Tales from the school yard.

Jesus man. It was clearly an implied contract. Did you have no decency?

Hahahaha so this ^^^^ @Constable_Savage

It would explain my erection every time I have a mouthful of Maltesers.

Euph?

Yes I was in my early teens.

This kind of next level pun is why we should bring back #rep

The amazingly racist art teacher

We had a technical drawing teacher, an elderly ex-RAF gent who would pointed tell one of my classmates that his lines were 'Too black, son. Too black."

The only interesting alumni from our school are Richard Ayoade (who was in my Brother's class), Brian Eno and John McDonnell (that last one was a bit of a shock).

Having sampled most forms of secondary education; grammar (expelled), boarding (paid for by Education Council, expelled) and comprehensive (didn't attend often enough to get myself expelled), I can confirm that teachers are not infrequently drunk, weak, kiddy fiddling, psychos or just plain barking mad throughout the entire system.

Some of my friends are teachers, they all qualify in at least one category, except kiddy fiddling (to the best of my knowledge). They are all cyclists, which explains a lot. I have been to several staff parties, every staff room appears to be a knocking-shop, particularly once alcohol is added.

Oddly, I have never worried about the alumni of any school which no longer required my services. My college, on the other hand, gave us J.R.R.Tolkien, Richard Burton, Roger Bannister and Philip Pullman (of which I am proud) and Dominic Cummings (of which I am not).

every staff room appears to be a knocking-shop

My mother, who was a French teacher and then Principal teacher at a Scottish state school can confirm that this is certainly what many male teachers think, drunk or sober.

One of our neighbours was also one of her colleagues and a rare beast - a Latin teacher in the state school system. Because his class size was small and all his pupils willing volunteers, he had no idea what his colleagues were really experiencing and thought the tales they told in the staff room were signs of them just being overdramatic or hysterical.

Then the school dropped Latin from the syllabus and he found he was expected to serve out his time taking general classes. He didn't last one term.

If I were a teacher I be damn certain that I was at least a little bit drunk all the time.

My parents met while teaching at Bradford's Belle Vue Grammar in the early 70s. They used to drink in the Belle Vue pub, as described by @General_Lucifer in #74.

PLEASE tell me you’ve asked them about the Belle Vue in relation to my story!!!

Of course, and was assured it was a reputable establishment back then.

Went to several schools in the UK, some paid, some roman catholic, both in Italy and some english language school in Italy. Went to the school that had the Minibus crash on the M40! was taught by the teacher who died. Scary thing is that she was only 35 as it felt she was older. She taught maths, and Music and had a 12 string guitar and was nice. Part of me noted how many classes and teaching blocks were built with funds raised from the incident. Played footy sometimes with Lee Sharpe. One English teacher Peter Haydn wrote and had a book published about a school day trip to France. He had a mental breakdown. Pity he was a great English teacher.

No peado teachers and nothing untoward, apart fro the usual corporal punishment, did anyone else get picked up by the side burns? Lost of kids who were better suited to being in a borstal than in education.

Some teachers had some cool cars, Lancia Beta coupe by an art teacher, science teacher with a mirafiori had the surname of slaughter. Another science teacher the had an array of cool cars, minor traveller, fiat 128 3p.

did anyone else get picked up by the side burns?

Oh yes, at junior school aged 9-11. The same teacher showed us a glass jar about the size of a jar of pesto. It was full of mercury until he dropped it on the classroom parquet flooring. Little silver balls shot everywhere which we kids swept up on sheets of paper. I had a pool of it in my desk for weeks. It would roll about under the dust and pencil sharpenings repelling everything it touched.

We all had teachers who repelled everything they touched. Do you think the mercury explains anything in later life? Mr Jones in 3rd year junior didn't mess with sideburns, the vindictive Welsh bastard hoicked us up by the ears.

We were taken out of one of our GCSE's in the middle of the exam so the police could do a controlled explosion on an IRA bomb under a teacher's car. Marched to a room on the far side of the school, not allowed to speak, they dealt with the bomb and we were marched back in again to finish our exam.

One day we were staying late for drama rehearsals, and saw a massive explosion. We knew it was York Road Station, and a lot us our sisters and brothers were there, but carried on with the rehearsal as usual. Turned out the usual warning had been late, and loads of kids, including my brother and sister, had been sprinting down the road to safety when the bomb went off. One of the occasions when that particular gentlemen's agreement with the IRA almost ended less well than imagined.

Looking back, I'm not sure what felt normal in Belfast was actually that normal.

Not to diminish your siblings' close call in any way but I have a school near death experience.
We had an open air swimming pool in which we did kayaking practice in BATs (stubby, rounded off kayaks). We were practicing getting out in the event of a capsize. We had no paddle and were near the side, for safety purposes. It came to my go and for some reason I had inadvertently jammed my knees in the dimpley bits and my feet stuck to the bottom. I realised my mistake when I was upside down and couldn't eject in the proscribed manner. I slapped the bottom of the vessel in the "help me" panic mode and started doggie paddling to try and get me face our if the water. This propelled me towards the centre of the pool and further away than my classmates wanted to reach.
Finally someone jumped in but didn't help me to get any air. Oh no, they just pushed the inverted boat back to the side I had come from which was further away than the opposite side. I eventually got my head out of water and was able to untangle myself. I looked about and the teacher was at the far end of the pool inside the school talking to a colleague. Totally oblivious and subsequently didn't care.

We had a fit male head of PE/Games for the boys and a fit female head of PE/Games for the girls.
There were rumours.
The only time we had mixed PE lessons was swimming.
This took place at the local baths.
Fit male teacher and fit female teacher would be in tracksuits doing their teaching stuff by the side of the pool and the last 10 minutes of the lesson was 'fun time'.
And wayhey ! Mr/Ms PE teacher have shed their tracksuits revealing speedos/bikini and he is showing off his back somersault dives from the side of the pool while she looks on with admiration.
This memory sticks out.

This memory sticks out

Sounds like more than a memory is sticking out

Late to the party... but i think we went to the same school! Eastwood aye?

Haha aye. Think I would have been 5th year in 97/98, you around that time too?

nah, to old for me (Something Mr Wright never said), i was 1st year in 2000.

People don't believe me at some of the shit that went on. The spit-pit (An area of the school where people would throw your bag and everyone would openly spit down on you as you got it back from the stairs above), Mr Wright (Music teacher that was known to be a pedophile by everyone but if you complained to a teacher you got detention with him, now in the jail), Mrs Rutherford (french teacher who had fireworks put in her desk and a table thrown out her second floor class window).. i could go on!

i genuinely didn't think it was that bad at the time though... just normal!

Still in the old building then? Wonder if the architects remembered to include a spit pit in the new one?!

Would you have had the new swimming pool? The old one was a bit rank. Always at least one buckshee elastoplast floating around in it. Remember there were some female PE teachers that liked to come into the boys changing room following swimming lessons. Also there was a game called 'swim the gauntlet' or some shit where the class all lined up along the edge of the pool (and maybe along the rope separating the lanes?) and you'd to take it in turns to swim as far as you could underwater while everyone kicked you as you swam past them.

I started being able to miss PE in 5th year though as was doing an art n design higher and there was some unwritten/unspoken deal that the less athletic pupils could work on that kind of stuff instead. Of course the art dept weren't expecting you so it was just an excuse to bunk off, go to Harvies for cigs etc.

There was Mr Dixon the maths teacher that had been a weight lifter or body builder or something. Remember him leaning out his classroom window on the 1st or 2nd floor during a fight between a white kid and a pakistani or indian kid and cheering on the white kid then the head came out a door on the ground floor and he quickly changed to telling them to break it up.

I had to do some of one set of my exams down at St Ninians because someone set the gym hall on fire.

I remember someone crashing their car into a tree just inside the school gates, drunk or high or something. Think the driver and/or passenger was pretty badly injured.

Haha Dickson, we superglued a coin to the floor in his class. He bent down to pick it up, couldn’t and went mental. Went into his cupboard and pulled all the shelves off the wall whilst screaming.

That old swimming pool was horrible, I remember swimming past spiders and plasters in there. Got turned into a dance/drama theatre when I was in 6th year.

Massive race problem in the school that was never addressed. I saw someone getting chopped in the head with a machete... crazy when you think back!