The Chronicle, No. 669, January 2016

21 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Judy Young

What do you do atTeddies and how long have you been at the school? I have been here 16 years – for all of which up to April 2015 I was Housemistress of Oakthorpe, and for the last eight or nine years, Senior HM. I have also taught Physics throughout that time. I stood down from my HM role to take up the newly- created post of Deputy Head Extra-Curricular. Where were you before? I loved running the boarding house, with the daily contact and the involvement in the ups and downs of teenage life. In many ways, I’m sorry that I am no longer doing it, but I am equally enjoying the problem-solving aspects of writing the school timetable and the opportunities both it and co-running the school’s extra-curricular programme are bringing in terms of getting to know many of my colleagues better. What has been your favouriteTeddies moment so far? There are a lot of these – getting the job in the first place has to rank as one of them, particularly after an interview in which one member of the Physics Department wandered in to clean his teeth very noisily, while another appeared in a wet suit! Successfully negotiating my first ever lesson (sexual reproduction to a completely unknown and very large bottom set in the Fifth Form, almost all boys), the day the RAF section was taken up in a VC 10 to take part in a NATO exercise over the North Sea, Snowdonia with the Shells over the years, the term when Oakthorpe made a clean sweep of the sporting and academic awards, the day my Head of House, who arrived with a very low CE score, got ABB at A Level. I could go on and on ... Favourite menu item from theTeddies kitchen? Has to be the fillet steak on offer for special dinners. What was the naughtiest thing you did at school? There are definitely too many to mention. I was a complete nuisance from the age of 11 to 15. Once in the Sixth Form, I turned over a new leaf and became an (almost) model student overnight. If you could embark on a wild adventure of your choosing, what would it be? Going to Mongolia and exploring the Steppes. What would be your Desert Island book? The Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield. Best advice you’ve ever been given? There is a great saying about pupils, attributed to Charles Bush when he was Headmaster of Eastbourne College: ‘If you trust them, they’ll let you down. If you don’t trust them, they’ll do you down. It’s better to be let down than done down.’ Never a week goes by when I don’t try to bear this in mind. At Westfield School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. What do you most enjoy about your role?