Your story – Heather Scott

Who was your favourite teacher and why?

My primary school only had two classes, the infant class and the junior class, there were only about forty children in the whole school. Miss Price was the teacher of the infants she was a no nonsense teacher you only spoke when you were spoken to and you were not allowed out of the classroom for any reason during lessons. I started school when I was four years old and one day, not long after I had started, I needed to go to the toilet during lesson time so put my hand up to ask, Miss Price told me off and told me to put my hand down, when I said I needed the toilet I was told I should have gone during break and would have to wait so, of course, being only four I ended up wetting myself which meant another telling off. When we got home Sue told mum what had happened, she was still in the infants when I started, so next morning mum was up at the school complaining about Miss Price’s behaviour. Needless to say she was not one of my favourite teachers.  The other teacher in the school was Mrs Knight, she was the junior teacher and also the headteacher, she lived on the premises in the school house which was attached to the school, for some reason she seemed to like me but she could never understand why I couldn’t spell as I was the best reader in the class.

The girls high school was a different kettle of fish, I went from a small village school of forty to a school of four hundred, from a school building of two classrooms plus a hall to a school with several separate buildings spread over a very large site.

One of my favourite teachers was Miss White she taught us for history and also for PE she was also my form tutor in the second year (would now be year 8), she was quite young, in her late twenties, and quite strict but she would also have a joke and a laugh with us. Unfortunately she left after about year 3 or4, she went on to lecture at a Physical Education Training College in Barry.

Most of the teachers were female, there were only three men, Mr Chapman who taught physics, Mr Davies – music also my year 3 form tutor, and Mr Philips – biology, he never taught me.

Another teacher that I liked was one of the geography teachers, Miss Davies, although she did accuse my friend Gaynor and me of cheating when we both got all of the questions correct on one of our weekly tests on map symbols, just shows what our normal results were. She was also one of the teachers that came on the educational cruise that Gaynor and I went on, along with Miss Jones, RE and Welsh teacher.

The head teacher was a lady called Miss Smith, she taught general science, she always seemed a very fair person; the deputy head was Mrs David a Welsh teacher  people were more scared of her than of Miss Smith.