that we are more than our worst moments.”

That is what he gave me, and that is what I try to give my students. At the start of each year, when I look out at a new group of faces, I carry that memory with me. I remind myself that I do not know the full story of any child, and that it is my responsibility to see them as they are today, not as they were yesterday.

It takes courage to let go of first impressions. It takes courage to wipe the slate clean. But when we do, we create space for growth, for forgiveness, and for hope. That courage shaped me as a student, and it has shaped me as a leader.

Every year, every child, every story deserves the chance to begin again.