Andy Richardson: Word to the wise, I've learnt my lesson

She hit the deck. There was an audible gasp as 30, third year, Willingsworth High School pupils decided whether to laugh or call the headmaster.

And then a boy at the back sniggered. And the whole class erupted with convulsive laughter. Miss Nolan pulled herself up from the floor and angrily slapped me about the head for thinking it might be funny to tip her off the desk while she was perched so precariously to its edge.

And then the class suddenly stopped laughing. There was a second audible gasp of breath as Miss Nolan gave me instant justice as well as extra homework and a week's worth of detentions. Ouch.

Miss Nolan was crimson with embarrassment. As the blows rained down I realised I. Had. Done. A. Bad. Thing. My smarting cheek bones took on the colour of the Chinese flag and I made a note-to-self: 'English teachers from Coventry are as hard as nails. Never again think it would be a good laugh to tip one off the desk. Even if it is. And even if it makes the whole class laugh. The detentions aren't worth the laughs.'

Miss Nolan was one of my favourite teachers. She was the Donald Trump of Willingsworth High: a woman who had as much interest in politically correct teaching as The Donald has about being nice to Mexicans. She was the Lionel Messi of the classroom, a woman whose creative methods elevated the humdrum business of learning to an art form. She was the Simon Rattle of English Lit, an inspirational leader who orchestrated the happiest times. They say you never forget a good teacher: well, I didn't forget Miss Nolan.

And not just because she slapped me about the head in front of 30 shocked classmates. To be fair, she had a brilliant overhand right. She could have been a boxer if she'd decided not to teach. She'd have taken Nicola Adams out from 20 paces.

Miss Nolan was captivating. When one of her pupils had a good idea, she would run with it like Mo Farah chasing Olympic Gold. She'd be energised like a Duracell Bunny. She'd be as effervescent as limestone chips in hydrochloric acid. Gale force winds couldn't stop her.

My two ideas were to create a Black Country Dictionary. It's oryte, ay it. And the second was to have a word of the week. I suggested we learn a new word each lesson and use it in one of our essays. Words are beautiful. They're doves flying into the heavens, they're fruity rosé on a hazy summer's afternoon, they're instinctive rhythm and carefree moves at a Friday night dance. Words are our way of communicating the happy and the sad, the art of winning and the pain of defeat, the joy of peachy sunsets and the exhilaration of love.

Miss Nolan took my idea and shared it with the class – man, they must have hated me. Instead of writing: 'On our holiday, we swam in the sea,' they had to declaim: 'We dived into phosphorescent pools and immersed our bodies in the deep azure during an exhilarating summer sojourn.'

Poor kids. Things were much funnier when Miss Nolan was being pushed off the desk. The last thing they needed was a year of Oscar Wilde-meets-Will Self-meets-Lewis Carroll linguistics.

Miss Nolan engendered in me a lifelong love of language. And she taught other cor-be-bovvad kids at Willingsworth High that words were like skeleton keys; they could be used to pick the locks of the most improbable social situations.

We're thinking of starting our own Word of the Week Club here at Weekend. We're planning to get in shape ahead of Euro 2016, which gives us until June to sharpen up our prose. By the time Wayne Rooney and Roy Hodgson fly out to France we'll be ready to win the literary equivalent of the Ballon d'Or.

When we write stories about Wags Behaving Badly we're going to upcycle our vernacular by using morphologically rich language like 'slatterns' and 'gin-sodden strumpets'.

Our Editor will ask us whether we've swapped our regular morning diet of Frosties and gold top milk for scrambled dictionary with a side-order of thesaurus. And we'll wiffle unintelligibly about old English teachers putting us up to it.

Miss Nolan will look down from her Ivory Tower and congratulate herself on a job well done and we'll shoehorn allegory and alliteration, assonance and anthropomorphism into our columns.

The only thing we won't be doing is tipping the Editor from her desk. It would be funny, but she swings like Buster Douglas and she'd get us writing property features for a month.