Another Story - Teachers in Need...

So this woman here fetched up at the Tech one day in the early 80s to teach a subject she knew damn all about.  Architecture?  Not a clue.  Not only that, but the day-release students in my group all worked in town planning or construction or architects’ offices, so they had a head-start on me and most were around the same age.  I don’t remember much about the syllabus I was given, but I do recall one of the topics was cubism.  I decided there was no point in winging it, so I came clean – sort of.  I didn’t know, and hadn’t been told, why the original, qualified lecturer was no longer available, so I just killed him off.  (Sympathy vote, you see.)  I then went through the syllabus with the students and established who already knew how much about what area.  Suggesting that we learn from each other, allocate specific topics to different people to research and try to get guest speakers in from their places of work, I soon had an enthusiastic and well-motivated group.  We ended up having a ball, had no bother getting volunteer speakers and I spent more time in the body of the class than I did in front of it.  I even ended up with an ardent admirer who handed me a letter at the end of the course, asking that I contact him if my marriage ever hit the rocks.  I could have been doing with that letter further down the road. ☺

The architecture course was a collaborative effort, but I also exploited my students shamelessly in another area, namely Media Studies.  The Tech was just across the road from Radio Foyle and neither organisation had a problem with me ferrying students back and forth to further their skills.  I showed them how to edit – on my material, I taught them how to research – for my programmes, and I encouraged then to come up with ideas for local coverage – which I later used.  Good, eh?

I also taught a couple of young men who were big into pub quizzes and I had cause to call upon their services at one stage.  The BBC had not long started supporting Children in Need and staff were all encouraged to do their bit.  And did so willingly.  When I was asked how I wanted to contribute to the Foyle effort, I airily replied, ‘Put me down for whatever you need.’  And that’s how I ended up on the radio quiz team and why I went running in a panic to my two student quiz whizz kids.  My general knowledge was, and still is, appalling, especially when it comes to geography, so the guys decided to concentrate on capital cities of the world.  They coached and questioned me for hours and hours and hours, mainly in the pub.  Did I get one question on capital cities?  No.  In a pub in Muff, with Anita beside me and Paddy Quiz (Doherty? Has to be….) heading up the opposition, my first question was, ‘What’s measured in hands?’  Bear in mind the fact that my father was a greengrocer, so my confident response was, ‘Bananas’.  Both audience and quiz-master thought I was playing for laughs, so I was allowed another go.  ‘Gloves?’  And by the time this supposed court jester’s final answer was called upon, Anita had hissed, ‘Horses’ in my ear.  And, do you know what, my friends?  We won.  In large part due to the fact that Paddy had over-imbibed and fell asleep in the middle of proceedings.

Another year, another Children in Need event and I was assigned a much more appropriate role – collecting the buckets of money and cheques from those who had  gathered outside Broadcasting House in Belfast.  That was the night a very famous person tore into me and told me to f*** off.  But that’s another story……………………

Another Story - First Days at the Tech

When I started at the Tech in the early 80s, my very first memo from our formidable Head of Department, Margaret Baumann, read, ‘I don’t think the Board will agree to supply us with 47,241 long-arm staplers – will one do?’  Mortified.  My first requisition form filled in wrong.  But lesson learned – I never got the catalogue number and the amount mixed up ever again.

After 4 years’ teaching English at Faughan Valley, I was cock-a-hoop to have landed a post at North West College.  Lecturing sounded so much more prestigious than teaching and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven as, even though I had night-classes, I also had blocks of free time during the day.  To be fair, the evening sessions were a joy as the students there were older and well-motivated.  The time flew with such groups and most nights some of us would fetch up at Andy Cole’s afterwards to continue the session, or not as the mood took us.  At the other end of the job-satisfaction spectrum were the daytime teenage brickies and plumbers, painters and decorators, who considered it nothing short of hell to be subjected to a weekly session of Communications & Life Skills.  Double hell when this was the last session of the day, as it usually was.  Because the English Department ‘serviced’ Construction with this course, we were at that department’s mercy when it came to time-tabling and they gave us the graveyard shift when they could.  Often.  Bad enough to have fading youths straining at the leash to get home; worse when they couldn’t see the point of this stupid lesson anyway.

Letters to employers, application forms, CVs, interview role plays, grammar, spelling, punctuation – what a load of drivel.  They knew – and we did too – that in those days most of them would drift effortlessly into working alongside brothers or fathers or uncles, or would be recommended for a job by Jimmy down the road.  But we had to persevere and by God it was an uphill struggle.  It was also a point of pride that you tried not to complain to their core lecturers about bad behavior, cursing, deliberately shoddy work, inane excuses for not being able to do something or the odd muttered threat. ‘Me Da’s in the RA and he’ll soon sort you out,’ was hurled over the shoulder by one guy whom I vainly tried to keep behind for defacing a desk.

One evening, frazzled after one of these sessions and in belligerent mood, I found myself driving through the Bogside. (I always hit the central-locking when I did this, more to pacify my husband than out of any concern for myself.)  I pulled up at a red light, lit a cigarette and rolled the window down a little.  Next thing, these two drinks of water wearing balaclavas and wielding guns are in front of me, motioning me to get out of the car.  I’m still in classroom mode and, as they move to either side, I yell, ‘Get home to your mammies!’  (There may have been a swear word in there.) I put my foot to the floor and drove off, leaving them open-mouthed with arms the same length.  It didn’t take long for the enormity of what I’ve done to sink in.  I just remember my right leg beginning to jump like mad as the car kangarooed it home. ‘ Give them the car, give them the money, give them your bag’ – all drummed into me from an early age and all for nought.

I often wonder how many outside the teaching profession are aware of how poorly qualified some of us can be for some of the subjects we end up spouting on.  Not as a general rule, you understand, but in times of emergency and the lack of anyone suitable to step up to the blackboard.  (Not allowed to say that anymore.  Mea culpa.)  With mediocre ‘O’ levels in Irish, French and Geography, plus a fail in RE at Dip Ed level, I found myself teaching all of those subjects at various times in various schools.  I’m not just talking about covering the odd class for someone off sick.  I’m referring to maternity leaves or periods of secondment or even sudden death.  Months could go by with someone like me keeping a page ahead of the class.

But the Tech presented the greatest challenge and what turned out to be the most fulfilling experience.  After an urgent - and terrifying - summons to the principal’s office, Peter Gallagher went round the houses about team-work and all hands to the pump and how we all have hidden resources, before telling me that a night-class which was fully subscribed and due to begin the following evening was missing a lecturer.  Can’t remember why.  However, the upshot was that he was depending on me stepping into the breach and sure it would be no bother to a person of my calibre.  And that’s how this woman, who just about knew how to build a fire, ended up teaching architecture.  But that’s another story……………………………………..

That's Another Story

Fun and frivolity.  We had buckets of both in Derry.  Just as those caught up in WW2 report grabbing life by the throat and wringing what joy they could from that awful time, so too did we, as we lived our way round and through The Troubles.  Was this fecklessness or simply survival of the spirit?  I think the latter, as many of us were doing our own small bits in our own little spheres to promote tolerance, understanding and communication.

Fancy dress events were thick on the ground and the costumes we assumed allowed us to step outside of ourselves for an evening.  Two of these occasions stand out in my mind – one ridiculous and one poignant.

The first was a debating society one in Redcastle.  A group of us had hired out a minibus and a room to change in.  I’d sprayed my hair blonde and borrowed a vintage evening dress in the vain hope that I’d pass for Marilyn Monroe or Lana Turner.  I knew the zip was broken and had armed myself with needle and thread.  Anita sewed me into the dress beforehand and I proceeded to dispel any illusion of elegance by getting stuck into my halves of Bulmers and my fags.  A good time was had by all and we swayed back to the room to change into our civvies for the journey home.  Now to get out of the dress.  Did anyone have scissors?  No-one had scissors.  Too tiddly to figure that hotel reception could probably come up with the goods, the gallant Trevor Robinson proceeded to bite me out of my gown.  Anita loved to tell that story.

The second memorable event was just before Christmas one year in the Guildhall and features the wonderful Paddy Rice, who fetched up as a local yokel.  He had on the most voluminous mid-calf white shirty thing tied at the waist with rope.  Add a flat cap, a blackthorn stick and hob-nailed boots and he really looked the part.  When I asked where he’d got his smock, he told me it was a shroud.  His father had been an undertaker I seem to remember.

A few days later, we had a New Year’s Eve party.  Paddy and Doreen had been invited but didn’t show.  They were sadly missed, not least because it was one of those knees-ups where everyone brought a dish and we were a dessert short.  We were joking about the fact that it was the ‘Rice pudding’.  Imagine my guilt, and our horror and sadness, when the phone rang to tell us that Paddy had just died in a car accident.  And then, not long after, my photos of the fancy dress plopped through the letterbox.  The hairs stood up on the back of my neck when I saw that the only print which was over-exposed was the one of Paddy and Doreen.  When I hear traditional Irish music, I often think of Paddy, as well as that other well-loved BBC presenter, Tony McAuley.

Many of the people who attended that party are now dead.  Anita and Trevor, Áine Downey, Ollie McGilloway, Liz Erskine, Gerry Anderson, Cecilia Kennedy, Peter Mullan, Dáithí Murphy – all good people who made the world a better place when they were in it.  They live on in the hearts of those of us remaining.  We creak on and continue to seize happiness where we can – with our arthritic fingers and halting gait – but always, always buoyed up by wonderfully fond memories.

Like the time two young lads tried to hijack my car in the Bogside and I told them to get home to their mammies.  But that’s another story……………………..