Sister Gerard
Born Kalgoorlie, 20^th August 1914
Sister Gerard’s experiences as a young teacher

Anyway, in 1933 I became a monitor.  I was sent to Salmon Gums which is a little mining place on the road to Esperance, a very small place. It had a train down once a week.  That was the big occasion of the week. We all went over to see the train in and out.  And there I was - a monitor - and we had just the one room. I taught infants and years one and two. The headmaster had the rest of the school. A lot of the youngsters used to come out from the bush, go in and tell you, you know, things like, “Oh, we ran over a snake on the way in.”  I was terrified of snakes. I thought one might turn up in the class but it didn’t. 

After a while I became very much a part of the small town. I was a good tennis player and I joined the tennis club.  They used to have dances about once a month I suppose and these were very big occasions. One thing that intrigued me was that on one particular occasion they were having tea suppers, one at eleven o’clock and one four in the morning. I enquired why the tea was so late? It was because the farm boys were going straight to work from the dance and needed breakfast.

You went around and visited people.  It was a very happy community.  And then in the middle of the year I went to training college and had to stay at the boarding house in Claremont. Twelve of us stayed there.  We were good friends by the time we finished but we never got enough to eat. We were always hungry so that we’d sit from about five o’clock waiting for tea at six.  Every time the door opened, there’d be a spring to rush for more food, but we didn’t get anything more. 

Once a month we got an allowance from the department and it was sixteen shillings for the four weeks.  And on that day we always went down and we spent two shillings or four shillings on our favourite food, I always had fish and chips.  The others had all variety of things, you know, it was the only time we really felt full.  I joined the tennis club there too and we enjoyed a lot of that.  We didn’t do very much in the way of entertainment - we were studying most of the time and trying to get on.

I had never done any science and I didn’t know anything about nature study. Every time when the lecturer from that subject would hold up something, they’d say, “Do you know what this is?” and I’d say “No” and they’d tell me.  So I was a bit of a joke among the people, but I’d never seen birds or anything like that, which I suppose I had but I’d never really noticed them

Anyway, when it came to the end of the time, we had to go for an interview with the Principal of the college and he said,

“Oh, you passed everything”.
I said, “Oh, even nature study?”
He said, “Yes”. 
I said, “Gosh”, that surprised me,
and he said, “Well you’ll be a very good teacher of nature study”
and I said, “Oh, will I?  Why?”
“Because you don’t know anything and you’ll have to learn it with them.”

After training college I went to Boulder Central.  I had Year 8, and most of them were boys. There were about forty in all and most of the boys were just about as old as I was.  I was terrified and I used to sit up half the night before preparing the lessons and I never let up on them for fear that they’d run all over me. I was only supposed to be temporary and then after a fortnight the boss came in and he said “If you want to stay, I’ll be very happy to have you on the staff. I thought you’d be over run by now and you’ve managed it well.”  I didn’t tell him how I did it but that’s beside the point now. 

I was a long time in Boulder, I think about thirteen years and I had various classes.  I really enjoyed teaching and I enjoyed the kids and got on well with them. I never had any problem with them, except one boy and he decided that he wasn’t going to do anything except watch me so it didn’t matter where I walked in the room, his eyes followed me.  And I thought I was going to go mad so I went out to the Principal, the Headmaster, and he was a man who didn’t know what to do with women and I burst into the office and said, “I want you to do something about so and so (the boy)” and burst into tears. 

Well he nearly dropped dead!  He didn’t know what to do.  Eventually, he removed the boy from my class and another occasion, I had a very, very poor class, when I say poor, I mean academically, and they used to be missing in great quantities and you’d say, Monday morning, when you were calling the register,

“Uh, where’s so and so?”
“Down the Court, miss.”
“Where’s so and so?”
“He’s down the Court, miss.”
And you’d have about eight, “OK, what was happening?”
“Oh, he broke into Woolworths and pinched the cigarettes.”
and I’d say, “Oh”. Well anyway, that went on and there was nothing I could do.

Somebody said to me "Why don’t you do some speech training with them?"

I said, “Oh, they’d roar their heads off if I started to do that.”  But anyway, I was doing speech with them, with the help of another person, and this was one of the best things that could happen.  Apart from the fact they were absolutely entranced with this speech, mainly because you did all these kinds of actions with them and it was as if nobody else had done it before, and everybody was asking could they go hear it.  And so the kids, their whole aspect changed and went on, they topped everything around the place, I don’t mean academically, they learnt more respect for themselves.

But it was funny, the headmaster took on everything including bottles for the war effort and anyway, my kids were absolutely miles ahead of everything.  Opposite the school, there was a hotel and apparently kids were pouring into to the hotel to get a case of bottles so that they could collect them and give them to the Principal.  They were really absolutely delightful, they really were.

There was great rivalry between the boys and the girls and anyway, the boys kept saying, “Oh, we’ve got a lovely Christmas present for you.”  “We’re not going to tell you about it but it will be something which you’ll love”.  And the girls tried to find out what it was. Anyway, when it came to Christmas they bought me a Christmas cake from Tippets, which was a cake shop in Boulder and you couldn’t imagine how it looked all right but it was terrible but I had to say it was lovely because they kept coming around looking at me and saying “Don’t you think it’s lovely?” and I said, “ I think it’s beautiful, I’ve never had anything as lovely as that”. Anyway, that was at Boulder.

And then, after Boulder I was sent to North Kalgoorlie which was much closer to home. I was First Assistant  and I used to have to teach the girls that people got into trouble and their children. The little ones would misbehave and you’d never know what was wrong with them. They’d tell you all sorts of stories, so eventually I said, “Just write down on a piece of paper what’s been happening" and they’d go out and misbehave beautifully for me, you know. They would start telling me the terrible thing that they'd done and they’d say, “Oh, isn’t that terrible!”

Anyway, one little kid kept coming up for swearing.  So finally I said to her, “Well, look if you come up again for swearing, I’ll have to wash your mouth out with soap. Do you know what that means?” and she said, ”Yes”, because I said, “That’s the only way I can clean your mouth out.”  So anyway, a couple of days later she turned up, again for swearing, and I said, “Well what did I tell you I was going to do with you?” and she said, “You were going to wash my mouth out with soap” and I said, “Oh well, I’ll have to deal with you.” We were going out the door and she looked up to me and she said, “But miss I didn’t call them dirty buggers, I only called them stingy buggers!” 

“Oh, I see, well that makes a big difference doesn’t it class?
“Oh yes miss.”

I said  “But I don’t like stingy or dirty words like that, I think they’re not nice.  So, this time I won’t wash your mouth out with soap, but if you ever come again, be careful.”  So she said, “Yes”. And away she went along.  My kids nearly had hysterics.

And another time, I was asked to go down to one of the places, to look at their drawings, you know, pat them on the back and tell them how great they were coming along and I said to one of the children, “That’s a beautiful, beautiful flower!” He looked up with absolute contempt, he said, “That's not a flower, that’s an aeroplane!”  Oh, I said, “Well, that’s how silly I am isn’t it?” I learnt from that, that I always asked what their drawings were about.

While I was at North Kalgoorlie, they used to have a Ball every year, but there was a lot of unhappiness because a lot of kids would get prizes and some kids wouldn’t get prizes so I said, “What about we run a Ball without any prizes?”

“Oh, you can’t, you won’t get anybody there!” and I said, “Well I will teach the big kids down to the little ones how to dance.  We used to have various classes, and the boys had to go and ask the girls properly and the girls did the dance. Then we decided to asked the various parents to get sets and in the first year we started with this, we had thirty-two sets which was absolutely unheard of before, eight in  a set is it?  Well they had the little ones who used to be on the floor from seven until eight and they’d do all the little dances and then they used to go to supper.  And then the big kids would have the floor from eight to half past ten.  They had a grand march, beautiful display. They were just superb.  Anyway, but we had lots  of lucky spots and all kinds of dances so that we went into supper just about everybody got a prize of some description but nothing official.  So that was something that took off. The parents and everybody thought it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened, because it was a Ball with no fights.

And that went on until I left North Kalgoorlie for no reason other than I just decided I’d like to go to the High School. So I applied and went on to the Boulder High School.