Thank you, Gareth!

This signed photo of Gareth Southgate once held pride of place above my granny’s tele.

I thought it might be time to air an old blog post of mine¹, which I first published in January 2017. It’s a true story of how my work as an Early Literacy Intervention teacher was benefitting from my second cousin’s achievements in the world of football:

On the first Wednesday back after Christmas, I met a new student. It didn’t take me long to discover he was a keen football fan and Tottenham supporter. He enthusiastically read me a couple of short pages he had written about his trip to see his team play live against Liverpool. He told me about his favourite player, Harry Kane, and then it happened – I name-dropped for no other reason than to impress the seven year old sitting next to me.

“Have you ever heard of Gareth Southgate?” I asked, as nonchalantly as I could.

My new pupil nodded, “Yes, he’s the England manager.”.

“Well, he’s my cousin.”

The young boy’s eyes widened and his chin dropped in amazement – and from that moment our lessons together purred along like a dream.

It sounds like bragging on the playground, doesn’t it? And I admit to feeling somewhat uneasy about exploiting my cousin’s celebrity status to enhance my kudos in the eyes of my pupils (that was an unintentional pun, honest…).

The shameful thing is, it’s not the first time I’ve done it. I cheekily came away from his wedding with autographs from famous footballers, which I then photocopied (with the headteacher’s permission) and gave to my class in Colchester. In the summer of 1996, I was teaching in Hackney and used my cousin’s bitter disappointment as a stimulus to get my class writing. We sent Gareth a bundle of empathetic commiseration letters, along the lines of: ‘Don’t worry about the penalty, we all have bad days.’.

We’re not even first cousins – our dads are. If you’re interested in a bit of family history, my grandmother (written about it in feeling-nostalgic.html) and his grandmother were sisters. Gareth and I were born 5 days apart. I arrived first, at the end of August, but he held on until the start September. I’m pretty sure that’s when the line in the sand was drawn. I can only imagine how very different our lives would be if I’d been one of the oldest in the school year and he’d been one of the youngest…

But, hey, that’s all water under the bridge now.

The fact is I’m not really feeling too repentant about my bragging behaviour and, if I can use this family connection to motivate the children I’m working with, don’t you think I should be making the most of it?  It certainly seems to have worked a treat with the young man I met at the beginning of the month. We’ve now had our three lessons together and, at the end of this week, I received an encouraging letter from his mum:

‘Dear Julia,
I just wanted to thank you so much for the work you have done with … and for giving me the knowledge and confidence to support him. He was so enthusiastic about writing tonight. 
It was so lovely to see him enjoying writing and being proud of it. 
You have made such a difference, thank you.’

Don’t thank me. Thank Gareth.

So, what’s the score in 2024?

A few months ago, I started supporting a new student in my role as an alternative provision tutor. He was a big Norwich City fan. After a couple of weeks, my husband asked me,

“Have you played the Gareth card yet?”

Of course I had!

Whatever happens on Sunday, it looks like I could be able to ride on my second cousin’s fame and well-deserved success for years to come. Oh, and by the way, if you think Gareth’s a gentleman, you should meet my Uncle Clive.

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1. https://learningtoreadandwrite.weebly.com/julias-blog/thank-you-gareth ↩︎

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