COMMENTS :

Ivan (Spadger) Sparrow - 1957 to '60

Welsh, sharp, quick tempered, and small in stature, which altogether may have given rise to a belief that he had some sort of “chip” on his shoulder and as such feared any boy bigger than he, as they might wish to knock it off – which of course encompassed most of the mid to upper school population – I never knew of any pupil that liked him. I am sorry to say that if I were marking his Teacher Appraisal card then, as now, it would have a very low score together with the comment “Theory teaching techniques require a great deal of

improvement”. When teaching Metalwork Theory or Metallurgy (the thought still makes me anxious even as I write this), he would copy from a text book (which each of us had and could refer to)copious amounts of text onto the roller blackboard – we at the same time were required to copy from the board into our exercise book, while at the same time write notes in our note-books about what he was actually saying, not reading. If you were a slow writer, as I was, and he had reached a level where he needed to roll the board up, tough luck, because up it went and he would continue writing – to “top it off”, when he had finished writing on the board and one’s nose was still following the pen-nib across the page, he would start firing questions at the class. Being only an average student with a slow writing speed, I was always behind the “Eight Ball” so to speak – if I were unlucky enough to be the target for one of his questions then I was in deep trouble, for I would not have even heard the question as I was still concentrating on finishing my writing – for all I knew he could have asked “Sparrrrow, how would you describe a Cupola Furnace, or what is the Eutectic Point of steel”? I think it was during his theory lessons that I first discovered the usefulness of saying “Ummm” before answering a question. It was no use relying on the chap next to you to give you a clue as he would probably whisper “What’s Brass made of”. Unfortunately I had “Nippy” for Tech and Geo Drawing as well as Metalwork practical sometimes. But despite the hardships of gaining such knowledge, something must have stuck, for not only did I continue in an engineering career, but also, the experience taught me to appreciate and evaluate what constituted a “good" teacher

Mike (Mick) Pusey - 1957 to '60

The main thing I learned from him was that there are teachers and there are creatures who like to use their power to terrorise those that are weaker than they and use the title teacher although they have no talent to be one. Oh, I did learn not to leave the chuck key in the lathe.

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