Text 1: The map in my pocket, by Elise Morgan

An original contemporary memoir extract.

Before my first day at Westbridge School, I studied its map as if I were preparing to cross a desert. I traced the route from reception to Room 14, then from Room 14 to the dining hall. By breakfast, I knew every corridor by heart. At least, I knew every corridor as a line on a piece of paper.

The real school was louder and larger. A wave of voices broke over me as soon as I entered, and hundreds of pupils moved around with the confidence of people who had been born knowing where the science rooms were. I stood beside reception gripping my map. For one dreadful moment, I imagined getting lost between English and science and having to live there forever.

Then Mina arrived. She had been asked to show me around, but she did not behave as though I were a tiresome job. She pointed out the useful landmarks: the staircase that led nowhere helpful, the door that always stuck and the quiet corner of the library. By the time we reached our form room, I was laughing.

My geography teacher, Mr Shah, introduced me without making me stand at the front. When he asked a question about rivers, I knew the answer but kept my hand down. Mina glanced at me and whispered, ‘Go on.’ I answered. Mr Shah nodded and continued with the lesson, but the small warmth of that nod stayed with me.

At lunch, Mina found me standing with a tray and no plan. ‘You’re with us,’ she said, as if it were a fact too obvious to discuss. Her friends moved their bags and made a space.

At the end of the day, I discovered the map still folded in my pocket. I had not looked at it since morning. Westbridge was still noisy and enormous, but it no longer felt like a place that might swallow me. When Mina called goodbye across the playground, she used my name.

Text 2: The black door, by Edmund Vale

An original autobiography written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this extract, the writer recalls arriving at a town school in 1872 after previously attending a small village school.

I was twelve years old when I first passed through the black door of Bell Street School. Until then, I had been taught in a village room containing nine pupils and one patient teacher. Bell Street had three storeys, tall windows and more boys than I could count. The windows appeared to watch me as I approached.

Inside, there was none of the cheerful confusion I had expected. Boots stood in straight rows beneath the benches. The clock struck each second with the force of a hammer, while fifty boys bent over their books in silence.

Mr Crowther, the master, asked my name and immediately ordered me to read aloud. My voice caught upon an unfamiliar word. He tapped the page and said, ‘Again, Vale, and this time without frightening the sentence.’ Several boys laughed. My ears burned, and I wished myself back in the little village room.

When I took my place, the boy beside me quietly moved his books so that I might share the desk. His name was Thomas Reed. He showed me where to find the correct exercise and pushed his spare pencil towards me when mine broke. These were small services, but to me they seemed acts of great generosity.

In the afternoon, Mr Crowther placed a difficult calculation on the board. I worked through it twice and raised my hand. My answer was correct. The master gave no praise; he merely said, ‘Vale may remain in the upper class.’ Yet those words lifted my head. Thomas smiled as though the success belonged partly to him.

When the final bell rang, we left together. The black door had not grown any smaller, nor had Mr Crowther grown kinder, but I no longer feared returning through it. I had entered that morning feeling like the least important boy in the building. I departed knowing that I had earned my place.

Both of these texts are about a first day at an unfamiliar school.

Compare:

• the similarities and differences between the writers’ experiences of their first day
• how the writers present their thoughts and feelings about these experiences

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