‘Has he started school yet?’
‘Yes, he started at Willingforth Primary last September, same time as you started here. He’s in his second term now. My daughter, Tricia, she lives in Willingforth and sends him to the village school. His sister Lucy is in the juniors. That Miss Pilkington’s the Headteacher.’ When Connie prefaced a name with the word ‘that’ as in ‘that inspector with the fancy car’ or ‘that teacher who never returns her cup to the kitchen’ or ‘that Savage woman’ I was pretty certain it would be followed by a diatribe. But I was wrong in this case.
‘I take it Miss Pilkington is not the flavour of the month, Connie?’ I said casually.
‘Oh no, she’s very compis mental.’ I assumed this to be a compliment. ‘My daughter’s no grumbles in that direction. My grandson loves his school, bless him. He’s come on leaps and bounds since he started. He knows his alphabet and his words and can do some of his tables. He brings a reading book home every night and is that keen. And he’s so well behaved. He was quite a little character before he started, asking for sweets all the time and when he didn’t get them shouting and screaming blue murder. But that Miss Pilkington got the measure of him in no time at all. She was having none of it. A couple of weeks in her class and he was as good as gold. She’s excellent is Miss Pilkington. A woman after my own heart. She doesn’t stand any nonsense, I can tell you, not like some of these airy-fairy, wishy-washy teachers you hear about. Miss Pilkington’s one of the old school.’
I often heard about these airy-fairy, wishy-washy teachers who supposedly believed that children learned to read by osmosis and that spellings are caught rather than taught, but I had yet to meet one.
‘Have you been out to Willingforth school yet then?’ Connie asked.
‘No, I have that pleasure to come.’ I reckoned Miss Pilkington sounded like a real virago.
‘Well, when you do, you’re in for a rare treat. You could eat your food off the floor in that school, it’s so clean – and the toilets, you have never seen toilets like …’ It was as if I had wound up some talking mechanical toy. Connie continued in her eulogy for a good ten minutes more. Why had I ever raised the subject of her grandson?
It was a month later, on a frosty February afternoon, that I had occasion to visit Willingforth Primary School. Everything looked bleak and grey as I drove slowly along the empty road beneath a dark overcast sky. The fresh bursting life of spring, the bright summer sunlight dancing on the fells, the mellow golds of autumn seemed many months away.
The village of Willingforth itself looked deserted. I searched in vain for a school sign, drove up and down the main street, peering this way and that, did a circuit of the gaunt Norman church and the picturesque duck pond, until I accepted defeat and decided to ask at the local inn. There were a couple of old farmers leaning indolently against the public bar and putting the world to rights. They stopped talking and turned in my direction when I entered.
‘Shut that door, lad, thy’re lettin’ a rare old draught in,’ growled one of the ancients.
‘Could you tell me where the village school is, please?’ I asked amiably.
‘Tha’ wants school, does tha’?’ asked the first local, eyeing me over his spectacles as if I were some rare specimen.
‘Yes, if you could point me in the direction, I should be most grateful.’
‘Tha’s got business up theer then, has tha’?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied simply, ‘I have.’
The landlord, who had been busy washing glasses at the other end of the bar joined his two customers.
‘Young mester’s wantin’ school.’
‘Oh aye?’ said the landlord, staring fixedly at me.
‘Willingforth Primary School,’ I said.
‘Tha’s got business up theer then, has tha’?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied again, ‘I have.’
‘If tha’s selling owt,’ said the first ancient observing my grey suit and black briefcase, ‘my advice is to get back in thee car. Tha’ll be out o’ that door before thy ‘and’s off t’door ’andle.’
His companion chuckled. ‘Tha’ will that.’
‘Oh aye,’ agreed the landlord.
‘No, I’m not selling anything.’
‘And if tha’s a parent wantin’ to send thee kiddie theer, be ready for a rare old grillin’.’ His companion and the landlord nodded.
‘No, I’m not a parent.’
‘Aye, well whatever, thas’ll have to watch thee p’s and q’s when tha’ get up theer and no mistake.’
‘Tha’ will that!’ agreed number two. ‘She dunt mince ’er words that Miss Pilkington. By heck, she’s a fierce woman and no mistake. She could put the wind up a banshee could that teacher.’
‘Actually, I’m a school inspector,’ I said.
There was an audible in-drawing of breath and the three men’s faces took on the most excruciating expressions – as if they had swallowed their teeth.
‘Well, I’m glad I’m not in thy shoes, young man,’ said the first old man.
‘Nor me,’ added the other with a grave expression. ‘I don’t reckon she’ll take kindly to being inspected, Miss Pilkington.’
‘It’ll not be ’im who’ll be doin’ t’inspectin’!’ roared the landlord to the great amusement of his customers.
Miss Pilkington sounded as welcoming as a scrapyard rottweiler. I finally extracted directions to the school and five minutes later was parked outside a four-square and imposing stone building, facing open countryside, on the edge of the village. There was no indication that it was a school. Usually these small village schools have playgrounds adjacent to the buildings, tall black iron railing fencing them in and large school signs but not this one. It looked like a private, carefully-maintained private residence. There were shining white shutters at every window, a large oak panelled door with brass knocker and a neat, lawned garden to the front. I braced myself, clambered from the car and approached the school with great apprehension. Taking a deep breath I turned the heavy brass handle and entered.
The door opened straight into a large airy classroom, the like of which I had never seen before. Instead of the small melamine-topped tables and modern chairs usually found in the primary schools I visit, the room was furnished with hard straight-backed wooden chairs and highly-polished desks complete with lids and holes for inkwells. The walls were a pale blue and the beams and curved wooden supports stretching across the high ceiling were painted navy blue and cream. I caught sight of a large coloured sampler with the words: ‘STRAIGHT WORDS, STRAIGHT DEEDS, STRAIGHT BACKS’. Framing the high windows hung long blue floral drapes, while the reading corner had a soft pale carpet and large matching cushions. There was a Victorian fireplace, its mantle of dark slate and inlaid marble and its heavy black iron grate filled with carefully arranged dried flowers in various shades of blue and white. I had never seen a colour co-ordinated classroom before. If there were a prize awarded for schoolrooms from one of these glossy magazines – Creative Decorating or Imaginative Interior Design – Willingforth Primary School would have won hands down.
At the far end of the long room stood, who I presumed to be, the formidable Miss Pilkington. I had rather expected a Dickensian character, a dark, brooding, aggressive individual with cold, glassy eyes, steel-rimmed spectacles and a thin bony frame. Her hair would be white and scraped back savagely from her lined face and she would have a hard beak of a nose. But I was wrong. Miss Pilkington was a tall, elegant woman approaching middle age, and dressed in a pale green silk suit.
‘Do come in, Mr Phinn,’ she said, ‘I was expecting you.’ As I headed in her direction she addressed the forty or so children, ranging in age from five to eleven: ‘This is Mr Phinn, children. He is the school inspector and he will be joining us for the remainder of the day.’
The class chorused enthusiastically: ‘Good afternoon, Mr Phinn.’
‘Good afternoon, children,’ I replied.
‘If you could bear
with me for a moment, Mr Phinn,’ continued the teacher, ‘I just need to explain to the children what they will be doing this afternoon. My assistant, Miss Bates, who teaches the infants, telephoned in sick this morning so I need to tell the little ones what they will be doing. I will then be continuing some work started with the juniors on spelling.’
She ushered me to a chair next to the blackboard where I watched with great admiration as she outlined clearly to a very attentive and interested class the work to be undertaken. I was filled with even greater admiration as the older pupils re-arranged the desks quietly without direction from the teacher, made sure the younger ones had the necessary equipment and paper and started them off on their work, before returning to their own desks ready for their lesson of spelling.
‘Please don’t let me interrupt the lesson, Miss Pilkington,’ I said. ‘I should be very pleased to discuss the reason for my visit after school.’
‘Very well,’ said Miss Pilkington. When the junior children were seated and all eyes were on her, the Headteacher began the lesson. ‘How many did you find, Tom?’
A large boy with a shock of ginger hair and a face full of freckles answered. ‘Six, miss.’
‘Well, that is a very good effort, Tom. Did anyone find any more than six?’
‘I found eight, miss, but had a bit of help from my mum,’ answered a tall pale-faced girl at the back.
‘That is excellent, Janine.’ Miss Pilkington turned to me. ‘We have been undertaking a little research to find out how many different ways we can find of spelling the sound “shun”. We have done some work on the prefix and the suffix and now are looking at the various spelling patterns and word endings.’ She turned back to the class. ‘Remember I said that good spellers do not make wild guesses but make sensible predictions, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, miss,’ chorused the class.
‘Now, in nine out often cases the sound “shun” is spelled “t-i-o-n” as in the words “disruption”, “investigation”, “examination”, “interruption” and, of course, “inspection”.’ She glanced in my direction. There was obvious significance in the particular words chosen. ‘There are over a thousand words which have the sound “shun” at the end and are spelled “t-i-o-n” for every four exceptions so you can be pretty sure that if a word has the sound “shun” in it, it will be spelled “t-i-o-n”. Let’s see how many other possible spellings there are of the sound “shun”.’
There followed a lively discussion and the various ways of spelling the sound were listed, with the pupils quick to provide different examples: ‘comprehension’, ‘ocean’, ‘fashion’, ‘Russian’, ‘politician’, ‘suspicion’, ‘truncheon’, ‘complexion’.
‘That’s excellent, but there are just two more rather difficult and unusual exceptions to the rule which only a real expert on the English language would know.’ She glanced again in my direction. I just knew what was coming. I was sitting at the front of the classroom, next to the blackboard in full view of the children, a supposed expert on the language, an inspector of English no less. Miss ‘I don’t reckon she’ll take kindly to being inspected’ Pilkington was going to turn in my direction, fix me with a confident stare and ask me to provide the two other ways of spelling the sound ‘shun’. And I, for the life of me, could not think of any more alternatives. My mind quickly raced through various words but with no success. It kept focusing on the picture of the landlord at the local inn roaring with laughter as he predicted: ‘It’ll not be ’im who’ll be doin’ t’inspectin’.’ But the teacher let me off the hook.
‘The two other spellings are “chian” as in Appalachian, that’s a range of mountains in North America, and “chion” as in the word “stanchion” which is an upright bar used as a support. I cannot find any others. I don’t know if you know of any, Mr Phinn?’
‘No, no,’ I replied quickly.
She looked back at the children. ‘Now the first task this afternoon is to add the spellings and the rule neatly to your word books, spending a little time learning them, and then I would like you to complete the stories you started yesterday. Do use some imaginative words but remember to use a dictionary if you are unsure of a spelling. I shall be spending a little time now with the infants so I would like you to get on quietly. Mr Phinn, perhaps you would like to have a look at what they are doing.’ With that, Miss Pilkington moved to the other part of the classroom to teach the infants.
After school I accompanied Miss Pilkington into her small office. ‘Now, Mr Phinn, you wished to ask me some questions about this survey you are conducting?’
‘That’s right,’ I replied.
‘And what is the focus of the survey?’ she asked.
I sighed before answering, ‘The teaching of spelling.’
It was a lovely sunny afternoon when I visited Willingforth Primary School a couple of weeks later. I had to return some of the children’s work I had taken to assess. I was also going to take assembly. I stole a few moments when I pulled into a gateway and got out of the car. Leaning on the gate and looking at the peaceful Dales pastures shimmering in the late winter sun below me, it seemed that spring was just around the corner. But I could not linger long.
As I approached the heavy door of the school a growl of a voice stopped me in my tracks. ‘Tha’are a glutton fo’ punishment, thee.’
I turned to see the old farmer I had met in the village inn on my last visit. He leant on his stick at the side of the road and grimaced.
‘Oh,’ I smiled, ‘good afternoon.’
‘Tha’ not come inspectin’ ageean, has tha?’
‘No, no, not today.’
‘Aye, well I reckon she wunt put up wi’ a repeat performance.’ He laughed before going his way in the direction of the village.
‘I had a very pleasant visit last time,’ I called after him. ‘Very pleasant indeed.’
He turned and winked dramatically. ‘Aye, well, tha’ wants to watch thi’sen, young man. Appearances can be perceptive. Her bite is worse than her bark.’
One of the poems I had assessed, ‘by Christa aged 10’, was exceptionally good. Miss Pilkington had told me that the little girl had already had a poem accepted for publication in a very prestigious national collection of children’s writing. The teacher had been delighted for, as she had explained, Christa was a particularly shy and under-confident child who found the work rather demanding and often frustrating. She had a whole host of medical problems and had experienced very little success in her short life. She found reading difficult, number work arduous, while games were her least favourite class. The poem, therefore, was a real triumph and her teacher had told me how delighted little Christa had been to see her poem in print and her name beneath it.
Inside the school, the children’s bright, expectant faces were as sunny as the afternoon outside. I was hardly through the door when I heard some very excited welcomes: ‘It’s Mr Phinn, miss!’ ‘Miss, Mr Phinn’s arrived!’ ‘He’s here, miss!’ ‘Hello, Mr Phinn!’
‘Good afternoon everyone,’ I said loudly. ‘My goodness, what a welcome!’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Phinn,’ said Miss Pilkington. ‘Come along in. We are all expecting you. The children are just finishing their spelling corrections and are reading quietly for a moment. Perhaps you would care to have a walk around and see how they are getting on.’
I moved from one highly-polished desk to another until I arrived at Christa’s. She was a small, pale-complexioned child with great round eyes. She lowered her head and I could sense her nervousness.
‘This is lovely work,’ I commented gently, leafing through her book. ‘You’ve written such a lot of stories and poems and your writing is coming on a treat.’ Her head remained lowered as if in prayer. ‘And what is your name?’
‘Christa Fennick, sir,’ she murmured.
‘Not the Christa Fennick?’ I asked with great surprise in my voice.
‘Pardon, sir?’ She looked up.
‘Christa Fennick, the poet?’
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br /> ‘No, sir,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, I thought you might be the Christa Fennick who wrote the wonderful poem on autumn which appeared in this book.’ I took the anthology of children’s poems from my briefcase.
She looked up and smiled ever so slightly. ‘Well, I did write that poem.’
‘It was excellent and I really enjoyed reading it. I wonder if you would do me a great favour, Christa?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Would you sign your poem for me, please?’ I said. ‘I don’t often meet many published poets.’
Miss Pilkington, who had been watching this exchange, said nothing but nodded and smiled as Christa wrote her name in the book in a spidery hand.
It was soon time for assembly and I had agreed to talk about stories and storytelling. All the children gathered around. ‘One of the greatest storytellers that ever lived,’ I began, ‘changed people’s lives with his wonderful stories. He never wrote them down, they were never put in a book during his lifetime and we have to depend upon his friends who heard him to know what he said. They weren’t adventure stories or mysteries, horror stories or funny ones, but everyone who heard them just had to listen. We know that this storyteller was a wonderful speaker, that hundreds of people would come to listen to him and to his fascinating tales, and we know that his stories told us how to treat others and how to live good lives. Does anyone know who I am talking about?’
‘Jesus!’ chorused the children.
‘That’s right. Now Jesus told stories like The Good Samaritan and –’
‘Parables,’ interrupted a large boy with very blond hair. ‘Those sort of stories are called parables.’
‘That’s right they are and Jesus told many parables to teach us how to live better lives. In the Old Testament of the Bible there are many exciting stories and I am going to read one to you today.’
I then read the story of David and Goliath, how the young shepherd boy with only a sling and a pebble defeated the champion of the Philistines. All the children, with the exception of just one, listened in rapt attention, their eyes widening at the part where Goliath, in his bronze armour and with his great spear roared at David: ‘I will give your body to the birds and animals to eat!’ Their facial expressions changed with the story and there was an audible sigh at the end when the Israelites cheered their champion who had killed the giant and saved his people.
The Other Side of the Dale Page 18