school

How my Primary School teacher stopped me from smoking

Written by Gerard on Tuesday 17 November 2009

Seamus was a substitute teacher who taught our class in the last year of primary school. We kind of called him Seamus behind his back because he lived just down the road from us, and that's what the parents called him.

I remember we'd been doing some lessons about the dangers of smoking. It was the usual stuff - rancid, rotting lungs that had been damaged by years of smoke filling them. Do you remember those specimens? The little microscopic bits of lung that were blackened and corroded? Yuck.

But one morning Seamus took the anti-smoking campaign to an entirely new level - he strutted into the classroom and produced a packet of cigarettes. Making quite a display of the next part, he took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it up. The constant background noise of the classroom died away as everybody realised the teacher was smoking in the class!

Nursery Graduation

Written by Gerard on Thursday 22 June 2006

So, Rachel had her nursery graduation ceremony yesterday. Most of the grandparents came to the school to watch the little concert they'd prepared and to see the kids getting their certificates from the principal of the school.

I showed up slightly late, due to my parents managing to get mixed up over timings. When I got in to the assembly hall, the children were already on stage. It didn't take long to locate my little cherub on the left of the stage among a gaggle of friends.