By Hermione Silver, Fiona Meagher, and Aimee Beecroft, Year 9
There are so many happy memories associated with the end of each school year, but sometimes, it can also mean that some of our school’s most beloved teachers are leaving. This is unfortunately the case for Mr. Stack, who, after 15 years of work here at Ecolint, is retiring at the end of this year. We spoke to Mr. Stack for the last time as an LGB teacher to get some of his much-appreciated wisdom.
What will you miss most when you leave LGB?
What I will miss is the environment of the school, it’s a nice place. I like it, physically here, it’s nice to walk around. Because it looks nice people respect their environment, and the students are quite responsible, which means it’s a really nice place to work. I mean trust me on this, you guys are so cool.
What advice would you give to the teacher who will replace you?
Start with an expectation that the people you are working with are really good people, and expect the best and not the worst.
What are your plans for when you retire?
I don’t know yet. I’m gonna get a dog, a medium-sized sheepdog, and it’s gonna be called Nobby, named after the famous 1996 World Cup-winning Manchester United player, Nobby Stiles.
What’s the funniest thing that happened to you as a teacher?
So when I was a new teacher at a school in England, they said “don’t be afraid to try stuff out”. At the time, I was a year seven teacher and I was teaching Mediaeval warfare, and I said “okay so what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you an idea” because one of the key things about Mediaeval warfare was that when they all fired their bows together the arrows that would come down would be really, dangerous, so I told my class to get some sticks and make a bow, and on Monday morning, I was called into the office, and the head teacher told me he wanted to have a quick word, and he asked me if I told the year seven kids to go make bows. I said yes and asked him why and he told me that the kids were firing them out the windows on the bus, and every time the bus stopped they would be shooting people at the bus stops. The school had gotten complaints from the bus company and I had to stop doing bows and arrows. The kids were maniacs.
If you had one thing that this school would remember you by, what would it be?
If I were to be remembered by the kids at this school, it would be with the phrase ‘What Am I Thinking of?’
(What Am I Thinking Of is a game many might recognize, where students would guess what their teacher is thinking of, which could be anything related to history. Fellow history teacher, Mr. Eddis, also adopted this game)
Another impressive thing many students may not know is that Mr. Stack was Mr. Eddis’ mentor. He recounts the story as:
One of my students, a long time ago now, came in and said, ‘My mum has a friend who works in a consultancy and is thinking about becoming a teacher, would you be willing to meet with him?’ I said yeah, and I went and had lunch with him, and it turned out that it was Mr. Eddis. And look at him now.
As a leaving joke, he said:
What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?
A Carrot.
