A day for reflection: Fond memories of a former colleague

Later this afternoon I will be attending the funeral of a former teaching colleague at the local crematorium. He and I shared an office for several years when we were both Heads of Year at the Woolwich Polytechnic Boys School in Woolwich. He was the Head of Year Seven (i.e the intake year from the local Primary Schools) and I was Head of Year Eight.

At the time the school was on two sites, one (the Lower School that housed the Year Seven and Eight pupils) in Macbean Street in the centre of Woolwich and the other (the Upper School that housed Years Nine to Eleven and the Sixth Form) in Sandy Hill Road, Plumstead. My colleague and I were based in the Lower School, which meant that we dealt with the youngest cohort of pupils which was both a blessing (very little bullying took place) and a curse (the local shopping centre, which included the first ever branch of McDonalds, was less than two minutes walk away and a very tempting place for youngsters to go to during lunchtime).

Corporal punishment was still used in schools back then, and both my colleague and I were responsible for administering it to our respective year groups. Surprisingly enough, we were more sparing in our use of it than many other schools, and always gave pupils the option to accept being caned or being suspended until their parents could come in for an interview. Most chose the former rather than the latter because they knew that their parents would probably punish them more than we would.

My colleague was a very gifted musician, having been a bandsman in the Royal Artillery before he became a teacher. As a result, the school had an excellent wind band that was tutored by serving members of the regimental band (its was based in Woolwich at the time), and many of the band’s members went on to become professional musicians, with most of them joining the British Army. Some of them are still serving members of the British Army, and I know of one who is currently in the Band of the Irish Guards.

Besides teaching music, my colleague also served in the Central Band of the Royal British Legion, where he was Director of Music from 1977 to 1984 and again from 1985 to 1991. I can well remember him conducting the band at halftime during a home match of West Ham United at the old Boleyn Ground when the side wasn’t doing very well, and as they marched off, one of the supporters shouting out 'You'd best stay on mates, you can't do worse than our lot!'.

We rather lost touch when I moved to another school, but every so often we would see each other in the local area and always made time to catch up with how things were going. I even saw him conduct the Royal British Legion Band when they visited Jersey towards the end of his tenure as Director of Music … and a very good band they were too under his leadership!

He will be sorely missed by his family and the many friends and acquaintances he made, both as a father, a colleague, and as a teacher.