There were a number of music teachers in my day. Initially there were Mervin Slatter and David Pallet both were in their first year at the school, David was eventually replaced by Chris Mitchell ( "Wicky" ).
In the beginning of the first term we were all issued with a Descant recorder and there was a serious attempt made to teach us all to play; I have always considered this to have been an inspired idea. It is such a pity they did not maintain the teaching into subsequent years; if I were more cynical I might suppose that they were hoping we would all persuade our parents to pay for extra personal tuition - surely not!
In the early days there was some real attempt to teach us some theory - such as what a treble clef was and how many hemidemisemiquavers there were in a breve ( I was going to show off and put the answer here but then discovered I was no longer sure, I think it is 8 hemidemisemiquavers to a quaver, 2 quavers to a crochet, 4 crochets to a semibreve and 2 semibreves to a breve - giving 128 ). Later most of the time was just spent playing records to us. Mervin concentrated on classical and Chris on modern. I have always loved classical music so was one of the few who liked Mervin's classes - sadly he blotted his copy-book by spending a term playing the whole of the "Dream of Gerontius" - the most tedious, insufferable noise ever devised by the human mind.
Drama was taught by the English teachers. There was no formal teaching of the history of the theatre, you general stood around pretending to be a tree; to be fair we did do some interesting plays. In the 4th form they introduced "Stage Design" - some serious teaching at last.
In the first year we spent, what seemed like, a whole term going into great and tedious detail on a single simple organism ( a locust I recall ). Not very inspiring. Despite this I have always maintained an interest in the subject. From my second year to my fifth the post was held by Alister Knight. He was one of the more entertaining and likeable teachers although he did not seem to know how well I was doing as some quotes from my reports demonstrate :- Form 4 Term 1 - "Far too effervescent and turbulent to pay any attention in the classroom". The very next term - "I am surprised at Robin's high level of academic achievement. He is to be commended". And finally the third term - "He works very hard".
In my reports for the first year "Progress being made" seemed to be the most popular phrase - for me at this time this could be classed as a good report.
At the start of my fourth year a new teacher, Tony Dunlop, arrived - there was an instant improvement in my understanding of the subject and for the first time in my life I was actually enjoying serious academic study. My reports were also very good. Tony was actually a chemistry graduate which I suspect gave him a more practical understanding rather that the dry approach you get from a pure mathematician. He was also an extremely likeable person. By a bit of good luck most of the form was skiving off "working on the play" - see below. So by the end of the year I was actually pretty much top of the class in something!
There as was also a female assistant math teacher around my third year. All I remember is she made me sweep the courtyard as punishment for something I had not done.
In year three there arrived Ian Perrin. He is the first physics teacher I remember clearly. He was quite young and trendy. For the Parents' Day display he filled flasks with liquids which were dyed with a variety of chemicals including florocene and one with two immiscible liquids with different coloured dyes - he then suspended them from threads from the ceiling - with the blinds down and strategically placed the lights the effect was quite impressive, if not particularly informative. Fortunately while the display was up he refrained from his favourite pastime of throwing the board rubber at people. My reports were still mediocre.
In my fifth year John Deadman arrived. My first encounter with him ( I think it was even before our first lesson ) was in the courtyard. A couple of friends and I were playing with matches and John 'caught' us ( it was broad daylight in the middle of the courtyard - you did not have to be Hercules Parrot to detect us ) and dragged us ( not screaming at all ) to the headmasters office. By the time we had finished with Brian I suspect John understood the futility of reporting people to the headmaster. Despite this inauspicious start John and I got on really well for the next two years. He was a very good teacher and I was ( by Wennington standards ) a good pupil and a willing helper in the labs. Because John was usually quite strict most of the other pupils were not too keen on him.
I can remember only one occasion on which I did annoy him - but I won't go into that. Oh OK... For one physics practical John wanted us to make some photometers which consisted of two little blocks of wax, about 1cm by 2cm and about 5mm thick with a piece of aluminium foil between them. Anyway we had to cast these pesky bit of wax ourselves - and we had to improvise some moulds. Some time later John came to see how we had been getting on. The desk was covered in wax, there was wax on the floor... - it was a mess. John just about maintained his temper until he discovered that we had still only actually produced one block. That was the only time I have actually been thrown out of a science lesson. The following lesson we arrive to find that John had made the photometers for us.
Stepping back a bit and looking at my career as a whole it is definitely one of progress - from total dunce to a competent scientist. This was achieved largely by luck. One irony is that my scientific progress was a result of the school's concentration on the arts. Let me explain. In the second term of my fourth year our form, along with several others, was putting on some sort of theatrical production and the staff seemed quite happy for pupils to cut classes to "work on the play" ( you can bet that for most of the kids this consisted of sitting around Bob's Pond smoking ). As a result of this there were only three or four of us in most of the maths and science classes. At a key point in my school life ( the year before O level ) I had a very good maths teacher almost to myself for a whole term. This set me up not only for maths but for the other sciences as well.
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