Memories From Students
Gillian Bastow (Mrs Harrison) 1961–64
It is an honour to be asked, after thirty-plus years of teaching, two headships and five years of retirement, for my memories of student days at St Gabriel’s. The amazing thing is to find that I can remember so much!
In conversation with the delightful Robert Gittings, for whom I’d been working at the BBC, I confessed that my burning ambition was to teach. How lucky I was that he and fellow poet Margaret Stanley-Wrench were such good friends, that they were meeting that evening and that the last week of interviews for September 1961 at St Gabriel’s was looming.
Mature students were a fairly rare species at Teacher Training Colleges in those days, but with the heady days of expansion in education just round the corner and the three-year course in its infancy, I survived some gimlet-eyed interviewing by Mary Atkinson and a very Ladies’ College afternoon tea, to begin my journey into the teaching profession.
I wonder how many still have all their notes, essays, dissertations, letters from children
and Teaching Practice files? It won’t surprise those who knew me that I have all of mine
and, of course, the comments from those who were my lecturers. I can still read the ‘Joyce
Grenfellish’ tones of those concentrating on the Nursery sector and the stimulating comments
of people like dear Stan Pococke – it was always wonderful to have him turn up to observe
lessons and to see him share the enjoyment of being with challenging pupils. He would always
arrive on time, at the beginning of a lesson, settle unobtrusively and give an encouraging
smile – a critical friend of great value. Then there were the less successful emissaries
from Myatt’s Fields. One arrived wearing a large picture hat and gloves, knocked over
the blackboard (remember them?) muttered apologies interwoven with ‘Ladies Day’ and ‘Ascot’,
and smiled benignly before settling herself at the back of my, by now, unatmospheric classroom.
As on so many occasions since then, the voice of a south-east London teenager helped me see
the funny side of the situation: ‘‘Ere, is she yer Mum?’
Re-reading letters from children (who will forever remain in the memory as eleven- and twelve-year-olds but who are now in their forties) reminded me how much my own work had been influenced by the inspired idea of the Clubs run in partnership between St Gabriel’s and Vauxhall Manor School. My enthusiasm for knowing and supporting the ‘whole child’ even transmitted itself to my parents, who, while I was a student, often found themselves with a succession of Lambeth and Peckham children on their first holiday, climbing trees in our Devon garden.
For obvious reasons, I felt truly alive during Teaching Practices, but the part of my three-year course I hugged to myself and still treasure, was the special prize of having Jane Blackburn as my lecturer in English. I can see her now, in that attic room, bobbed hair, light-brown silk blouse with a bow at the neck (early power-dressing, Jane?) a dark-brown pleated skirt and ankles crossed above stylish shoes. And there began a rekindling of my love of literature, partially quenched by uninspiring A-level teaching, and an awakening to authors whose works still delight from their yellowing, much-travelled paperbacks. Main Course weeks were keenly anticipated with their opportunities to spend more time listening to both Jane and Margaret Stanley-Wrench. (In the case of the latter one had to listen very intently to overcome the snoring of an ever-present Pekinese!)
As a day student my extra-curricular life was lived differently from that of those with rooms in College. It wasn’t until I attended my first Students’ Union meeting that I realised just how differently. It was the start of the 1960s and here were young women, who were to become role models for generations of children, using Union meetings to become over-excited about rules governing where the ironing boards should be stored! My election as President still saw me presiding over meetings dotted with trivia, but with the help of Jean Barrett (Vice-President), Margaret Chalker (Social Secretary) and Janet Harber (ULIESA Representative) we became more involved with larger issues and activities within the University of London Institute of Education Students’ Association and in the wider, more turbulent and fast-changing world. It was as Union President, representing St Gabriel’s, that I attended the 1963 NUS Conference during which a shocked gathering learned of Jack Kennedy’s assassination.
Between 1961 and 1964 there were changes in the structure, methodology and content of much of our work, as the staff began to evaluate the early stages of their three-year courses against the background and demands of a rapidly changing society. One thing, however, didn’t change and that was the main building with its amazing art collection – I wonder how many other students were as lucky as we were? Very few could have had the pleasure of sitting beside a Rodin when their minds wandered during lectures on a warm Friday afternoon. Then, at the heart of everything, was the lovely Chapel. I remember it particularly for the major festivals and the wonderful music we heard and jointly made.
I have to thank St Gabriel’s for giving me the key to open the door to a career that was full of interest, stimulation, excitement, challenge and fun. I hope that those ‘children’ of Peckham, Singapore, Lewisham and Milton Keynes were as pleased as I have been that an archangel and two poets were instrumental in helping me realise my dreams.
