Page 55 - She's One Crazy Lady!

touch. Ian ended his career as an HMI Inspector for Art and has since bought property in France where he spends a lot of his time pursuing his artistic hobbies.
A very large part of the teacher training course was practical, hands-on teaching, and I had three school placements, each lasting approximately six weeks, under the supervision of the class teacher and college supervisors. My first placement was at Tennyson Road Infants School in Rushden with Year One infants. Miss Wendy Lamb was the headteacher and came across as being very strict and very serious, especially when she would observe my teaching by looking through the window from outside. I was in a mobile so all I would see were her eyes and the top of her head. It was very off-putting. However, my thoughts of Wendy changed considerably when, very early on when Crazy Hats had started, she regularly came to see us in our office, became a member, supported us at fundraising events and often, in her role as an officer in the Salvation Army, went to visit Mum in her care home. Wendy became a valued friend of our charity.
In November 2020 Wendy wrote to me:
“Dear Glennis, I feel I must write to congratulate you on your vision for, and the organisation of, a most successful charity in the form of Crazy Hats. Your positive thinking at a time when you could have sat back and felt very sorry for yourself was remarkable.
It hardly seems possible that I first met you nearly fifty years ago when a young girl, training to be a teacher at Nene College, came to Tennyson Road Infants School in Rushden for her ‘teaching practice’. It was even more remarkable that when I retired, and returning to Kettering to be near my mother, I heard that you were to be appointed as Head of Highfield Road School where I had been for thirteen years before becoming the Head of Tennyson Road.
I believe that your expertise as a teacher, along with your personality and dedication to hard work, made Crazy Hats such a success. Margaret and I enjoyed many happy occasions sharing in your fundraising events...
May God bless you. Look after yourself remembering that it all began because you had cancer.
Yours very sincerely...”
Never judge a book by its cover!
Deciding I preferred to teach older children, who could ‘do more’, my next teaching practice was at Ruskin Junior School in Wellingborough and my third at Windmill Primary in Raunds; both very enjoyable, demanding, testing and, I’m glad to say, successful. I’d passed! I had qualified to be a Primary School teacher and was awarded my Batchelor of Education degree. I had signed on to do a further year and work towards the Honours part of the degree but, thanks to knowing a Primary School Headteacher, through sport, and a link with Tennyson Road, (where his wife worked) this was put on hold, and I was able to leave Nene College in 1976 to take up a paid, full-time, teaching job.
“Your positive thinking at a time when you could have sat back and felt very sorry for yourself was remarkable.”
I was ready.
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