Roy Norcliffe

There's Nowt Like Wanting: an Unusual Education Autobiography Roy Norcliffe

This is a personal story, which tells of a quite different journey through the complex facets of my life in 'Education'. It recalls my childhood years in Infant, Junior and Secondary schools both during and immediately after the Second World War. It covers Grammar School failings and then the beginnings of relative success and academic development. The decision to take up a career in teaching at 35 years of age was, at that time, both controversial and to many people questionable. It was however, ultimately justified!Much of the book deals with the fun, the heartache, the joy and sadness as I progressed from simple classroom receiver to the heights of a Secondary School Headteacher. It was all done 'my way', but during this journey I learned so much about, and from, many people. A delightful if sometimes erratic and difficult Afro-Carribean pupil, whom I constantly had to chastise and chivvy, was one day asked by myself what he would possibly do without me?His reply, virtually instantaneously was 'I think I would be a slave, Sir!'A totally unexpected response, and this book has so much more of this, the unexpected, in it. The young man, 16 years of age at the time in the mid 1980's, went on to become a powerful Rugby League International!