‘Caused a commotion’: The rock star that was mobbed at our school fete

A moment glimpsed when I least expected it at a school fete made me realise who the OG influencers really are.

Male and female students raising hands in classroom. Men and women are answering to mature teacher. They are together in university.School roomclassroomgenericschool

Sometimes, when I am growing weary of the world something will happen that sets me on a more optimistic course. That exact thing happened to me last weekend at our local primary school’s fete.

Now, I love this fete, particularly as my children are no longer at that school and I don’t have to hand thread several thousand lollies on a necklace anymore.

Or do facepainting. Actually, I loved doing facepainting, I just wasn’t very good at it.

One year a little girl asked me what I had just painted on her arm.

“A dolphin!” I replied brightly. She said “Are you sure?” then said it looked “more like a doggie”, and I asked her what art school she had attended. I didn’t really ask that, I just thought it.

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Anyway, there I was at the fete, footloose, fancy free, and early enough to get the best cakes (seasoned fete-goers will know exactly what I’m talking about) when I sensed a wee commotion happening outside the fairy floss stand.

Being the investigative reporter/nosy parker that I am, I immediately hot-footed it over there to see what the fuss was about, and what it was about was a teacher.

But not just any teacher, oh no. One of those teachers you remember. Surrounded by a knot of children – with more incoming from every direction.

A teacher who had recently retired, and one I recognised straight away. She had taught both of my children. And she had loved both of my children. Nurtured them. Listened to them. Saw them. Found their spark. Blew on it until that spark grew into a fire that still burns today.

Cheered them on all the way through primary school, and then high school if she happened to run into them on the street.

“How’s your writing going,” she’d ask. “Are you still playing guitar?” She remembered them. She remembered everybody who had the good fortune to pass through her classroom. And now here she was, back at the school fete. Surrounded. Like a rock star.

Past students from recent years, older ones who were now at uni, all waiting their turn to tell her what they were up to. That woman could not take more than a few steps without someone stopping her.

Frances Whiting. Photograph: David Kelly

One teenager came running up with her arm held aloft in a cast, her friend breathless beside her. “She broke her arm”, her friend said, desperate to get the news out, “rollerskating”.

And it occurred to me, watching this woman slowly – very slowly – make her way across the grounds that our teachers are the original influencers.

Or in social media speak, the OG Influencers. Long before we looked to social media for some sort of inspiration, teachers were providing it. Influencing not how we looked, but how we thought, how we moved through the world, who we were and who we might yet become.

So here’s to you, Mrs Mewburn, I’m glad you were welcomed back to your old stomping grounds like the rock star you are.

And here’s to all the Mrs – and Mr – Mewburns out there. All the teachers in our classrooms, the OG influencers blowing gently on the embers, making our bright sparks fly.

Originally published as ‘Caused a commotion’: The rock star that was mobbed at our school fete