Sunday, February 18, 2007

'Ear a teacher feature

Pupils my granddad taught remember him with affection.

My Gran told me that she was talking to some builders at her sheltered accommodation and she asked if they were at school at the time he was teaching, and they all enthused about him. OK, they could have been humouring her, but I think it is likely to have been genuine as "not remembering" would have been a perfectly legitimate response. My Mum has also been button-holed on occasions by ex-pupils reminiscing about him, which makes me think he must have been a good teacher.

Apparently he was a very good shot with the chalk and had a firm grasp of the earlobe! Of course, time was, that was acceptable discipline from a teacher. And it doesn't seem to have made the pupils who got such treatment resent him at all, they still appear to recall him as a good egg, as such. One guy apparently laughingly claimed one of his earlobes is flatter & longer than the other through his agency. :D

He had to be very careful with the girls, for they tended to get crushes on him: he was good-looking, blond, athletic. If he decided to eat his lunch in the classroom, some would always try to wangle their way into spending the lunch-break with him, to moon about after him. He had to avoid getting into those sorts of situations.

He found teaching quite stressful, however, and this was part of the reason they moved a few times while my Mum was a teen. I think one of the moves was inspired by the news that his school was becoming a comprehensive and he didn't approve of that.

Ironically the school he moved to (and stayed with until he retired) became a comprehensive before the one he left for that reason.

He hadn't been happy at one of the schools he taught in, and apparently Gran went in and complained to the headmaster about the discipline in the school. She says she must have been ever so much bolder then, and I guess that's true. Although I remember quite clearly when her doing such a thing wouldn't have seemed such a stretch at all. I wonder how Granddad felt about her doing that. I can't see that it would have made life any easier for him at the school. Fortunately, shortly afterwards the headmaster went off in a boat with the music mistress and they were never to return.

I don't think they sank ;).

No comments: