Watching Waterloo Road as an Adult
WARNING... SPOILERS FOR WATERLOO ROAD ARE IN THIS POST. BE AWARE!
Hey guys, I watched Waterloo Road from halfway through series 7 to the end of series 10 when it was initially on air. This is a series I loved to watch and was disappointed when the series ended. Last year, all the episodes from the 10 series were put on BBC iPlayer, and I was super excited. I started watching straight away and ended up finishing all 290 hour long episodes by the end of March due to having loads of free time due to Covid-19.
However, my experience of watching Waterloo Road was an Adult was very different to as a teen. How I work with children who struggle in school, I was able to have a different perspective on a number of the storylines.
The first example of this is when the PRU is set up. When I first watched it, I thought it was unfair that some students were singled out and taken out of classes. However, now I work in a similar project, I am definitely for the PRU. However, I found the way they run it strange. I focus on pastoral care and confidence-building in my work to help those who struggle with behaviour, but the attitude of the teachers in the show was to shout and be really strong on discipline, something that doesn't work in real life and didn't really work in the show.
Another example is the attitudes to Mrs Mulgrew being an alcoholic. I think as a teenager, with minimal life experience, I was shocked that she was able to keep her job. However, I can now see that there are many underlying issues behind the alcoholism, and that firing someone, firstly, isn't that simple but also isn't always the best thing to do when there is conflict.
Something else that happened was that the whole school moved from Rochdale, England to Greenock, Scotland. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, Rochdale is in North England, and Greenock is in South Scotland, so they are only 4 hours away, but still, what?! This is the least practical thing ever, the schooling systems are entirely different between the two, and moving students away from their families just to keep some of the same teachers is extreme.
Finally, the staff turn over rate was shocking. The school had a new headteacher almost every academic year, which would ring major alarm bells to the local council, but wasn't really an issue in the show. I hardly noticed when I first watched it, even though there were 3 different heads in the 3.5 years I originally watched the show. However, this is something that massively stood out as I watched this recently.
Have you rewatched Waterloo Road now all the episodes are online? Do you have any other weird observations about the show that you didn't notice the first time? Let me know!
Bye guys! Speak to you all soon.
AbiBeth xxx
Facebook: @AbiBeth97
Instagram: @Abiewb
Pinterest: @AbiBeth97
Twitter: @AbiBeth97
BlogLovin': @AbiBeth
Email: Abi@AbiBeth.com
Snapchat: @abiwb
Comments
Post a Comment