I’ve talked about the teachers who were monsters and monstrously unfair; maybe I should also talk about the ones who made a positive difference, the ones I remember fondly.
Mrs Winehouse: She was side referenced in my Pink Lady story. My Year 1 teacher, the one who worked out I wasn’t deliberately being disruptive, I was just bored in a class that was still learning the alphabet when I could already read.
She was one who told me go and sit quietly in the reading corner when I finished my work. She was kind. She was patient.
I saw her some years later, when I was at briefly working in a supermarket, packing groceries (back when supermarkets still offered this as a service). I got to pack her groceries. Did I say something? Probably not, I didn’t want her to think one of her students was now working as a grocery packer. Also, what is the chance she would remember me after 14 years?
Mr Morgan: My year seven teacher. He also turned up in a recent post as the teacher who was trying to teach us about finite and infinite numbers. When we started in his class, he had a deck of playing cards and we were all given a card. He would use these cards to divide the class up, or if we were having a desk reshuffle, it would be a literal shuffle of the cards. He would put the cards down on desks and we would move to the new desks. (How often did we do this? Every term?)
He also treated us… not like grown ups, that would be going too far. But it certainly felt like he was treating us with more respect than we had had with Sister Brandon the year before.
He was tolerant, he allowed a certain degree of joking around, but he also kept discipline in the class.
I saw him seven years later, on my way to an evening class at university. His daughter studied at the same institution and he must have been picking her up. I saw him sitting in his car and thought, “Ah, there’s Mr Morgan! I won’t wave. He won’t remember me.”
As I walked by the car he smiled and waved at me. Embarrassed, I waved back. Even if he didn’t remember me, he recognised me as a former student.
Ms Douglas: She took us for English in Years 11 and 12. She was the only Ms in a school of Misses and Mrses. She was a feminist. (What? A feminist? How did they let her into a Catholic school? I hear you ask. I don’t know is the answer. She must have hidden it at the interview.)
She pushed us to question things. Why are women expected to behave in this way? Why are women not expected to behave in this way?
She shared with us that she chose not to have her father give her away at her wedding because she was not someone’s property to be given away. (She also said she regretted that a little because she hadn’t thought about what that moment might have meant to him.)
When we were assigned group topics to present in English, she encouraged us to use a variety of means to present. I had never enjoyed group presentations but when we had permission to throw away the boring “reading from a script” notion of a presentation and incorporate singing, poetry, mime, re-enactments of scenes from the books – I don’t think I had ever enjoyed doing a presentation more.
Miss Crimson: my music teacher. Yes, despite all I went through with Sister Mac, I took music as a subject at high school. Miss Crimson was another teacher like Mr Morgan, one who could keep discipline in class but also gave us a certain degree of independence and respect, and would allow for a certain amount of joking about.
She was dating one of the other teachers in the school at one point, and refused to be baited by students asking her, “Did he take you somewhere nice last night, Miss?” (How did they know? I never had a clue about these things.)
She also organised the school musical, and ran the school choir. For one particular event, we had to learn a song in Latin. None of us spoke Latin, but in reading through the words there were some quiet giggles at one of the words. She got ahead of that one.
“I don’t want any silliness about this,” she told us sternly. “It’s a Latin word and it’s pronounced cooont. Be- ne-di-cooont dom-in-um.”
It’s a sign of the kind of respect she commanded that we (largely) stuck to the correct pronunciation during choir performances.
Miss Gemini: She taught French and German through a mix of gentle encouragement and sugared inducements. I remember the day we made pineapple boat sundaes for German class. I still remember the word, Ananas-boot. I don’t recall why we did this. I don’t know what making a pineapple sundae had to do with German language. But I remember that word and that day.
I also remember April Fool, or Poisson d’Avril as it is in French. We pinned fish on each other’s backs.
We learnt the German words to 99 Red Balloons by Nena (99 Luftballons).
We had an excursion to the French bakery in West End to ask for our ham and cheese croissants in French from the bored Frenchman at the counter.
Miss Gemini was one of those charmed people who always seemed to be in a good mood, who always seemed to believe the best in people, and for whom every day was a good day, a great day. Thinking about her now makes me smile. I can’t say she was a good teacher but she was a very good person.
Who were the teachers you look back at and remember fondly?
Tales from Tobhamhor 