Teaching post taught me a lot By Mrs D H Henderson (From Penarth Times)

Teaching post taught me a lot By Mrs D H Henderson

A WHITE sheet-like object lay in the road 80 yards away.

"It's a delayed action parachute mine," volunteered a local Brummie whose house, with 300 others, had been evacuated.

It was August 1940 and I was celebrating my 21st birthday and my appointment as a domestic subjects teacher in a Birmingham school.

The headteacher, pupils and most of the staff had been evacuated to Newent, Gloucestershire for a second time, leaving domestic subjects teachers to man rest centres if necessary, and two senior teachers but no children.

A tremendous explosion at tea-time proclaimed that the parachute mine had been disposed of in a controlled explosion by brave experts.

The next morning we found 300 small houses reduced to rubble but fortunately no loss of life.

The school was intact except the heating system was out of use as a bomb had struck it, but the two domestic subjects rooms across the playground were intact.

When bombing became spasmodic the children began to drift back to be taught in the domestic subjects rooms which were heated rather inadequately by coal fires.

I was attached to an experienced teacher, Miss Morris, who was in charge of the 11-year-olds, and my colleague to another experienced teacher who was in charge of the 12 and 13-year-olds.

I learned much about teaching general subjects from Miss Morris.

At that time there were three ability bands in each year so she allocated seats according to these "streams" expecting me to take the lowest group for arithmetic and reading, while she wrestled with the other two groups.

At 4.30pm sharp she departed for a bus for Kidderminster while I spent most of the night in the Anderson shelter in the garden of my lodgings.

It is a tribute to the spirit of all Birmingham residents that the next morning it was simply "business as usual" as they declared "We can take it!"