Mrs Hipkins

Special Memories from my time as a pupil 1943 -1950 and as a teacher from 1963 - 1969

How I became a teacher at Campbells Bay School

I became a teacher and I had been overseas. I came back and needed a school to attend to teach at and this was the closest school. This school was the one I really wanted to go to but I thought I wouldn’t get the job and my father encouraged me and said “how can you get it if you don’t apply for it" so I did. I think it was the ^24th December that  I found out and I was so pleased. It was just wonderful! 

Favourite Activities

Well, I liked the maypole and I liked the music. I liked dancing outside on the cold winter mornings before school. That was fun! I was so pleased when I learnt how to read because that was the thing I really wanted to do when I came to this school. I enjoyed learning about other countries and I remember the classroom which had a map on the wall. I liked writing. I liked getting ‘excellent’ stamps on my work. Those are some of the things

You have probably heard about the fancy dress balls and we would dress up in different outfits and we went to the Picturedrome in Milford. This is when we were pupils. Then we went on to the pirate ship. It was quite an occasion. The whole school went in dress-ups of some kind

Uniform

We did have school uniforms at one stage which were red and white, but I think you have changed your colours now.

Special Lessons

I remember ‘bible in schools’ too. I remember a nice lady teacher I had called Mrs Brown. I would have just been a primer at that stage. We had a little nature walk and some trees were labelled and I remember learning some, like the tanekaha. So you’ll probably have one in your forest now.

Form One and Two at CBS

 I was one of those awkward ones that had a birthday in the middle of the year. We went right through to standard five and standard six, as they were called at that time (now called form one and two). They were here when I was a pupil. I remember some of those standard six girls coming to play with us in the primers. We thought it was good, but the teacher didn’t, so we had to stop.

A J Hackett

I taught here from 1963-1969 that was six years. I taught A J Hackett in one of my classes.  I just remember he had dark hair and he was always called ‘AJ’.  Both his mother and he said that is what he wanted to be called. So he was always called AJ and still is. I think his first name was Alan. He didn’t go jumping around the classroom though

Rooms One, Two and Three

 When the classrooms with the veranda was built, a penny was put in the concrete to give the age of the classroom, but when we went back last jubilee, the penny had disappeared. However, I know many children had sat there and worked at it for a long period of time.

Shields

The senior children had houses. There were 4 houses. When I was a pupil they were red, blue, green and yellow and they had names of canoes, they were the early canoes that came to New Zealand and we were all teams. Well they called them houses at that time

My first and second classroom

Well I remember my first day at school when I went into the classroom nearest to the road and I remember that the teacher had grey hair. She seemed quite a kind person. There was a little step at the front of the room by the blackboard and I thought that was a nice place to step up so I stood on the platform and she asked me to get off but I didn’t want to get off it was a nice place there and so she smacked me on the leg and I got off. That was a bit of a surprise!

I especially remember the next room which was the last room on the block and in that room I remember we had music and it was so good. I loved it when the music came out.I remembered blackboards around the room where we could draw and we also had to do writing on the board and for our books we had art books and we’d make pictures with hard pastel. So for writing we had chalk. I don’t think I remember pencils. Well not in that class anyway. In that room I learnt to read. They were my introductions to the school.

Differences in the school

The Community Forest which is beautiful is new. Some of the rooms are the same but some rooms are not because they just weren’t there. The extension to the two story building was interesting too. The coloured playgrounds are new. Nobody thought of doing that when I was here.

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