WHEN A SCHOOL TEACHER IS PUSHED TO THE WALL

WHEN A SCHOOL TEACHER IS PUSHED TO THE WALL

What would you do if you were a school administrator and a student beat you at your own game?

Below is a story once recounted by the Rev. Orville Woolford, at the time Education Secretary of the Seventh Day Adventist Church for the South England Conference. He told the story during school assembly at the John Loughborough School in Tottenham (Haringey), North London one day, when he was guest speaker. At the time I was a French and Spanish teacher at the school.

Rev. Woolford said when he was principal of that same school some years ago, there was a student who had got on the nerves of every staff member. He as head of the school had punished this boy many times. One day, the boy put a foot wrong again. Irked, he the principal frog marched him into his office, picked up a cane and said

“Boy, turn round and give me your buttocks! I know what to do with you so that you at last learn a lesson! ”

When the student bent down, the principal ordered him:

“Bend down!”

The boy bent over and angrily Rev. Woolford raised the cane. Before he landed it on the boy`s buttocks, the latter said

“Please, sir, before you beat me, can I say something?”

Astounded, the principal barked at him:

“Yes! What do you want to say?”

“Before you beat me, sir. Can we pray?”

“Pray? What do you mean? Who will pray?”

“I will pray, sir”.

“Okay, then pray! Go ahead and pray!” Rev. Woolford answered, placing his whip on the table, totally subdued.

After the boy had prayed, the principal ordered him out of his office. But it was a good prayer in which the boy asked God to help him change and be a good student.