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| Mr. Griffin with a healthy teacher-pupil relationship |
This blog was inspired by Stuart Webb's recent post on Facebook.
Before I even set a foot in Samuel Southall Secondary School, I had friends and family who told me all sorts of tales about the various teaching staff at Sammies. These stories descended in incrementing levels of ridiculousness, from the half-baked to bordering on the absurd.....
Some selected stories and nicknames I was told about Sammies teachers included:
- How strict Mr. Ryder was
- The multitude of school stories that Larry Farmer would tell in class
- How big the nose on 'Beaky' Jones really was
- How Mr. Davies used to mumble and how everyone called him 'Hitler'
- How big Mr. Pester's hands were
- Miss Lynch apparently had breast cancer
- How the headmaster Mr. Cooper apparently had a bent neck, walked funny because he was missing a lung?
- How Mrs. Chalmers wore pregnancy dresses
- 'Piggy' Poyner
- 'Geraldo' Hill
- How soft and effeminate Mr. Jelfs was.
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| Jo Tryner and Shelley Smith outside S-Block |
Maths has always been my weakest subject, from my earliest school days I've struggled with numbers. My arithmetical problems began at Elbury Mount Infants. We used to do the very basic of sums in class, and once we completed these sums we were allowed to go outside and play. In my particular case, when I went outside it didn't take too long for someone to call me back in because I got the sums wrong! When I was in the 4th years at Elbury Mount Juniors our headmaster, Mr. Brooks tried to teach a group of us long division. It wasn't until 2008 (when I did a numeracy course) that I finally learned how to do long division properly! I knew that maths was my weakest subject, so bearing that in mind, you might have thought that I would have tried a bit harder at maths? But my ideas of hard work changed once I walked into Mr. Jelfs maths class..........
I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to expect when I first stepped into Mr. Jelfs's classroom, particularly after hearing all kinds of wild stories about him. His classroom was in the old school building, opposite the science block, down the steps and was the classroom immediately before Mr. Wallace's room, 1-1 got to do maths with Mr. Wallace.
My first impressions of Mr. Jelfs wasn't exactly what you might call flattering. He wore an old faded fawn coloured suit, complete with elbow patches. This threadbare suit had all the tell tale signs of where certain portions had been stitched up to make do, he appeared like he hadn't shaved, and when he handed out papers and books you could see that he had dirty nails. Mr. Jelfs seemed badly put together, but two things were very prominent. Firstly, there was this mop of hair which had a comedic kink running through it, and then there was this nervous heightened state of awareness that reflected in the expression on his face. He'd be seemingly confident and in control, then the next minute he'd be on edge and a complete nervous wreck.
The first thing Mr. Jelfs did when he got us all in his class was try to flog us his diaries. I, of course bought a yellow diary, which was the colour of my house, Wulstan. I sat next to Stuart Webb, who was a calming influence on me. Stuart was always good for maths information, he would let me copy his work, his handwriting was elaborate, very neat and almost pristine compared to my scribble! We were bunched in a group of tables by the window, which looked out across the corridor, where you could see the lucky few walking around the school who didn't have to suffer this calculus related lassitude. Sat behind me, and in front of me were fellow inmates Neil Jones, Steven Johnston, Beaver, (Simon Smith) Kevin Stride, Andrew Orr and David Burley.
At first our lessons were routine, we had plenty of coursework and there wasn't really any problems, but after a while what little détente there was had evaporated and discipline in the classroom had started to dissipate. Two major contributing factors were Carl Lloyd and Ashley Shearon. One day Ash started to answer Mr. Jelfs back, then Carl would go that degree further, and then even I started to give him grief? Our collective cheek escalated until Ash, Carl and myself really started to really give Mr. Jelfs a lot of grief until he was almost crying. At the time I thought it was the funniest thing to watch Mr. Jelfs lose control of our class, where it was the talk of a lot of us in about how things had started to deteriorate in maths. I think the whole situation reached its peak when Carl Lloyd really upset Mr. Jelfs, to the extent where he raised his hands in the air, clenched his fists and shook them at Carl's face and screamed, "Lloyd.....I'm bigger, and I'm stronger than you......" The entire classroom was in fits of laughter, even though we did try to stop ourselves from laughing out really loud and making a bad situation turn into a farce. Mr. Jelfs had completely lost it and things had really started to spiral out of control.
Carl and Ash eventually ended up on report but for some reason I escaped it. Mr. Jelfs had threatened the three of us with detention for ages, but we ignored it, we took no notice and treated his threats with contempt. I had a bizarre incident when I confronted Mr. Jelfs in his classroom at playtime regarding a detention and I got into a slanging match with him about a detention. Then one Tuesday afternoon we were in metalwork with Mr. Alderwick, the previous day Mr. Jelfs threatened the three of us with another detention, which we duly ignored. This time we were in our metalwork class (the last lesson of the day) we were told that Mr. Jelfs was waiting for us outside the class! The metalwork shop was by an embankment that lead to the smaller playground, so I decided to jump over the fence where I hopefully escape and go home. Poor old Carl and Ash caught caught up in the crowd outside the metalwork class and had no escape, but I managed to get far away from the madding crowd!
In our second years Mr. Jelfs started to teach us physics. This was mainly about optics (not about shorts measures on a bar!) We were in the classroom/lab (in the science block) where Mrs. Cook would later teach us chemistry. I basically started where I left off in maths. Every lesson I would do my best to mock Jelfs, give him cheek, disrupt the class, and generally make Mr. Jelfs's life a misery. Then the most obvious of things started to happen. Physics was probably one of my most favourite subjects, we had a test and I got some of the worst marks I had ever got in a test! It was then that it dawned on me that my grades was slipping and I questioned why it was that I was being so disruptive? The only person who was losing in all of this was me, I realised that it was time to get back into my studies and stop being such an idiot. Mr. Jelfs had ordered me to sit at the side desks (by the windows on the right) on my own because I was being so disruptive. I went into class one morning, sat with everyone else and I didn't say a word. At the end of the lesson Mr. Jelfs came over to me and said that I could continue sitting in the main bunch of desks, (mainly because I didn't annoy him and play him up!) which I did, and my days of playing up Mr. Jelfs had stopped as quickly as they had began.
I suppose the sad thing about all of this was that I wasn't the only person to do this to Mr. Jelfs. As a lot of you will testify to the fact that sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to what you do when you're a young kid? I'm not saying that in the sense of using it as an excuse, or defence, or some kind of moral get-out clause for doing bad things. Hindsight is 20/20, and many is the time when I've thought about the multitude of stupid things I've done, and had recriminations about. I never started up in Mr. Ryder's art class, or even in Mr. Fisher's RE class? A contributing factor may have been because of all the stories that I was told, and the reasoning that it was just the normal thing to do, and maybe seeing the chink in Mr. Jelfs's armour made me and the many others (like Darren Clay for instance!!) want to exploit it?
For a time Mr. Mills (he was our careers officer before Mr. Hill) taught us English language. He would always instruct us (as a class) to put chewing gum back in it's wrapper (where we got it from) and stick it in the bin! Mr. Mills was a good teacher but he had one trait. When he talked he would utter words from out of the side of his mouth. One Tuesday morning we were in a side classroom in S-Block, which was Mrs. Carroll's old room, (which was next to Miss Seddon's old classroom) I was sat next to Troy Jauncey, who was always fun to be around. Troy had a great sense of humour, and one of his many jokes came at Mr. Mills expense. There was a character in Popeye cartoons called Wimpy and this cartoon character would talk out of the side of his mouth, a trait which didn't go wasted on Troy! So consequently when we were in Mr. Mills class he would shout, "W-I-M-P-Y!!!!" Usually I would try to contain my giggling, but on this particular morning I couldn't restrain my laughter. The more that Troy did it the louder my giggle got, and the louder my giggle was the more Troy would do it! This was going on throughout the lesson, and Mr. Mills started to get more and more flustered and uncomfortable as Troy kept saying, "Wimpy...." All of a sudden, right in front of the whole class, Mr. Mills just decided to walk out. We were all sat there (about 15 or so of us) looking at each other. After 5 minutes or so there was no sign of him, then after 10 to 15 minutes or so we realised that there was something seriously wrong. Eventually someone came to our room and told us that Mr. Mills wouldn't be coming back. That was the last class I ever saw Mr. Mills teach.
My form teacher in 1-2 was Mr. Davies, who taught geography, everyone in school simply knew him as "Hitler". One day he went on a huge tirade in class. Presumably someone had upset him to the extent where he was about to go on a rant, and in his own unique style he decided to take it out on us.....Mr. Davies mumbled a lot, and this compounded with his deep welsh accent made him virtually indecipherable at times, but on this occasion he shouted, "Some people think I'm a fascist!" which everybody understood, and consequently a tsunami of universal snigger carried across our entire class.
When I was in the fourth and fifth years at Elgar my form tutor was Mrs. Rogers, and on many occasions she had individual and collective arguments with us all in our form, but one day she picked on the wrong one! Richard Weston was one of the most amiable of people I had ever met at Elgar. Rich came from Perdiswell, so he was someone who I had never met before, he was quiet, and once he got to know you he was great to be around. Richard was a good mate to me in my last two years at Elgar. One morning Mrs. Rogers got into an argument with Rich. What the argument was exactly about I don't know, but Mrs. Rogers decided to criticise Rich's attire and school uniform, which was ridiculous, because Rich was always smart, but bear in mind that Mrs Rogers herself looked like a cross between a sloane ranger and a bad imitation of Fanny Craddock, complete with the tacky turned up collar on her blouse. When Mrs. Rogers finished with her tirade it was Richard Weston's turn to speak. He looked her up and down and started to critique her outfit, and he did it in such a way and to an extent that she got flustered and was embarrassed! I don't think I could ever do justice to the way that Richard Weston put Mrs. Rogers in her place that morning, but she got exactly what she asked for that morning.
I've had more than my fair share of mental and verbal abuse at school. Much, much more, in fact I still do. I had problems in the first years with our year head Mrs. Hullah. My mum and the headmaster got involved. I also had problems in the fifth years with my chemistry teacher Mr. Phillpotts. I don't know whether you'd take the attitude of 'what goes around comes around' or if you'd say that it's all wrong?
I recently completed a college assignment in advanced designing of statistical spreadsheets, which contained quite a lot of maths formulas. As I sat there at my desk with my head in my hands trying to get my head around various maths theories, I wished that I'd paid more attention in maths!! Then I thought about how Mr. Jelfs could have a laugh at my expense for all my maths related woes!! But in all honesty I don't think he was the sort of teacher that would do that.
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| Two figures of authority |
My first impressions of Mr. Jelfs wasn't exactly what you might call flattering. He wore an old faded fawn coloured suit, complete with elbow patches. This threadbare suit had all the tell tale signs of where certain portions had been stitched up to make do, he appeared like he hadn't shaved, and when he handed out papers and books you could see that he had dirty nails. Mr. Jelfs seemed badly put together, but two things were very prominent. Firstly, there was this mop of hair which had a comedic kink running through it, and then there was this nervous heightened state of awareness that reflected in the expression on his face. He'd be seemingly confident and in control, then the next minute he'd be on edge and a complete nervous wreck.
The first thing Mr. Jelfs did when he got us all in his class was try to flog us his diaries. I, of course bought a yellow diary, which was the colour of my house, Wulstan. I sat next to Stuart Webb, who was a calming influence on me. Stuart was always good for maths information, he would let me copy his work, his handwriting was elaborate, very neat and almost pristine compared to my scribble! We were bunched in a group of tables by the window, which looked out across the corridor, where you could see the lucky few walking around the school who didn't have to suffer this calculus related lassitude. Sat behind me, and in front of me were fellow inmates Neil Jones, Steven Johnston, Beaver, (Simon Smith) Kevin Stride, Andrew Orr and David Burley.
At first our lessons were routine, we had plenty of coursework and there wasn't really any problems, but after a while what little détente there was had evaporated and discipline in the classroom had started to dissipate. Two major contributing factors were Carl Lloyd and Ashley Shearon. One day Ash started to answer Mr. Jelfs back, then Carl would go that degree further, and then even I started to give him grief? Our collective cheek escalated until Ash, Carl and myself really started to really give Mr. Jelfs a lot of grief until he was almost crying. At the time I thought it was the funniest thing to watch Mr. Jelfs lose control of our class, where it was the talk of a lot of us in about how things had started to deteriorate in maths. I think the whole situation reached its peak when Carl Lloyd really upset Mr. Jelfs, to the extent where he raised his hands in the air, clenched his fists and shook them at Carl's face and screamed, "Lloyd.....I'm bigger, and I'm stronger than you......" The entire classroom was in fits of laughter, even though we did try to stop ourselves from laughing out really loud and making a bad situation turn into a farce. Mr. Jelfs had completely lost it and things had really started to spiral out of control.
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| Beauty and the Beast: Joanne Honeywood and Mr. Tavendar |
Carl and Ash eventually ended up on report but for some reason I escaped it. Mr. Jelfs had threatened the three of us with detention for ages, but we ignored it, we took no notice and treated his threats with contempt. I had a bizarre incident when I confronted Mr. Jelfs in his classroom at playtime regarding a detention and I got into a slanging match with him about a detention. Then one Tuesday afternoon we were in metalwork with Mr. Alderwick, the previous day Mr. Jelfs threatened the three of us with another detention, which we duly ignored. This time we were in our metalwork class (the last lesson of the day) we were told that Mr. Jelfs was waiting for us outside the class! The metalwork shop was by an embankment that lead to the smaller playground, so I decided to jump over the fence where I hopefully escape and go home. Poor old Carl and Ash caught caught up in the crowd outside the metalwork class and had no escape, but I managed to get far away from the madding crowd!
In our second years Mr. Jelfs started to teach us physics. This was mainly about optics (not about shorts measures on a bar!) We were in the classroom/lab (in the science block) where Mrs. Cook would later teach us chemistry. I basically started where I left off in maths. Every lesson I would do my best to mock Jelfs, give him cheek, disrupt the class, and generally make Mr. Jelfs's life a misery. Then the most obvious of things started to happen. Physics was probably one of my most favourite subjects, we had a test and I got some of the worst marks I had ever got in a test! It was then that it dawned on me that my grades was slipping and I questioned why it was that I was being so disruptive? The only person who was losing in all of this was me, I realised that it was time to get back into my studies and stop being such an idiot. Mr. Jelfs had ordered me to sit at the side desks (by the windows on the right) on my own because I was being so disruptive. I went into class one morning, sat with everyone else and I didn't say a word. At the end of the lesson Mr. Jelfs came over to me and said that I could continue sitting in the main bunch of desks, (mainly because I didn't annoy him and play him up!) which I did, and my days of playing up Mr. Jelfs had stopped as quickly as they had began.
I suppose the sad thing about all of this was that I wasn't the only person to do this to Mr. Jelfs. As a lot of you will testify to the fact that sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to what you do when you're a young kid? I'm not saying that in the sense of using it as an excuse, or defence, or some kind of moral get-out clause for doing bad things. Hindsight is 20/20, and many is the time when I've thought about the multitude of stupid things I've done, and had recriminations about. I never started up in Mr. Ryder's art class, or even in Mr. Fisher's RE class? A contributing factor may have been because of all the stories that I was told, and the reasoning that it was just the normal thing to do, and maybe seeing the chink in Mr. Jelfs's armour made me and the many others (like Darren Clay for instance!!) want to exploit it?
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| Wimpy!! |
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| Jo Tryner Mark Zikking Arlette Mayo Wayne Cook Ruth Rice Sharron Price with S-Block in the background |
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| Hitler: As if you didn't know already |
When I was in the fourth and fifth years at Elgar my form tutor was Mrs. Rogers, and on many occasions she had individual and collective arguments with us all in our form, but one day she picked on the wrong one! Richard Weston was one of the most amiable of people I had ever met at Elgar. Rich came from Perdiswell, so he was someone who I had never met before, he was quiet, and once he got to know you he was great to be around. Richard was a good mate to me in my last two years at Elgar. One morning Mrs. Rogers got into an argument with Rich. What the argument was exactly about I don't know, but Mrs. Rogers decided to criticise Rich's attire and school uniform, which was ridiculous, because Rich was always smart, but bear in mind that Mrs Rogers herself looked like a cross between a sloane ranger and a bad imitation of Fanny Craddock, complete with the tacky turned up collar on her blouse. When Mrs. Rogers finished with her tirade it was Richard Weston's turn to speak. He looked her up and down and started to critique her outfit, and he did it in such a way and to an extent that she got flustered and was embarrassed! I don't think I could ever do justice to the way that Richard Weston put Mrs. Rogers in her place that morning, but she got exactly what she asked for that morning.
I've had more than my fair share of mental and verbal abuse at school. Much, much more, in fact I still do. I had problems in the first years with our year head Mrs. Hullah. My mum and the headmaster got involved. I also had problems in the fifth years with my chemistry teacher Mr. Phillpotts. I don't know whether you'd take the attitude of 'what goes around comes around' or if you'd say that it's all wrong?
I recently completed a college assignment in advanced designing of statistical spreadsheets, which contained quite a lot of maths formulas. As I sat there at my desk with my head in my hands trying to get my head around various maths theories, I wished that I'd paid more attention in maths!! Then I thought about how Mr. Jelfs could have a laugh at my expense for all my maths related woes!! But in all honesty I don't think he was the sort of teacher that would do that.
I used to deliver post to both Mr Farmer & Mr Jelfs. Jelfs was quite decent, always gave me a tip at Christmas. Larry Farmer would make me a cup of tea so I could have my nreak at his place. He died of alzheimers, real shame because he was a brilliant bloke.
ReplyDeleteI used to deliver post to both Mr Farmer & Mr Jelfs. Jelfs was quite decent, always gave me a tip at Christmas. Larry Farmer would make me a cup of tea so I could have my nreak at his place. He died of alzheimers, real shame because he was a brilliant bloke.
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