b'30 YEARSPAST TIMES and CountingIts thirty years this September since I arrived at HGS with a little previous experience and a nearly full head of hair. Recruited to teach Economics and to start a Government and Politics A level, I also found myself teaching lower school History. Id meet boys in Year 7 History and see them leave Year 13 Economics. Its strange to think that the Year 13 students I taught when I arrived are nearly fifty. Ive been here long enough to have taught fathers and uncles of our current generation and indeed Ive met them again at Open Evenings. All part of the ongoing cycle of arrival and departure, but in the space of thirty years theres inevitably been lots of change as the school evolved. Looking back, its remarkable how fast this change has been.In 1992 the school was just starting a long period of structural change with a recently opened scienceA new Head teaching block. This was the pride of the then Head,came and went. Of the staff Malcolm Cavendish, and a triumph for a GrantI joined, only three others remain. Most, like Maintained School over the local authority. A victoryme, balder but hopefully wiser. Older staff retired, recounted at every Prizegiving Evening for a goodnewer staff arrived then departed themselves. The decade. size of the staff grew and the support staff went Further improvements to the fabric of the schoolfrom just a reception and a chaotic-looking finance followed as the old wooden hut, which had servedoffice to a myriad of functions.as a canteen for decades, was replaced with theWe are a bigger school. Four-form entry became existing canteen and computer block. A new sportsfive-form entry giving us more students overall and hall, Learning Hub, Astroturf, DT block and sixthfrom far more diverse backgrounds. The sixth form form block followed. is considerably larger. We can no longer all fit in Big In the main part of the school out went chalk andSchool for an assembly. The early Remembrance our huge rotating blackboards. Chalk, a mainstayAssemblies were so hot, with the whole school of teachers for centuries, died within a few years.attending, that boys would faint and be carried out, In came projectors and interactive whiteboards. Alllending an air of authenticity to the occasion.teachers got a laptop. Some of us were even shownDespite all the change, much about teaching is still how to use one. The internet arrived and went fromthe same. We have found new ways to teach the intermittent to very reliable. Paper registers wentsame things. Boys still resist our efforts to help them online, giving us data. Spreadsheets circulatedlearn, often in new ways, and teachers find new giving us, well, even more data. We no longer haveways to catch them. The old battle goes on.to hand-write reports, and invigilation is almost entirely a thing of the past Mr R. CoulthardMR JONES, STARTED JULY 1986:Full school assemblies with all staff on the stage, Years 7 to 11 (not called that then) crammed standing within the body of the Hall and sixth formers squashed together on the balcony certainly helped with whole-school cohesion; camaraderie was evident too when students supported whichever of their unfortunate number collapsed as a result of the stifling conditions!49'