End of an era.

All good things come to an end eventually. After nine years of teaching Drakensview Primary School, the governing body decided that all teacher 65 years and over had to go, well I was nearing the end of my 68th year so I was one of three that had to go. The first two years that I was there I taught English and History to grade 7, at the beginning of 2009 I took over the library. I have had no formal teacher training, lots experience though (been teaching since 1996) but I do have two library degrees a B.Bibl degree in Library and Information Science, a four year degree, and I have a post graduate Honours Bachelor of Library Science (B.Bibl Hons) from the University of South Africa, (UNISA) a distance learning institute. 

I enjoyed every day that I worked at Drakensview, I can't remember one day where I thought I'm not in the mood to face another day at school, work was a pleasure! Actually I can't remember one job in my working life that I didn't enjoy.

Come end of year and at the last assembly of the year for the Foundation Phase, gd's 1 - 3, I was invited to attend and given a certificate and a gift bag full of goodies.

Click on image to enlarge.

Above is the certificate I was given, if you enlarge the image and look in the bottom left hand corner you will see Worm Fixations and right at the bottom left Glow-worm. This refers to a comment I made in November. On the 3rd of December I had to go to hospital for what the medical profession calls a "procedure", in real English an operation. The "procedure" was Brachy-therapy, which is where they implant radio active pellets into the prostate glad to combat prostate cancer, (seems to have worked). Well before I went in for the "procedure", I told everyone in the staff room during tea time one day that when I'm radio active I will have a Light Sabre like Luke Sky-Walker in Star Wars, and at night when I go to toilet I won't have to switch on any lights, all I need to do is take out my Light Sabre and light my way. Someone muttered under their breath, "he means his glow-worm". Who needs enemies when you've got friend like that.

Above is the gift bag specially made for me, the fish and the lettering were cut out and carefully pasted on to the bag.

At our year end function at one of the posh Berg hotels I was presented with this clock. Here again all the letters and numbers were carefully cut out and glued onto the clock face. This was done by one of the school secretaries, Lindy Naude, in her spare time at home. To say that I was deeply touched by these tokens of affection would be putting it mildly.

I will write about my new career in a following post, just to say I'm now a member of the SAVF. What is the SAVF? The SAVF is an NPO (non profit charity organisation) that has almost 400 institutions under it's wing, old age homes, frail care centers, orphanages, creches, etc,. And what do the letters SAVF stand for? Suid Afrikaanse Vroue Federasie, translation South African Women's Federation, founded in 1903. Google SAVF South Africa for the whole history.

How come a man is member of a women's organisation, as I said more about that later just to say I'm still involved in education.