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Tales from the 1960s chalkface

Teaching staff
When Susan Elkin was 21 she went to work in a scandalously challenging boys’ school in Deptford – one of the first women on the staff. In an extract from her new book, she tells her often horrifying, often funny story.

 

Harry Baker surveyed me quizzically over his glasses before hurrying round his desk and across the dark, rather dingy room he had for an office. Then he smiled. Perhaps it was my shortish, bright orange 1960s interview dress. Or perhaps he hadn’t spoken to a woman under-50 for a while.

Actually, I realised much, much, later he was, at that moment, offering silent prayers of thanksgiving to the God of headteachers. Divisional Office had sent him a reasonably normal, able-bodied young teacher who might, just might, turn out to be the answer to a prayer and grow into someone who could fill one of the numerous staffing gaps in his “challenging” – very challenging – south London boys’ school where the testosterone flowed in the gutters and nearly everywhere else.

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