Going back into a secondary school classroom after almost ten years in the TAFE and University sectors has been a bit of a shock to the system – theirs and mine.

When I landed my first two-week-full-time CRT job at a comparatively cushy secondary school a few weeks ago I wasn’t cocky exactly but I was feeling pretty relaxed about it all.

I mean, I’ve taught everything from dance to Derrida, to students from six to sixty. I’d just slide right back into that classroom of twenty-three kids all wearing regulation uniforms, their heads stuck in their bloody ipads – sorry, their educational learning tools – and all of them probably as keen on being there as a mistress at her lover’s wife’s birthday party.

But I’d forgotten the routine and rules, the noise and extras, the yard duty and the running up and down stairs between rooms and buildings to get from one class or staff meeting or assembly to the next.

Period 1 of my first day back is a Year 8 Drama class. Suddenly I feel too old for all of this. But fourteen-year-olds don’t appear to have changed that much. The boys are still either clowning about making excuses for body contact or quietly awaiting instruction. The girls are still either guarded and self-conscious or asking loads of questions. All of us are a bit scared.

The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, drama, dance, art, languages and maths should all have equal and central contributions to make to a student’s education.

But despite years of dedicated reputation-building, exemplary teaching practice and pedagogical research, and governments who love to play the culture card when it suits them –Drama is, let’s face it – until VCE level anyhow – still often seen as the slack subject, time-out and unstructured vocationally irrelevant fooling around.

Maybe since I’ve been outside the mainstream secondary classroom Drama is no longer the poor, flamboyant and slightly embarrassing cousin to all those other ‘real’ and serious subjects.

I stand in front of my Year 8 class. They look at me. I look at them.

So what you got for us, they seem to be saying. This better be fun.

I want to tell them about a totally awesome 10-minute TED talk by this inspiring English educator called Ted Robinson. In it he says how by the time we all get to the age of these kids that lots of us have had our imaginations sucked out of us by the education system and that creativity is as important as literacy.

But these kids are on the cusp of cool so instead I automatically indicate to form a circle and watch as one girl goes to hold the hands of those either side of her and then thinks better of it. I watch one of the boys yank off his jumper, stuff it up his shirt and do a funny fat man walk. Everyone laughs.

Excellent. This lot is still young enough to catch in time.