May 29th, 2023Just sayin’…

By Donna Kelly
PUTTING together our education feature took me on a trip back to my school days. Mostly good memories – I was what you would call a “goody-goody” – and loved most of my teachers and was pretty much a straight A student from prep to Year 10. The wheels fell off then but that’s a
story I have already told.

Frankston born and bred, and living in The Range, we four Kelly kids went to Overport Primary School. It was a big school, about 1000 students I reckon, and about 35 in each class. A bit of a shock to the system but we all settled in pretty well.
Mum would drop us off in the Holden Premier (KEO 505 – funny how you remember some old stuff but not what you had for breakfast) and off you would go to your respective classroom. We were all two years apart so when my brother started in prep, I was in grade 2, my sister was in grade 4 and my other brother was in grade 6.
Dad was on the school committee for a while but by the time I was the oldest at the school he had quit so I never got to take home the important looking letters for him which I was quite annoyed about.
Mum did canteen duty now and again which was always great because you got free lollies and a school lunch order. I think I mostly had a sausage roll and maybe a bag of chips. Don’t worry, little lunch was mostly healthy, a bunch of grapes. And be assured there was not a bento box in sight.
School was different then. Most of the teachers smoked, they still had the strap for the boys and the other punishment was often sitting with both hands on your head for long stretches of time or having to write lines on the blackboard.
We had different “houses” and you could win points for your house with the principal’s myriad competitions. I learned all of the poem My Country for one of them and had another win in maths by learning how to not look down when writing answers to equations on the blackboard. Shaved seconds off the time it took – yes, it was about accuracy but also speed.
When primary school came to an end I found myself at a very newly built Mt Eliza High. That was a bus ride away and I only knew one other student. Most of the others were already in cliques from their own primary schools but I slowly made a group of good friends, all quite different but all good value. Some are still friends.
I still did well and enjoyed most of the classes but found it quite tricky to traverse the moving from classroom to classroom depending on the subject for that period.
Kyle would say I still have geographical issues but who did not turn the Melway sideways and upside down as they navigated?
It was the late 70s and Mt Eliza was in an experimental stage. We learned 10 different languages over the first two years – for a long time I could ask “where is the toilet?” in Swahili. We were meant to be immersed but I think overwhelmed would be a better word. We were also perhaps among the first schools where everyone did both wood and metal work along with cooking and craft. Boys and girls. I joined both the Scrabble and religious education clubs – both because they were held inside
during winter lunch times. I also edited the school newspaper, no surprise there, and continued on with my straight As. It was going well until a friend mentioned they were moving to Frankston High for year 11. Hmmm, I thought, that sounds fun. What could go wrong? And that story has been told before.
Anyway, I hope you have a look through our feature, check out schools if that is on your agenda and maybe relive your old school days. I get the feeling, even with rose-coloured glasses, they might be better now. Just sayin’…