Mr. Norris (Maths)

 

’Mr. Norris taught Mathematics and sometimes Technical Drawing. He was a smart man, with a small beard, his suits were either brown or green striped. You could always hear him coming down the corridors because of them metal segs on the bottom of his brown leather shoes. He had come from an engineering background and taught Mathematics to mainly middle or upper sets and had been at Tulketh since the late 1960s.

In my second year I was in the middle set for Mathematics and was in Mr. Norris class in the Maths block which is situated to the right of the main building and faced Tag Lane which meant in summer it was always very hot and uncomfortable unless you were situated on the other side were Mr. Norris class was then you were shielded by a prefab block. It was a relatively new building compared to the rest of the school which dated back to 1964.Mr. Norris decided to sit us at the desks in a girl with a boy rather than you sat next to your mates which was the normal way we were seated in lessons back then. I was sat next to a girl called Shirley Taylor who fortunately for me had an aptitude for Mathematics. 

One afternoon we covered algebra for the first half of the lesson and to be honest I struggled with this new concept and felt myself daydreaming and not taking in what we were being taught. Then Mr. Norris set us a test for the second half of the lesson. I looked up at the board at the set of questions and wished I had taken more notice of what had been said in the first half of the lesson. On a lighter moment one of Mr. Norris tricks to see if you were listening to what he was saying was to scrape his nails across the blackboard which used to have the girls cringing and lads laughing and on a rare moment if angry, he would strategically throw the wooden blackboard duster or a piece of chalk to the back of the class without it hitting any pupils first time in this lesson I thought maybe I could cheat and copy the answers from Shirley’s book without making it too obvious to her. A couple of occasions this worked well with me getting a well done! or Good work! when we hand our books in for marking at the end of the lesson.

Unfortunately, on this occasion Mr. Norris had me sussed out. He said, “You can’t kid a kidder young man,!. You have copied your answers of Shirley.” All the class looked in the direction of Mr. Norris and me. He went on to go through each one of the answers in my exercise book and compared to Shirley’s book. I stood looking down at the ground hoping it would suddenly swallow me up all red faced and ashamed. Once the bell went for the end of school, I beat a hasty exit down the drive to avoid the general micky taking and leg pulling from the likes of Gary Corsbie, Jimmy Callaghan, and Stuart Cutler and Neil Stonely.

The following week Mr. Norris spoked to me before the lesson started about the previous week shenanigans and had showed some empathy. He said cheats rarely prosper in life which I respected him for. For the rest of the term, I sat next to Rosalind Bosom, who had a very artistic looking pencil case with various Pop stars and boys she liked scribbled on it. We both seem to struggle with Maths at first but eventually we got on top of a difficult subject with the help of Mr. Norris, finishing the term on a high note in the exams.

A few years after I left school I went for a drink with Peter Darwen and John Hutchinson at the members bar in the Lancashire County Council offices on Fishergate Hill where John worked. Who should we bump into Mr. Norris and his wife. Surprisingly he recognised the three of us. For a short while we chatted about our time at Tulketh where he was still teaching. He kindly bought the three of us a drink.   

I heard Mr. Norris had passed away sadly in the 1990's from ex-member of the Tulketh staff.