Gary Topham
Teacher  – Technology

I teach here at Shirebrook School but as well as teaching I am involved in the student council, intervention courses and exams.

I like working at this school and I have been here a long time believe me. The students are very friendly and always honest. If they do something wrong they own up to it. The teachers help each other as well and we all have the same aim which is to get the best out of the students. It is a pleasure to come to work here. The building is the only thing that lets the school down. When I first came here it drove me mad. If I wanted to find a student they would always be in the tower and up on the fifth floor. I would have to walk miles to get around the place. Amazingly the school building won awards when it was built for its design. They were so happy with it they were going to put another block on the end of it but fortunately they never got round to it.

Over the years I have been here things have changed a lot. The biggest thing was putting a fence round the site. Before that happened we had so much vandalism. Windows were always being broken and they even smashed the black decorative panels. It must have cost a fortune to replace them. The inside of the school has changed as well. When we became an academy the paint work was made much brighter. Before that it was dark and drab and a bit depressing. The students work started to appear on the walls, lots of paintings and other things. It made the school look like it was our school and it felt much happier to walk around.

In the new building I don’t think that we will be able to do that and that is a shame. There are lots of restrictions about what we can and cannot do when we get into the new building . Even worse is the fact that we will have to share classrooms and there will be no fixed form rooms so you will always be carrying your stuff with you.Still times change, I mean at one time we had a typing room to teach the girls office skills. That certainly wouldn’t happen today.

When I was at school I was well behaved in fact I was the head boy. That meant I was in charge of the prefects. We don’t have prefects now but then they could order the other boys about and keep discipline. I loved sport especially cricket but was terrible at languages. I wasn’t good at English either and I had to retake that because I failed it. My main interest was in practical lessons. I enjoyed physics, woodwork and metalwork. I suppose that is why I became a technology teacher. I made things in woodwork and I still have a stool and a cabinet I made. I avoided getting into trouble and it was just as well. The only time I did get in trouble was because I forgot to do something. I was told to go into a classroom to talk to the teacher and opened the door without knocking. He turned and slapped me across the face. That was forty years ago and thankfully you wouldn’t get that happening now. Children were regularly hit in those days and our P E teacher had two slippers for punishing us. He had names for them, one was called Elizabeth but I can’t remember what the other one was called.

I have one photo of me at school. I am in my school blazer and I look good until you notice that I have Custard down the front of my blazer. I soon lost touch with all my friends from school because I went off to university and made new friends.

There are quite a few things that I would like to take with me to the new school. All the students and staff for a start. They make the school what it is today.

One thing that I would love to have over at the new school is the naughty bench. It is the bench outside the head teachers office and it is where we send pupils who have been very naughty. They have to sit and wait there for their telling off. The pupils don’t know that the teachers call it the naughty bench it is just the teachers who call it that. I think we might need it even at our shiny new school. By the way it is literacy week and that is why I am dressed like this. I am Darth Vader from Star Wars. Anyway I have lessons to go to, so may the force be with you.