Any jordanthorpe secondry school lads out there from 1965 to 1969.

[bigkev]

well anybody out there who use to go to jordanthorpe secondry school from 64 to 69,we had an headmaster called mr addams or batman as he use to always wear a cape the other teachers that was there was mr such, mr white.miss waite,mr gibbs,mr helliwell woodwork teacher,mr hawthorne,mr wilson art teacher,mr rodgers pe master, and others I cant remember now. I wonder what ever happened to my form mates who all left in 1969 are you still out there? if so send us some feed back.

[RiffRaff]

P.J. Adams if I remember correctly - a magistrate or JP to boot....

A French teacher (Dave Jessop) and my personal favourite, "Chalky" White, English teacher.

Great bloke - had a thing about all his pupils being able to spell "immediately" correctly......Strange the things you remember!

Also (in my time anyway) a Mr.Sibley, who looked after the library....also liked hiking with a huge rucksack. Often saw him wandering along Pinstone Street, waiting for a bus to take him to Matlock or wherever.....

Also Jeff (Geoff?) Smith, maths teacher.....

and Mr.Walker, R.I. teacher.....

All retired/dead now, I guess...

Think (?!) I left in 67 or 68 - to help you zero in, I was in Ray Ashcroft's class - he went on to appear in The Bill, Corrie, etc.....

[RiffRaff]

...and was it Mr.Wilson (art teacher) who was also known as "Peanut", by virtue of head shape and....er....lack of locks?

[RiffRaff]

So, BigKev - only 2 of us went to J'thorpe then!

Surprised I'm not better educated, just 2 pupils and all those teachers!

[bigbifter]

i was at joranthorpe from 85-90 and had woodwork with mr helliwell so he must have taught there for donkeys years.

[RiffRaff]

Yep...and he was there in '63 when I came over from Eire....actually he was at Woodseats, but they shared the woodwork rooms with Jthorpe.....

[happychick]

I went to Jordanthorpe from 1966-1970.First two years at the girls school,the second two years at the top school (used to be the boys school).that was when it turned comprehensive and mixed.Mr Helliwell,little & fat if i remember rightly,had the pleasure of teaching us "ladies" woodwork & metalwork.Poor old sod, we led him a right dance. He had no idea how to deal with girls.He walked out of one class when we were playing up called us a load of "bloody hooligans" and refused to teach us again.

We all had to write a letter of apology to him ,got detention,& were most severly warned what would happen if we did it again!

I enjoyed my time at Jordanthorpe School and made some fantastic friends along the way.Lots of memories there for me.

[Johnh]

Hi Big Kev, I remember ya! ... Tommy Cooper inpersonations in the Smoke Room of the Grennel Mower if I recall correctly. Maybe you remember me, John Hallam, lived in the maisonettes at the back of the terminus?

[Johnh]

I remember Mr Helliwell ... more commonly known as Mr. Belliwell amongst our class, 4x2 on leaving in 1969. Do you remember a phsycopath called Mr Haythorne and his fawning contemporary Miss Waite? "Rubberneck' Walton always gave us a good laugh in Technical Drawing, whilst I shall never forget Mr. Sibley who used to keep his cane down his trousers .

Mr. Sellars, was he barking mad or what. history teacher who used to run th chess club?

[Gone4good]

Yeah, I was there at this time and remember all these teachers. I started in 1X1 at the Annexe and finished in 5.1 before moving to 6th form elsewhere. When I started, boys and girls were at different schools, but later it became mixed. I didn't enjoy it much at all. The best day was when the school caught fire. We all hoped it would burn to the ground.

 

Some teachers I remember were:

 

Helliwell - a nice bloke, but he was never in the classroom, making it impossible to get supplies. Consequently, it took all term to make a ruddy coaster. When we had to choose metalwork or woodwork for 'O' Level everybody wanted to do metalwork because they thought Walton was going to teach woodwork. When we discovered it was Helliwell, there was a big rush to change to woodwork. He must have been an ok teacher, as I got a grade 1 'O' level woodwork.

Walton - Yeah, "Rubberneck" due to his weird manic twitch. Nobody liked him. He loved to shout and go crazy.

Sibley - Library teacher who repeatedly read us a passage about Greek kids working out naked and one getting a javelin in the backside. There are lots of stories I could tell about him, but probably inappropriate to his memory as he is long gone, I imagine.

Fern - Science teacher, what a psycho this guy was. He'd seem all normal and having a joke one minute, then he'd turn strange and ask a kid what he was laughing at. Then he'd slipper the kid by running from one end of the classroom to the other. His teaching fell apart when the girls joined up with the school and he could no longer beat anyone senseless.

Haythorne was definitely certifiable. Thank God he left in about my second year. He used to organise the dinner queue and had all the boys with free dinners standing at the front. He collected dinner tickets on a wooden board with nails in it. If he heard anybody talking in the queue he would hurtle down the corridor shouting, waving the board above his head, veins sticking out on his neck and forehead. He taught sex education, which he seemed overly interested in, and played guitar and sang badly with a woman teacher.

Rogers a PE teacher who never did any PE. He just sat in his office smoking and emerging only to slipper kids who had forgotten their kit. He had the easiest job in the world, this bloke.

Wilson If I'm correct he was a maths teacher, unless I am mixing him up with someone else. He seemed a tall thinnish bloke. He was ok, except he would spend all the class time waiting until a girl put her hand up to answer a question. Lessons therefore seemed very, very, long.

Thompson Geology. He was a laugh a minute. Everybody did impressions of this guy. I can't remember his nickname now! I remember he gave some of us a lift in his old car back from a geology trip to Derbyshire and freewheeled it all the way from Fox House to Midland Station.

Prebble Headmistress who took over when it became a mixed school. She thought she was royalty and had a laughable 'posh' accent. There was certainly no connection between her and the kids.

 

In senior years we had some English teacher with black-rimmed glasses and plastered down hair. I can't remember his name. I heard he became head of the 6th form when they started one. I think he lived with his mum. He was a nice bloke, though he had a thankless job trying to get us to read Dickens out loud. Our class was always trying to spot a weakness and would make a teacher's life misery if they couldn't control a class, but this teacher seemed to manage it without having to knock seven shades of **** out of us.

 

Despite not liking any of my teachers and mostly hating school, I left with 9 'O' levels, which must mean most of the teachers did their jobs. I was neither popular nor unpopular at school, had my share of friends and enemies, and my share of fights. In retrospect, life was so much simpler in those days and we were pretty innocent. I would like to be an adolescent even less these days.