Teachers I remember with gratitude #1

I can’t remember his name.

I’m bad on names and faces. Sorry. I do know he died some years back,and if I’d known I’d have travelled the 250 miles to be at his funeral.

He was the first teacher who treated us as equals,although he was able to retain our respect at the same time. To him we were younger,less experienced,his role was to teach and ours to learn,but we were just human beings like himself,of equal significance in the universe. For a year he was my form tutor. When my mother and I were evicted from our flat and I ended up in council care he arranged for me to stay with a friend instead of in the council place.

In our room the blackboard had an area a couple of metres deep behind it,which naturally formed part of the landscape in which we fooled about at lunchtime. Technically we weren’t allowed behind it,even though it was wide open. One day we were playing with the board duster –thick felting attached to wood –behind the board when he came in to collect something. Most other teachers would have shouted at us to behave. Some would have been embarassed and gone straight back out. He caught the duster in mid air,zipped it round his back,turned,and passed it to someone else as if he were playing rugby. For a minute he joined in the game before saying,“I’m sorry,I must get on with some work. By the way,I see someone’s been writing on the back of the board with chalk. It all looks polite and acceptable to me but some of my colleagues might get upset,so make sure you don’t get caught.”We cleaned all the comments off that day.

He made me feel like I counted,that I wasn’t just a tiny component on a large conveyer belt. He got me thinking that you could achieve something really important as a teacher. He was one of my models for how to be a teacher. I wish I’d told him so.

Ah,I think I now have his name,though I may not be spelling it correctly:Mr. Dunnicliffe.

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