Monday 9 December 2013

The Right Approach.

When my friend Ronald Thorpe, age 9 1/2, broke a window at school by accidentally hitting it with a cricket ball, the teacher on duty came storming into the playground, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, shook the living daylights out of him, screamed at him, called him all sorts of nasty names, making him cry in front of all the other kids, and then kept him back after school until he had written 500 times, 'I will not break windows with a cricket ball again' or words to that effect.

When I, age 9 3/4, broke a window at school by accidentally hitting it with a cricket ball, Mr Hewitt strolled out to find out why it had happened, asked me if I thought it was sensible to play with a hard cricket ball so near to windows, explained to me that was how accidents happened, and told me in future to play cricket with a soft ball at the far side of the playground away from windows.

All of us kids liked Mr Hewitt. He was a fantastic teacher. Always easy to approach if we had any concerns about anything. I will never, ever, forget Mr Hewitt.

We all hated the other teacher, and do you know what? I can't, for the life of me, remember what his name was.





5 comments:

  1. There should be more people like Mr Hewitt in the world. He taught you what you needed to know but was kind as he did it. The other teacher only taught you to be fearful of accepting what you had done and of him. An ice cream cone for Mr Hewitt.

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  2. It's sad that a teacher can only be remembered by how the kids hated him. If he had chose to use kind words and understanding you and others would have remembered his name; fondly.

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  3. I remember the names of all my nice teachers too. There is only one not so nice university professor whose name I shall never ever forget.
    People walk into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts....your Mr. Hewitt was one of them.

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  4. I remember the nice teachers. Mrs Walker who taught cookery. Miss Walker who taught sewing. And Mr Boczar (Bo char) a Polish teacher who taught geography. He was the only one who could say my name correctly. Although I do remember Mrs Cotton who taught swimming and sports, she was evil.

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  5. It's interesting. Some kids only learn with the difficult way, but many teachers don't take the time to find out which is which. If Ronald was a sensitive boy he probably still has scars from that.

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