My primary school was very small. There were only four rooms and only four teachers. It was a village school and everyone lived nearby. The head teacher was Mr Foxhall, a kind man with a bright red face and a big smile.
Mr Foxhall was the teacher of the top class containing the oldest children. He split the school into four teams and gave each team a colour. There were the Blues, the Reds, the Greens and the Yellows. If a child did something good, their team got a point. If a child did something bad, their team had a point taken away. Each team's points were marked on a wooden board that had four sets of holes from 0 to 20, and four coloured pegs. Each Monday morning the pegs would all start at zero. As the week passed, the pegs would move up the board. On Friday afternoon Mr Foxhall would check the positions of the four pegs, and then announce the winning team. There were no prizes for winning, but the rivalry between the four teams was enough to ensure we all tried our best.
Every Monday Mr Foxhall would single out one or two children who had done something good the previous week. At morning assembly in front of the whole school he would call out their names and tell us what good things they had done. You always hoped your name would be called out, but when it was, you always felt a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment. You were pleased to be praised by Mr Foxhall, but you couldn't help but go red in the face with everyone looking at you. Being a very fair man, Mr Foxhall never chose the same child twice in the same term. He did his best to make everyone feel important.
Mr Foxhall showed us the importance of teamwork and of individual effort. Every Friday it was the Blues or the Reds who won. On Monday it was George Mudge or Rachel Dixon who was the week's winner.
The thing I liked most about Mr Foxhall was his ability to encourage even the laziest child to do their best. He gave children points not only for getting sums right, but also for keeping their desk tidy. On Monday morning he would praise children for a goal scored in a football game or a drawing well done. Every child was made to feel they were a winner.