Teacher Meme
Nicole tagged me for this meme. I have stalled on it a while, primarily because I didn’t want to blog over the weekend (have spent too much time at it lately!) and partly because I wasn’t personally all that inspired by this one. So I started thinking about that and sat down to write, ending up with something of a memoir of my life at school, which had very little to do with the teachers. So, now I will stick to the task at hand, and some of my favourite teachers were:
Mr Dennis, my year 9-10 maths teacher, who acted like Oscar the Grouch but we all knew he didn't mean it. He was old and he’d glower at us all from under his bushy eyebrows and bellow things like "you're further behind than Walla Walla" or "well stone the crows and starve the lizards". Then he'd prowl around the classroom and state things like "what you miss out on the razzle dazzle, you pick up on the hurdy gurdy". When he had nothing else to do, because he'd put us all to work, he'd pick up the big old wooden metre ruler, toss a piece of chalk in the air and swing at it. Occasionally he sent a piece of chalk smashing into a wall somewhere. Don't ask me for any sort of technique, he was just very good at teaching maths, and that’s where I really sunk my teeth into and learnt my capabilities.
I’ve mentioned Mrs Baxter in the past. She was my year 11 and 12 English teacher. In her class we studied Jane Eyre and it burned into me somewhere. We analysed John Donne’s poems and I discovered that it was worth the effort to understand metaphysical poetry. English didn’t perhaps come as easily to me as Maths at the time, but it meant so much more, and I discovered that I didn’t have to be a “Maths person” OR an “English person" but could flout the system and have them both. So I stayed back for two hours of 3 Unit English on a Wednesday afternoon, after hours of Maths, and it was the highlight of the week. When Mrs Baxter handed back my last assignment on which she’d written that I had reached my zenith, I felt like I could finish school happy.
Professor Peter Jarman taught Wildlife Management when I was at university and supervised my Honours. He was a very proper Englishman who often wore a cravat and spoke with perfect diction. His lectures were masterpieces of precisely crafted sentences. But in them he taught us, amongst other things, that the most obvious course of action is not always the best one to achieve the higher goal. One day as I set off to gather data at Wallaby Creek he said “drive carefully now because the roads will be slippery after the rain”, and I was amused but also rather moved.
David Calderwood came to our church as the assistant minister as I was heading into high school. He was a tall Irishman with blonde curly hair who reminded us all a little of my Dad. He lead the youth group and taught us to be deadly serious about God and personal holiness, but to have a whole lot of fun with everything else. And his was a pure religion that meant he gave up his time to teach a widow’s kids how to drive. (And I will just add in the senior minister John Paterson here too, who is a man for whom I have great respect. Colin Buchanan refers to him in the front of one of his CDs as a man who “always speaks a word in season”, and that’s about right. Ever since I have left that church in Tamworth I have been discovering how much I learnt there.)
My Mum must have taught me something. One of the memorable things she used to say is that “one of the chief lessons of adulthood is deferring pleasure”. I still think she’s right. The people in this world who haven’t grown up include those who haven’t learnt to do what they need to do before they do what they want to do.
Oh, and I almost forgot to add that if you haven't been tagged for this already and feel so inclined, then now's your opportunity.