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A kindly teacher and a nature table helped create my lifelong love of biology A kindly teacher and a nature table helped create my lifelong love of biology
(7 months later)
Like many of my generation of naturalists, a primary school nature table played a formative role in my fascination with biology. A kindly teacher called Miss Waghorn maintained the repository of wildlife specimens in our village school, where I can recall pupil contributions that included fruits and seeds, fossils, skulls, feathers, seashells, birds' nests and, on one memorable occasion, a dead bat that I'd found.Like many of my generation of naturalists, a primary school nature table played a formative role in my fascination with biology. A kindly teacher called Miss Waghorn maintained the repository of wildlife specimens in our village school, where I can recall pupil contributions that included fruits and seeds, fossils, skulls, feathers, seashells, birds' nests and, on one memorable occasion, a dead bat that I'd found.
Miss Waghorn encouraged her class to bring in their treasures and enthuse about them, although my bat made only a brief appearance on the table before the smell forced us to bury it, with due reverence. Unfettered by the constraints of national curriculum, key stages or standard assessment tasks, she sometimes took us on impromptu trips to the stream at the bottom of the playing field to creep up on water voles, listen for the plop and watch the stream of bubbles as they disappeared. It was a curiosity-driven, easy-going state-school education that neither money nor influence could buy today. In late winter she'd bring her own contribution to the nature table – jam jars full of horse chestnut "sticky-bud" twigs. They were ours to draw, from the moment the glossy bud scales began to loosen, through stages where the first leaves erupted like furry clenched fists then expanded to translucent green fingers, to the appearance of flower buds. As an exercise in close observation of nature, with a class of seven-year-olds sucking the ends of their pencils in concentration and scrutinising every detail of their bud's development, it was inspirational.Miss Waghorn encouraged her class to bring in their treasures and enthuse about them, although my bat made only a brief appearance on the table before the smell forced us to bury it, with due reverence. Unfettered by the constraints of national curriculum, key stages or standard assessment tasks, she sometimes took us on impromptu trips to the stream at the bottom of the playing field to creep up on water voles, listen for the plop and watch the stream of bubbles as they disappeared. It was a curiosity-driven, easy-going state-school education that neither money nor influence could buy today. In late winter she'd bring her own contribution to the nature table – jam jars full of horse chestnut "sticky-bud" twigs. They were ours to draw, from the moment the glossy bud scales began to loosen, through stages where the first leaves erupted like furry clenched fists then expanded to translucent green fingers, to the appearance of flower buds. As an exercise in close observation of nature, with a class of seven-year-olds sucking the ends of their pencils in concentration and scrutinising every detail of their bud's development, it was inspirational.
This week, half a century on, I repeated the annual ritual of the cutting of the sticky-bud twigs. They're among the natural history artefacts strewn around my desk, totems of past discoveries and encounters. As the seasons change and unstoppable force within them builds, I can already see pale edges appearing around the resinous bud scales. Their grip is loosening, unlike Miss Waghorn's influence, which never did.This week, half a century on, I repeated the annual ritual of the cutting of the sticky-bud twigs. They're among the natural history artefacts strewn around my desk, totems of past discoveries and encounters. As the seasons change and unstoppable force within them builds, I can already see pale edges appearing around the resinous bud scales. Their grip is loosening, unlike Miss Waghorn's influence, which never did.
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