Saturday Let’ s celebrate Great teachers

My school friends held one of our semi-regular reunions last weekend and, as often happens a couple of cocktails in, we got to talking about our teachers.

We all have teachers we remember fondly (and the opposite of fondly, but let’s not get into that).

And we all have our own names to throw into the mix.

Take Miss Adam for instance. She’s probably why I’ve been lucky enough to write for a living all this time.

I’ve basically been showing off in English for my entire life.

I’m still grateful to Mr Douglas and the art department for providing a place where weird, backcombed kids could hide out, experiment and pretend to be a lot cooler than they actually were.

I think about Mrs Caskie every time I visit Crail. Her project on fishing opened my land-locked 10-year-old mind. And it might have been my first proper introduction to researching, recording, reporting and all those other skills I still use every day.

And Miss Macdonald never did teach me how to knit.

But she did show us P1s how to be kind, how to share, how to treat others as we’d like to be treated and 100 other lessons I’ve tried to live by since I first fell under her soft Hebridean spell.

I shouldn’t be surprised when my friends come up with other teachers’ names, sometimes ones I’d forgotten all about.

We all arrived in their classrooms with widely varying experiences and interests.

We went home to very different lives at 3 o’clock. And we’ve all gone on to forge our own paths.

But isn’t it remarkable that each of us can identify these people whose impact we are still crediting today?

Those teachers who not only managed to keep a ragtag assortment of 30odd, hormone-fizzing adolescents under control for 45 minutes at a time, but also lit the sparks that literally shaped our futures.

What power. What responsibility. What a job.

I thought about that on Thursday when The Courier told the story of debut author Ross Mackay.

Ross, 35, from Aberdour, has battled mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression and self-harm and has used the publication of his first book to acknowledge those who helped him to survive.

They include his family and Peter Ferguson, his P7 teacher at Oakbank Primary School in Perth.

The book, Will And The Whisp, draws on Ross’s experiences of bullying at high school, but it also features an inspiring teacher, whose character owes much to Mr Ferguson.

“I wouldn’t have been a writer if it wasn’t for him,” says Ross.

“He recognised I was creative and really encouraged me to pursue my creativity… He boosted my confidence by having so much faith in me.”

What a tribute. What a job reference. And if the photograph of the pair of them back together for the book launch doesn’t melt your heart WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH YOU?

There was another story about teachers in

Thursday’s paper. The one explaining that all primary and secondary schools in Angus and Perthshire will be closed this Thursday because of strikes organised by the EIS and AHDS unions.

Members want a 10% pay rise to allow their incomes to keep pace with inflation. They’ve been offered 5%

I can only imagine how frustrating it’s going to be for parents who have to arrange childcare on that day. And I’m glad I’m not the person charged with dishing out public sector pay awards in this time of shrinking budgets.

The person having to decide whether nurses or teachers are more worthy of a pay rise that will maybe prevent them from having to visit the foodbank next month.

But I also look at what teachers managed to achieve during the pandemic – all the little futures they tried to keep on track, all the sparks they managed to light across a sticky laptop screen on the other end of a dodgy internet connection – and, honestly, if they succeeded in making half the impact my lot did, they’re worth their weight in gold.

Good teachers change lives. Mine included. Yours too I bet. How do you put a price on that?

I have written previously here about school dinners, rhapsodising over Mrs Kettles’ custard as I pitied the poor kiddies eating reheated, mass-produced gloop off foil trays today.

So my heart was nourished by the news that school caterers are being encouraged to serve up more locally produced food in their meals.

Meetings have been held between members of the National Farmers Union (NFU) Scotland and Tayside Contracts, the agency which supplies meals to Dundee, Angus and Perth and Kinross local authority schools.

There’s still a lot of negotiating and box-ticking to be done before the idea becomes a reality.

But as Kate Maitland, NFU Scotland’s east central regional manager, says: “The Tayside region has fantastic food production, from seasonal berries and sweet fruits to all-year-round produce such as potatoes, carrots and peas.”

It really is a no-brainer.

THANK YOU SIR: Clockwise from left: Ross Mackay and his former teacher Peter Ferguson. Ross thanked Peter for support in his school days after releasing his debut book Will And The Whisp; Morag never got the hang of knitting; and could strawberries grown in Tayside get on school menus?