Memoirs of YMS Teacher Miss H F Freeman,1915-1927

Next week Yaldhurst Model School begins a new chapter and the rebuild will begin.  This is a major change to our school that will in turn add to the long history of our school.  Cup of tea in hand?  Let us begin........ 

At the beginning of the First World War, Yaldhurst School was remote, there was no public transport of any kind.  The nearest railway station being three miles distant.  The tram service to the city was very infrequent.  Westwards lay in the river bed of the Waimakariri River and the heavily gravelled road leading to the West Coast.  Some of the land was stony and  not very fertile and the small farming community had great difficulty in making ends meet - life was austere.  The austerity was reflected in the school too.  The buildings were adequate and that is all that could be said of them.  There was the two-roomed building - the 'big room' and the 'little room' with a connecting door.  Each classroom had it one cloakroom.  The school house was situated across the playground with it windows giving a clear view of recess activities, and the school lavatories were as far away from the main building as it was possible for them to be.  For hygienic reasons? Modesty? Certainly not for convenience.  Later a 'shelter shed' was built but this never found favour or seemed to fit in the the rest of the school.

The playground was as austere as the school.  Two large swings standing side by side were the terror of my life and led to more accidents than anything else.  On one occasion I saw the whole swing part company with the uprights and send a small boy flying through the air and landed quite a distance away, but the only damage was a broken leg.  I shall never forget that sickening thud - and I still marve that there was not more damage.

In those days one had to be prepared for any emergency and many times my bicycle was put to use as an ambulance - usually with the carrier of the back acting as a stretcher.  On this occasion I delivered the child to his parents who drove him the eight miles to hospital where his leg was set.  He used to use a broom as a crutch and each day I used to fetch him to school.  As soon as he saw me he would hurl away his crutch and hop at a tremendous speed towards me.

At the far end of the playground there was a row of pine trees which provided endless pleasure for the girls.  Their main amusement at recess was to make fir houses with the fallen pine needles.  They used small branches of the trees for brooms and swept the floors so clean they had a sheen on them.  The walls were trim and frima and they had charis, tables, sofas and beds all made of tightly packed needles and surrounded by walls of needles.  They were beautifully made.

There was a really splendid swimming bath situated near the road.  It was a magnificent for so small community in those days and attracted much attention from the other districts.  We used to "teach" the children to swim.  This instruction tool, the form of a kind of fishing game with the teacher as the angler and the child the poor fish.  They were dragged from side to side of the pool by a rod to which a child was attached by a hook in turn was attached to a belt placed under the arms.  The poor child was usually terrified and spent most of the time struggling to keep heads above the water.  How differently are children taught to swim nowadays.  The wonder is that anyone ever learnt to swim.  I guess most who did so were never to taught to swim at school.

I also wonder how we all learned to read but the old methods but we did.  In the days of which I am writing, the first steps of learning to read were taken with the use of a wall chart.  This was a kind of overgrown calendar and each sheet was when mastered as one turns the calendar month by month.  I remember the first sheet was composed of words of two letters.  Surely that was a brainwave of someone.  Two lettered words only and about six sentences of them. The first sheet had a picture of a beast with a child astride and read "I am up on an os.  Am I up? No, I am not up.  He is up."  (Terrific adventure having a three lettered word.)   The small group of children would stand facing the sheet handing on the blackboard and laboriously spell out each work and "read."  Anyhow the result was amazing.  Even Nobel Prize winners learned to read by spelling out the works and I daresay many a learned man got up on an ox as his earliest reading experience.  The only other equipment provided by the Education Board were packets and packets of shiny coloured paper squares of varying sizes for paper folding - paint brushes and paint for "brush-work."  One filled the brush with paint and laid it down on the paper at varying angles producing daisies and board patterns with monotony.

Nowadays with modern transport Yaldhurst is almost in the city but in those days it was almost impossible for some families to ever visit the city.  There were large families and most people had to work long hours on the farms even to make a living.  For many mothers the yearly visit to a maternity nurse and/or the annual school picnics, or "treats" as they were called, were the only times when they left their homes.  I remember one family where the father of fourteen used to take the day off for the school to act as a babysitter for the youngest children while the mother took the eldest group out for the day. During the war the picnic was cancelled as a war effort and on one occasion we were taken for a treat of a different kind.  In the district there lived a family who owned a steam engine and a threshing plant.  The owner suggested that that year we should be taken for a traction engine drive, so we duly assembled and were packed on wooden benches in trailers which were attached to the engine. 

 It was a blazing hot nor-west day and the wind whipped the tick black cinder-laden smoke straight back in our faces.  We trundled down the rough shingle road - no springs in those trailers - for about two miles till we came to the Racecourse Hotel.  There we stopped while the driver and stoker whetter their parched throats and where they supplied the children with raspberry and other fizzy drinks.  The results were fatal.  We trundled on from the hotel - bump, bump,bump, down the Main South Road, round Church Corner and up the West Coast Road till we came to the small hamlet of Masham.  There we drew up the engine to be refilled with water from the running water race.  One small person came over and whispered in my ear. "No" said I, " you'll have to wait."  "Cant wait", You must" said I, but the small child won as I spied a small building at the end of the garden pather of a cottage.  Small child made a bee-line for that spot - and as if released by a spring - every child leapt up and dashed off saying "me too!"  The Headmaster was a very shy man and I was very shy too and today the funniest part of it is the way we turned our heads in different directions as we sat in solitude waiting for the 'relieved' youngsters to return.  It was a very kind gesture on the part of the traction owne, but I vowed I would never again ride behind a steam engine.  Of course I never did but I suppose I was never offered on again!

The School Committee in my day used to make the appointments and I well remember being interviewed by the Chairman when I applied for the job.  Their meetings were held in a small building called the "library" which was situated near the road.  After the war, life for me turned a little sour and I was not very well either.  It was a great opportunity when two aunts suggested I should be given a year's leave and accompany them to England.  In those days to go to England was really a thrill.  In my case it changed my whole attitude to teaching and to life in general.  While I was in England I met a charming worman who was teaching there.  

She told me she was going to a refresher course organised by Evans Bros who were publishers of new and really exciting educational aids.  It was an eye-opener for me and I bought some really helpful equipment and sent for more regularly.  I approached the firm of Whitcombe and Tombes and suggested they import some.  They said there was "no demand" for it to which I replied that "of course there was no demand as we in New Zealand didn't know it existed."  

Finally I saw Mr Whitcombe and he told the manager of the department to go ahead and order what I was wanting.  In due time Mr Whitcombe asked me to write a series of seven reading books for infants.  They were sure of what they wanted and though I never used the first three readers myself, even when I became head of a large infant department, they were the means of my becoming the owner of a Model T motor car. 

Till that time I had had to rely on my bicycle in all weathers and felt as proud of my Model T two seater as if it had been a Rolls Royce.  Therefore, I feel grateful to the Progressive Readers for providing me with my first care which cost one hundred and sixty-seven pounds and saved me many a weary ride.

My Yaldhurst days were very happy days.  My training had been firstly under a very hard worman who made a great impression on me in those impressionable years, and it took the gentleness of that grand little country school to free me from that influence.  Training Colleges in those days were inadequate and as it was a very green and inexperienced young woman who began her teacher career there.

So, I say - Thank you Yaldhurst and all those dear people who paved the way to a long and happy teaching career.

Here is a memory shared from Wallis Rout at the age of 7 years - a pupil of Miss Freemans, 1918

I had been absent for a week. Miss Freeman drew up a chair and got me to stand facing her She was quite awe inspiring with her rimless glasses which peered right through little seven year olds, especially one who had a guilt complex. She was middle aged I am sure and so experienced (she was about 27 years young really.)

"Wallis, where have you been?" "Sick Miss Freeman"

"Wallis, where have you been?" "Sick Miss Freeman"

"Wallis, where have you been?" "Sick Miss Freeman"

"Wallis, where have you been?" "Picking spuds!"

"Five shillings a day picking potatoes was more profitable that being in school. I didn't understand the 3rd degree cross-questioning that she used on me at the time and I have never forgotten the incident. She was kind and very understanding - put me in the corner for telling fibs!"

If you read to the end of this article, you may enjoy another top up on that cup of tea 🫖