My First Real Job

Towards the end of 1955, I applied for two jobs, and the first to grab me was Hamilton Boys High School. At that time there were only two colleges training secondary teachers: Auckland and Canterbury. Don Duff and I were the only English majors in the Auckland course; both ended up at Hamilton Boys and Don spent his life working there until retirement. 

1956 was the first year after the co-ed High School was split into two single-sex schools, so it was virtually a new school; certainly the site and buildings were brand-new. The Principal was H D Tait, a man at the end of his career, with great mana. The school worked well, with a friendly staff, an active Secondary Teachers Association, later morphed into PPTA, and massive community support.  The gala day in 1956 made 3500 pounds, a huge amount for those days. 

My programme involved teaching English up to Seventh Form and Latin to a third form class. Looking back, I probably used the methods I had been taught by at AGS.

My English HOD, Hugh Morton, was a very experienced teacher with a good sense of humour and an easy manner. 

I became friendly with another first-year teacher, Bill Roche from Christchurch, and the three new chums in the English Department compared notes regularly. 



My form class in 1956

I helped with leadership of the Crusader Union, and in one of the holidays I was one of the leaders in a bike tour around the Waikato for our boys.  I also took one of my classes out for a tramp  one Saturday; we climbed Mt Pirongia after biking from Hamilton to the end of the approach road. Having helped manage Ponui Island holiday camps, and Bible Class Easter camps, as well as others at Carey Baptist Park, I was pretty au fait with outdoor activities like these. 

As the two years developed, I also took on producing a one-act play for a students’ drama competition, and supervising (I won’t say coaching) one of the school soccer teams. Fortunately the pupils in both activities knew enough to cope without any expert input from me; at that stage I had none to give on either score! 

One of my most vivid memories from those two years was of the morning Britain and Israel jointly attacked Egypt to punish the Egyptians for having nationalised the Suez Canal. The announced song in assembly that day was "Land of Hope and Glory"; I nearly walked out in protest. That was, to me, the beginning of the "Sixties" period of protest and rebellion.

Another memory is of a skiffle band made up by some of the music students at the school, with the bass part played by a tea chest with a hinged piece of wood sticking up from one side with one string on which all the notes were played. The tune was "When the saints go marching in".

At the end of 1957 I left Hamilton, having been accepted by the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society as a missionary teacher to be sent to the school run by the mission at Agartala, Tripura, India.