015 - Chapter 15: 

(Illustration: Wallsend Grammar School Staff: 1961)

On that first day of term at my new school, we were asked to copy down the timetable for the week. Latin was one of our lessons! 

The first Latin teacher we had, the deputy headmistress, would enter the room, and say, “Salvete omnes!” to greet us.” And we had to respond with, “Salvete magister.”

Then we would be told to sit down.

On leaving it would be “Valete omnes.” and we would reply, “Valete magister’

In Latin lessons we chanted:

Mensae, mensa, mensam, mensae, mensae, mensa.

Mensae,mensae, mensas, mensarum, mensis, mensis (or something like that) . . .with its nominatives, vocatives and accusatives! These three English terms were like a foreign language to me!

What was all that about, I ask you?

And why did we have to know so much about ‘mensa- a table’? . . . of the table, for the table, by the table, or O table?

By the end of Third Year, we were allowed to drop Latin, and so I did, like a hot brick, even though I got a C, and could have continued.

 I liked the teacher very much, but I just knew I would have struggled to learn even more words!

History was another strange learning experience.

In order to get us to remember certain countries of historical interest, our very first History teacher, had us reciting difficult sounding names twenty times over, to stamp them indelibly on our minds:

‘Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia’ etc

But you know, it worked!

To this day I still know that Mesopotamia was the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates! Though I fail to see what benefit this kind of knowledge was to me in later life, other than knowing the answer to a quiz question!

I think our History teachers were all a little eccentric?

Our second one had a habit of lecturing to the far corners of the room, for almost the entire length of the lesson, in consequence, he had no eye contact with us whatsoever. Did he realise we were there at all, he was so engrossed in his subject? I heard of one sixth form girl who changed into her PE kit during his lesson, and he wasn’t even aware her doing so!

When there was only five minutes left in lesson time, he would stop talking and turn away from us to the blackboard, and say, “Right everyone, take these notes down!”

Then he would pick up the chalk, and off he would go, writing the main points of his lecture, at great speed, in an illegible scrawl! This happened on a regular basis, and we often missed the best part of our much-needed break!

Our first Maths teacher at the Grammar school terrified me, she was forever scowling, and never once smiled at us. I hid from her, behind the child in front of me. No wonder my maths was poor; I was afraid to ask questions.

There was no leather belt though, which was very good news, but we lived under the threat of the ‘report book’, into which a child’s name was written if they offended. They would have to go to collect it from the headteacher’s office, and we know all too well by now, what I think of such a room?

Chemistry opened up a whole new world for me, with its Bunsen burners, (one for each pupil,) and its exciting experiments. Magnesium, lit up,  was spectacular, and there were warnings about what to do if a drop of acid fell on your finger.

I had no interest in Physics whatsoever, apart from practical experiments with iron filings and force fields. That’s as much as I can remember. 

I loved French immediately, and enjoyed practising the vocabulary we were given to learn, but why were some French nouns feminine and in need of a 'la' or a 'une' prefix, and some were masculine and needed a 'le' or a 'un'? Our first French teacher was beautiful and so friendly. I always responded well to good natured teachers.

However, we all feared 'WAB', the deputy headmaster and our second French teacher. He had a walrus moustache, very little hair, and looked rather like one.

Rumour had it that his wartime record linked him with the French Resistance 1939-1945, but whether this was true or not, I don’t really know. But when he spoke you listened, and you sat up straight. No-one messed with him and got away with it, not even my best friend, Margaret! She once went a little too far with her sense of humour, in one of his lessons, and he walked over to her, and placed a waste paper basket over her head, and she had to sit like that until the bell rang for the end of the lesson!

We so much wanted to laugh at her sitting there rigidly at her desk, wearing her new wickerwork basket hat, but we didn’t dare. He smirked at his handiwork, as he left the room that day.

We were to discover, when we were older, that this teacher, who had scared the living daylights out of most pupils in their early years, actually had a great sense of humour, and was a really lovely man. It was through a holiday camp for international students which he organised, that I would meet my husband, Bob. And WAB later invited me to be one of his leaders, just before I became a teacher myself!

One subject I really adored was Art, as I did have some skill in that direction.

When I was very young, I had found a beautiful drawing of a Nativity scene, lying folded, on the pavement, and I took it home with me. I then told my mam that I had drawn it at school. She didn’t believe that the work was indeed mine, no matter how hard I tried to convince her,

“OK” she said, as she took a pencil and a piece of paper from a drawer, “Draw me another one!” I had been caught out, telling lies, but I had so wanted my mam to recognise that I was a good artist! I drew my own pictures after that.

One of the activities in the Art department at the Grammar School each year, was to decorate the entire school hall at Christmas, with really huge papier mâché models. adventurous masks and friezes and all these elaborate Christmas decorations were masterpieces.

The theme of Peter Pan really stood out one year. We entered the hall one morning, to see a huge papier mâché crocodile on the wall, and at its centre, was a large cardboard clock, which had been fitted into one of the big round windows on the wall, the one which led to the headmaster’s office. These elaborate displays really inspired me for work I would do years later with children in school lessons and plays. They taught me to ‘think big’.

Whenever we sat an end of term exam in class, two boys, David and Trevor, would finish first and second every single time, they must have been competing against each other! It was most distracting for us, to see them proudly marching out to place their finished papers, onto the teacher’s desk with a flourish, while we all struggled on.

By the GCE years, we pupils sat exams in the gymnasium, at separate desks, and the tension really got to us, until we were allowed to turn over the papers, and examine the questions to see if we’d revised the right information. Our hands were aching by the end of each exam, with writing so much.

“Put your pens down, now!” the teacher would call out at the end of each exam.

After our mock exams, my Geography teacher called me over to one side in the corridor, and he informed me that I’d given the entire staff room a good laugh with what I had written about the export of ‘Sweden’s ‘steel’ separators and ‘cream’ ball bearings! Obviously, it should have been the other way round; either I had got mixed up writing at speed, or I’d learned it all by rote, and gave the answer without thinking.’

He went off chuckling to himself, and shaking his head from side to side.

I must admit, that once I had considered what I’d actually written, I had a bit of a chuckle to myself too.

When I became a teacher, I received some howlers too!

But what’s interesting is that Sweden still produces ‘cream separators’ and ‘steel ball bearings’ even today!