Windlesham House 6

In many ways, I think that I learned much more about what I would call "the theory and practice of Education" during my fairly short time at Windlesham than I did during my PGCE course. Why was that, I wonder? Well, my curiosity and determination had a lot to do with it. At WHS, I set my mind on learning more about teaching, the actual practice rather than the more abstract stuff. When you are doing it every day, then you want what actually works with real children, rather than the vague things you might waffle about in an essay or in a lecture. 

Another reason why I learned a lot more about the science or the art (or the craft?) of teaching was that at WHS I did not have to take any sports or games sessions in the afternoons. Joy of joys! Yes, I did have to do some sort of activities with the children, but that was not really a problem at all, as it meant that I could do things like my Robot Club and The Windlesham Weekly.

  

While I was at Windlesham, I started writing articles about Information Technology in an educational context and these were published in Micro-Scope, the magazine of MAPE (Micros And Primary Education) and one or two other publications. Junior Education even paid me!

The Windlesham Weekly was a spin-off from my interest in desktop publishing (DTP). Once a week, my intrepid band of young reporters and newspaper hacks would meet in Mr Worley's computer room. First of all, we would decide on who were going to interview that week and what questions we would be asking them. Then they would set off with their tape recorders and get the interviews, bring them back to the IT room and start the typing. When the stories were complete, we would use the excellent Sherston Typesetter program to print out the first draft. After that, some clip art (usually pretty irreverent and irrelevant too) would be pasted in and then the finished newspaper would be enlarged into A3 and multiple copies would be produced on the staffroom photocopier.