Beverly Smith

During 1960 – 1961 I was a student art teacher at Adelaide Teachers College. In the first year all students in the art course for secondary schools had to go into the upper primary school classes to observe and teach regular subjects such as arithmetic, English, handwriting and social studies. It may have been a good idea professionally, but we, as students, would have preferred teaching art.

In second year the H (art) group was sent to Taylor’s Road annex at Thebarton. A new complex of temporary pre-fab buildings had been erected as a ‘home’ for the influx of art and craft trainee teachers, and for the excess of infant school student teachers from Currie Street. As one of our lecturers, Alby Smith, said, ‘They’re permanent-temporary! They won’t build anything permanent there.’ He was right. The complex is no more.

Barbara Hanrahan was our home group lecturer and I think she supervised history of art as well. She had not changed much from when I knew her at Thebarton Girls Tech in 1956. She seemed a bit more sophisticated, but her quiet, contained self and enigmatic smile remained the same.

That year of teaching practice I found myself spending a few weeks at Croydon Girls Technical High School. While I remember almost nothing of my experiences there, I do recall being asked very nicely by the art teacher, whether I would supervise the girls in the art class one evening as it was a parent visiting night. The teacher said she couldn’t come to the evening. She probably knew it would be a quiet night for her.

She organised the girls to work on various craft activities. Everything was planned so that I would have nothing to do and, I suspect, so that I wouldn’t mess up the girls’ craft work with my inexperience. It was not a teaching demonstration, only a display night. The art room was in one of the portable buildings off Torrens Road. It was down the side street and at the back of the school, away from the main brick buildings. Some of the girls turned up and I had an easy time of it although I was rather anxious about my role and responsibility. I was 17 at the time – we were in Teachers College at 16 in those days.

In the art class there were three or four deaf girls. I had been told, prior to the evening, that they would be there and that I didn’t have to do anything like talking to them because they would get on with things and do their work as well as the other girls. The prospect of communicating with deaf students was daunting at that time. Mum used to tell us not to stare at people who were different from us, and so I found it awkward to look and yet not look at the deaf girls speaking with their hands. I worried that I might be staring too much and I had no confidence in trying to communicate with them, other than nodding and smiling. I felt disadvantaged and clumsy. I did not want to intrude on something private in their conversation although it would have been impossible under the circumstances, as I had no knowledge of sign language other than my childhood acquisition of the alphabet spelt on the hands.

I think the art teacher may have warned me that the deaf girls tended to talk more and therefore got less work done. I do remember wondering if I should be a strict teacher who stopped them talking on their hands, when I could see that the other girls could talk and work at the same time. I declined to interfere that night: we were all volunteers.

I remember that hardly any parents came into the room. There may have been none at all. It was a very quiet evening and the deaf girls communicated unceasingly using sign language.

Afterwards I had to lock the classroom and find my way in the dark down to the Croydon railway station, on to the platform with awful dark corners, and wait for the train to Grange, and then walk home to Beach Street. I wondered about teaching in the future. Was that what it was about? Being responsible? Being in charge of something? But what? Doing one’s duty? I was glad to get home and be with mum and dad and the kids.

And what an omen of things to come! In the 1980s I was back at Croydon High School as the parent of two deaf students of my own.

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