As explained in the entry for year one, the class line up was changed around for when I started Parsonwood Hill. A far bigger and newer school than the Market Place it had it’s good points as well as it’s bad.
My memories of this year are not good both inside and outside of the classroom. In the school playground the issue of bullying raised it’s ugly head (this is dealt with in another entry). Inside the classroom my number one problem was the teacher Mrs Price. She was easily the one I hated the most out of the six I had at Primary school. It was not just because she was strict and hard line (Mrs Irneson in year 6 was far worse in this department).
The problem I had with her was the way she had her “favourites” in the class, the kids she treated different to the others. I of course was not one of them and as far as I was concerned she couldn’t have made it any more obvious. By then it was firmly established that Maths was my best subject, I was top of the class all the way through Primary school but never got any credit off her at all. With English I was average at best but she took great delight in giving me a hard time about my handwriting.
The fairly strict upbringing I had made sure that I was never badly behaved at Primary school. I was always the type of kid who if I got in trouble would be upset about it for three days after. I was not perfect of course but I was hardly a trouble maker either. Despite this Mrs Price seemed to hate me for no apparent reason.
One incident I remember was when something went missing from the classroom, I can’t remember for the life of me what it was but what I do remember is that Mrs Price was 100 percent sure that it was me who stolen it. I was never the sort of person to do this but after lengthy questioning she went and searched my coat pockets and school bag.
After coming up with nothing I will never forget the look on her face as she muttered something under her breath and stormed off back to the classroom. You could tell that she was hoping to pin something on me but so upset when she couldn’t.....
Looking back it was blatant victimisation and I have never figured out what I did wrong to get in her bad books so often. The problem at the time was of course trying to get my parents or any other adult for that matter to believe me at the age of 6. In their eyes I had done something wrong at school and were “just making up stories” about the teacher to try and cover up what I had done wrong.
Even if they had believed me I very much doubt something would ever been said or done. My parents had grown up in the era of harsh corporal punishment at school so in their eyes any problem I had with teachers or school was always going to be considered to a lesser problem. It was always the “we had it worse than you attitude”.
I continued to repeat the same stories to my parents for years after but they still didn’t listen. Then one day mum came home from school telling me that several of the other parents at the school gates were complaining about how Mrs Price plays favourites with some of the kids in the class.
Finally they had accepted what I had been telling them all along but this was of course 5 years later when my sister was at the school and I had long left so it didn’t matter anymore. This was a depressingly common theme to many of the problems I had growing up.
Apart from a day trip to Elvaston castle in Derbyshire any other memories of this year are thin on the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment