Tag Archives: high school

Moving on up

November 30, 2021 By in Family, Tasmania Tags: , , 6 Comments

Image shows a child's hand holding a pen. On a piece of paper is written 'Tom's book Chapter 1 adventures'

I have to be honest… when DorkySon left his infant school at the end of Grade 2, I thought I would never love a school as much as I did that one.

It had been such a perfect fit. The nurturing little community by the sea that helped us settle into Hobart; the place where we made our first friends; the school where a succession of kind, caring and thoughtful teachers supported DorkySon from the age of four through to eight.

It was the school where we watched him learn to read, to write, to make marvellously messy artworks that he would come running up to show us at the end of the day. It was everything you would hope for in a school and so, so much more.

But I have had to eat my words, because it turned out that his next school – the primary he has attended from Grades 3 to 6, ages 8 to 12 – has been every bit as good. Continue reading →

High School: The Best Days of Our Lives?

February 1, 2013 By in Nostalgia, Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 47 Comments

 

Figure in jeans and grey shoes holding a backpack in front of a brick wall, with the text 'High school: the best days of our lives?'

“High school days are the best days of your lives…”

How often did you hear that nonsense line uttered when you were a teenager, eh?

Someone put a picture up on Facebook the other day of a staff photo from my former high school. According to the silver lettering embossed on the frame, it’s from 1999. I would have been sixteen at the time, and these were the teachers I saw every single day, week in, and week out.

I am shocked by how few of them I remember.

There are two or three I am still in touch with – friends of my parents, or parents of my friends – who I could comfortably stand in the street and make conversation with. There are probably another dozen or so who I either liked or disliked a lot, and their names are still easy enough to call up in my mind.

But then there’s the rest. A nameless mass of smiles and suits, made up of individuals who may or may not have once stood before me in a classroom and imparted their knowledge on noble gases, imperfect participles, and quadratic equations.

Continue reading →