Rosehill College 1973-1980 1993-1998

What I found	Rosehill was a three year old school of about 300 students. Class sizes were small. The majority of students were white and affluent. There were about 30 Māori and no Asians. Most of the staff were young. The building that held my room was new - everything was spotless. The main thing I found was GIRLS. I had gone to a boys high school for 4 years, then 5 years MIT where there was 1 girl for 1000 boys and then 3 years teaching at a boys boarding school. 12 years without seeing a girl as a student. More than just girls, they were beautiful, bright and fun.	Felicity, Caroline & Margo
The Forms	3rd Form was the first year in high school and so they began the year meek. By 4th Form they had pretty much turned into rat bags. 5th former a real pain becasue in 1973 thre was no unemployment and there was a great need for workers. SO as soon as a student reached legal age to leave (15) they left. Get a green Leavers form and take it to each teacher to sign and they were gone. At the year 5th Formers took the School Cert exams in each subject. Policy was that 50% must pass so grades were always scaled up. But that meant a smaller amount made it to 6th Form and smaller classes with genuine students. These had University Entrance Exams at the end of the year. Good students were allowed to skip them and get an automatic pass. The remainder sat the UE and depending on results, they would resit 6th Form, go to 7th Form or actually go to univeristy. So 7th Form classes were even smaller again.
The Uniforms	3rd Form to 5th Formers: Boys wore grey shirts with blue sweaters and shorts. Girls had a white blouse overwhich was heavy wool pinafore. Boys wore grey long socks. Girls usually went without in summer and ankle white socks optional. Sandles were more common than shoes. 6th Form Boys wore light blue shirtsmand long blue pants. Girls wore a white blouse and blue skirt. 7th Formers were allowed to dress in mufti (street clothes).
Basketball 1	First day of school I was made the coach of the boys basketball team and I was playing a game that night in an adult league. There was no school competition. In fact, basketball was not a popular sport. The school didn't have a gym which made it difficult. There was an outdoor court, but I prefer to practice in same conditions as the game. So I was able to rent the YMCA gym, which is where we played. Since it wasn't a school league I could play on the team, as well as any other teacher that I could talk into joining. I inherited a team of boys who played for the fun of it. Michael Rollo was the best player. Nelson Sopar was the spark plug and we made him the captain. Rudy Bakker rarely played to his full ability - he and I became good friends. The boys didn't have real uniforms and footwear was non-existant in some cases. So I bought the tees and had them stencilled by Al Drumm,the art teacher. Here is the team list and stats for that first season.
Basketball 2	The next thing I did was to start up a Junior Basketball league at the Y on Fridays after school. Open to anyone up to 4th form. This was an instructional league and I had my A-Squad boys coach and referee. I put the word out to my math classes and we ended up with 34 teams at one stage. The kids loved it, got uniforms and took it semi-seriously. I kept doing it right through 1979 and when we returned to Papakura in 1985 it was still going.	Chaotics 1974
Basketball 3	I then opened the team's Saturday practice to anyone in Jr BB, plus I was encouraging others at school to try it. The result was that the school was able to enter two boys and two girls teams into the Papakura summer league with the A-Squad playing in the A Grade. They lost all the games but it was a good experience playing against top notch teams. I played on the B-Squad with Ian Scott (until he quit in a rage against the refs). Here is the game results and the stats.	Nigel Farley 1974
Basketball 4	Dave Dickson said he would sponsor a team that included his daughter Frances if I would coach it. So the Meteors were born. All of the girls attended Rosehill but they weren't a school team. I wanted to prove that I could put together a team that would beat the school's A-Squad. Actually, I wanted them to be the best womens team in Papakura and they could have been but they self-distructed after two years. Partly my fault as I left for the States leaving Jack Burns, Lynn's father, to take over in my absence. The first year, 1974, they were in the D-Grade and won all off their games, 10 - 0 Game scores. They were promoted to the B-Grade in 1975 where they were 10 - 8 Game Scores and Stats..
The Cheating	A favourite trick I used would be to make two versions of a test. They looked the same but each problem was slightly altered. I only did this when I suspected a lot of cheating. I would make sure that the suspects got the alternate paper. You'd be surprised how many kids I caught out this way. A couple even accused me of cheating!! One time I made it obvious by putting one version on pink paper and the other on blue. In 1978 I had a talk with Susan Wells after school about her 15% exam. She began crying and told me that Ingrid and Vicki cheated on it.
Chalkboard	I liked to keep my board clean, eh? And I could always find a reason for some student to do the job.
The Punishment	1973 - Several 3rds forgot books and I had them write their excuse. Gary Jones wrote a whole page and when I took it he said he hadn't gotten to the excuse yet..
Blue Butt	1976: Accidently sat on a Banda sheet wrong side up and happened to be wearing ligth colored pants. Spent remainder of day trying to keep my backside to a wall.
The Song	Brian asked me about "bombs bursting in air" in the song "Arial". I thought it was a very intelligent question. So I explained that before TV stations went off air they played the "Star Spangled Banner".
The Promotion	1976 - The Headmaster told me that I was promoted to PR 1 (HOD - Jr Maths) but it would be a few weeks before my pay rise began. So I told him that I wouldn't attend PR meetings until that time.
The Home Ec	Over the years students would give me something they cooked. In 1974 Anna T gave me a slice of pizza.
The Pies	At some stage I discovered that the Tuck Shop sold these amazing things. They also sold an apple sauce with mock whipped cream, but I fell in love with custard. Most of the time I would send a girl down to buy one for me and once Nadine Hitchcock shouted me one.	Apple Pie
The Bridge	In 1974 I started a Bridge Club at lunch time. Mostly girls with a few boys. I bought ten decks at 35¢ thinking they would be used over the following years. But when I left the school in 1975 it ended.
The DJ's	In 1976 John Holgate and Brian O'Toole (morning DJs at Hauraki) gave a talk to 5th form classes. They gave me the latest American Top 40 album set and a copy of Shoestring Pirates. Lloyd took my 3L class so I could stay for both sessions. The DJs stayed for lunch with me and I had a great time.
The Radio Station	Boss let me spend $100 for speakers, wire and a headphone. We got two microphones and an amplifier from Ardmore College. I ran a radio course (using a lot of material provided by my DJ friend, Paul Mitchell) and from that came our broadcasting teams. Set up and ran the lunchtime radio shows out of Sue Miller's office in upper C Block. NZ famous DJ Blackie came and did the broadcast with us. In November 1979 we ran a survey (form on right) to determine the students' favorite songs to be played on the final day of classes. No I don't remember what they were.
The Overhead	In 1973 Des showed us how to use an overhead projector. I became the main user of them at the school - brilliant, only needed to write the lesson down once on the foils and re-use them year after year, thereby avoiding the need to write it in chalk over and over again. And it meant that I could face the students the whole time.
The Mix Up	One lunch time I had to kick out what I thought were 7th Formers. Turned out that the three young ladies were teachers!!!
The Alcoholic	1979 - So desparate for math teachers that the boss hired a guy he knew. I had Sylvia spend a day with him explaining what he had to do with each class. Within days many students were complaining that he just stood in a corner the whole period. One told me that they had finished rthe years' work and were doing nothing. I arranged to view him teaching a 4th form class. It was horrible. He did a bad explanation of a 3rd form subject and didn't interact with the class. I gave him an earful. Then I had girls crying that it was so bad. I told Mr J about and he went to watch the guy "teach". He agreed and we had a meeting in his office. I let the guy have it, no bars hold. Mr J's solution was that I would teach the classes part time and the fool would sit in on mine. I got so upeset that I had another nervous breakdown. Finally, the guy quit and Mt J told me with a straight face that he had a stutterer lined up.
The MATHEX	Auckland area competition for junior grades. I, of course, got students all keen on it. Three areas: motif, exhibit and 4-team comptetion. We always did well even winning sometimes. In 1976 Delwyn and Nadine made a talking Math Teacher head, whihc made the evemning news. The next year they won 2nd placewith their Nesting Polyhedra. It was also featured in the Math Digest.
The End	I had been at the school for 6 years and was running the whole Math department while Maguire got paid for it. I thought I should get a PR 2 or 3 for all the other things that I did at the school. I asked for one and Mr J told me he had no points to give out. The following week it was announced that Crawford was going to PR 4. Head of Languages. He had only good students, much fewer in number and one third the number of teachers that I was responsible for. When I heard that I went into Mr J's office and told I didn't want to but he had forced me to quit, which I did as of the end of the year.
The Return	I had been retired for over two years and wasn't looking for a job. Saw in paper that Rosehill wanted a computer technician. A short walk to work and short hours. What the heck, I applied and got the job starting in March 1993.
The Mix Up	One lunch time I had to kick out what I thought were 7th Formers. Turned out that the three young ladies were teachers!!!
The Foreigners	When I returned in 1993, the school was doing big business with International students paying big bucks to attend. I met Dawn when some of them wanted to email back home. At first I said: "No" I had too much work as it was. Luckily, I changed my mind and got to meet quite a few interesting people from all over the world as a result.
The Accountants	Denice Hastie' office held the safe. I eventually convinced Dea and her that our program disk should be kept there. So she got to see me often and soon became friendly. She was also in charge of Adukt Eductaion and talked me into do courses on computing. When she left her replacement was Karen Berhow, from Manurewa,
The New Guy	I spent 3 hours with my replacement, Chi, - he knows nothing (e.g. he re-installed Win95 because a floppy drive wasn't working. I told him there was a piece of metal in the drive. He didn't know how to remove the drive!)

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