Our Day Out

Authors Avatar
Our Day Out

In the play Our Day Out, we come to see two very different personalities, as the teachers clash on a school outing to Conway. The teachers are Mr Briggs (a strict teacher, who is used to teaching more intelligent children) and Mrs Kay (a teacher who identifies with the children's needs). There very different characteristics of the two teachers become apparent in the first four pages of the play, when two older students Reilly and Digga ease their way into the school trip by working 'the head' with Mrs Kay which would never even come to the minds of those involved if it was a trip organised by Mr Briggs. As we can already see this already outlines the 'soft' nature of Mrs Kay.

I think the first part of the play were Briggs shows how pathetic he thinks the Progress class is, is when he shows his dislike and disgust for the progress class by nearly collapsing when he hears that a 'kid' has been to the shops to get sweets, here is his reaction to the child getting sweets, 'sweets? Sweets?' this part of speech gives you a picture in your mind of Mr Briggs's face, you get a picture not believing what is happening around him. My views are that because Mr Briggs may not of been in this sort of remedial environment before everything that does not normally happen around him is automatically abnormal.
Join now!


Mr Briggs seems to get on better with the older students, for example when he has a long conversation with Reilly and Digga about the Liverpool Docks and his own private life by saying things like," I'm often down here at weekends, taking notes, photo-graphs".

Mrs Kay first shows her parent like teaching skills when she is talking to Carol with an understanding tolerant attitude, what really highlights on Mrs Kays parent like attitude is when she links Carol Chandler's arm at the end of the conversation, this also shows how mother like Mrs Kay is.
...

This is a preview of the whole essay