Teenagers are exhausting: Teacher and author Carol Atherton on why her profession deserves more respect

Carol Atherton is shattered. Her classroom may have emptied for the day, but the final push before A-levels and GCSE exams has sent her into “marking overdrive”. Head of English at a secondary school in Lincolnshire, she has been teaching for almost 30 years and has covered largely the same set texts her entire career, but her enthusiasm for the job – and the texts – remains undimmed. As times change and new generations appear, the relevance of the poems, plays and novels doesn’t fade, it evolves.