ART & Design This year’s Art & Design report is a little different - a farewell from Mr Barlow who is retiring this year.
“A lump of wet clay can be easily deformed. It can be thinned and extended into a clay wall; it can be pulled out into an unsupported form until the extension collapses under its own weight. If wet clay is piled on wet clay, the clay at the bottom of the pile will begin to flow. Wet clay can be pushed around with the fingers, or scored and scraped with a pointed or curved tool or stamped. If the clay is left in the open air, it will slowly harden. If the amount of clay is large enough it will develop cracks which extend throughout the body of the clay. This can be seen when mud dries in summer heat. Most strange of all is that if this soft, enticingly malleable substance is subjected to large amounts of energy in the form of heat, it is metamorphosed into hard and brittle substances ranging from porous earthenware to impermeable porcelain. I feel a child’s education is like the shaping and firing of clay, in the hope of forming the desirable traits of a caring person.
to become independent thinkers in order to achieve excellent exam results. With three terms to go before I retire, I thought of a gentle roll-down, watching cricket and absorbing the sounds of children playing and listening to those classical old hymns from Chapel as they floated on the morning air. What can I say, the carpet was whipped away from under my feet!
Part of my own art education started in the Parish of Shebbear in the early 1980s, when I was training as a production potter under the tutorship of Clive Bowen. I had many enjoyable days throwing pots with him and later with William Marshall, both having strong connections with that most famous of potters, Bernard Leach who placed ceramics on the world stage, equal to that of painting and sculpture.
Lockdown fear set in, having never done any online shopping or joined any social network. Whilst my younger colleagues were talking fluently about Google Meet, Google Classroom, webinars, Space time / Face time and tech speak like wuu2, btw and gm, I had not got a clue what was going on. I was lost after thirty plus years of teaching and no longer in control. My pupils became the masters and I the pupil.
After teaching at Harrow for the first sixteen years and then St Georges in Vancouver, I moved on to become a PGCE lecturer training teachers. I exhibited in London, including the RA, and had the privilege of working with the British Museum on a Eurasian sarcophagus from the Roman Empire 250 to 150 BC. However, my main love was spending many happy evenings working on stage sets with such actors as Peter O`Toole. Who would have thought I would come full circle and spend my last years of my teaching career back in sunny Shebbear.
Having grown up with threepenny bits (3d) a brass 12 sided coin, sixpences, shillings and crowns, at age ten I had to quickly learn that 5p was equal to 12 old pennies or one shilling/a florin, that 240 copper pennies was equal to £1 and that 30 cm was now a foot. At sixty, looking back at the switch to decimalisation, I felt I could embrace this online teaching and learn a new skill or two. My pupils were very helpful in aiding me through this technology. I felt positive once more and slightly proud of my newly acquired skills proving it’s never too late to learn. It got me thinking how technology has impacted on teaching and learning and how the internet has made it possible to accomplish things that were not even dreamed about before its birth.
Over this time my educational philosophies and practices have remained basically the same (Chalk and Talk). With a focus on setting high standards, I believe in encouraging children
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THE SHEBBEARIAN 2021
