Great teachers part 2

Hawarden Grammar School is of course no more. A victim of the comprehensive education revolution which was right when it came but before that it meant that those of us who went to the Grammar school got a pretty good education.

So as a grammar school it is no more. It first split into Deeside Senior High and Hawarden Junior High. The latter on the old grammar school site. The former is now John Summers High School and the Hawarden school is once again a full secondary with over a thousand pupils. I’ve done some on-line research for this post but there’s surprisingly little to find. The odd name does come up but I can’t find the old school badges.

For me it was a lot of new teachers as the new intake moved away from the one teacher per year which they’d experienced at primary school to the one teacher per subject, and several new subjects, of the secondary school. A lot of new teachers but I don’t remember many of them and the ones I have the strongest memories of were those that taught me in the 6th form.

Before I talk teachers just a little more about the school: 900 pupils, boys and girls, 4 forms of entry. That means class sizes of at least 40 and a fairly big 6th form. It did of course offer a full range of subjects but in those days boys did science and girls did languages. Not 100% of course but in my year just 5 girls did science with fewer boys on the other side. I was on the science side which was right for me but I could have done with a more balanced education with maybe history to complement my one language (Welsh).

In the 6th form I did 4 subjects, pure maths, applied maths, physics and chemistry, and there was a different teacher for each one.

Starting at the top: Dr Nora Lumb taught chemistry. She stood 5 foot nothing with a shock of fuzzy brown hair. I think it’s fair to say that she was committed to her subject and her profession. She had an incredible passion for chemistry matched by a fiery temper which she used to control students who towered above her in the class room. She certainly inspired me and I stayed with chemistry until I left university.

As different as they come John Sam (JS) Williams taught us physics. He’d taught my father so he must have been in his 60s when he taught me. He wasn’t 100% fit, some chest complaint I’d guess, and he taught sitting down. He had a lisp so we called him Tham, not to his face of course, and I think he compensated for his physical weakness with finely tuned sarcasm.

Ron Kemp taught us applied maths and he’d been at school with my father. He seemed to wear the same clothes every day and his jacket had a tear in the back. We reckoned that he’d killed a man to get it. Both he and JS made sure that the basics of their subjects were drummed into us so that we had an easy fluency to approach the worst that exams might throw at us.

David Hughes who taught us pure maths was of a different breed. He was much younger and had taught elsewhere before coming to Hawarden. I guess in reflection that in those days most teachers got a job on leaving teachers’ training college and stayed there. Anyway David was different, not just younger but he played rugby and enjoyed jazz. We related better to him but that meant that he related less well to the school’s management and he left soon after I did. However it’s a measure of our relationship that he gave up a day to help a group of us who were struggling at university with differential equations.

I must have been taught by 20 or 30 teachers and that would only be about a half of the staff, no teaching assistants then. Several had taught one or both of my parents: JS Williams (above), Mrs Abrahams the art teacher, Jimmy Bell another maths teacher. Some had been at school with one or both of them: Mrs Sayer who taught English, Harry Fisher general science and probably more . Other names I recall include Don Rowlands Physics, Peter Trinder English, Iorwerth Evans geography, Peter Hewitt metalwork, Fred Foulkes PE, Silvain Evans french, Helena Jones latin. I’ve got the photos and if I spend time on them I can come up with a few more names but are there any great ones to complement Alun Edwards in my list of great teachers?

Nora Lumb and David Hughes are a shoe in but I struggle with numbers 4 and 5.

There’s a sort of a reunion event for the school every year (see the photo above and go to http://bit.ly/24X15Kr for more information). About 20 or so from our vintage meet in the St David’s Hotel in Ewloe. Nothing formal and sadly those who now attend are getting fewer in number.