A pupil of a primary school in a backwater African village tells the story of his enigmatic and inspiring headmaster with verve and haunting realism. From the headmasters refined manners and cultivated appearance to his father-figure image that inspires discipline in his pupils, Bamai the protagonist of this moving story full of homespun wisdom, living anecdotes and pastoral allegories provokes a nostalgia and reminiscence of a lost past and innocence we all strive to regain a lost past and innocence this epic tale gives an opportunity to live again.
I first time I saw the man who became my headmaster was when he rode his motorcycle past our house in Tyosa. He was a huge, dark, hairy man with big eyeballs that looked like they could see through anything and often saw through everything. His eyes were so frightening to me that I always trembled whenever he turned them on me. Not only were the eyeballs big, he had a way of baring them in the most frightening manner when he focused them on you. Older people said his father Akut was nicknamed Akut the owner of frightening eyes for pretty much the same reason. His eyeballs were said to be so big as to scare away birds whenever he entered the forest. Some people said they scared away chickens too. So he was called Akut the owner of frightening eyes. But Akuts son was headmaster and no one dared pass his nickname to his son though he had passed his frightening eyes to the son. No one dared sing songs behind him the way children used to sing behind Akut his father Passing through and growing up in school with Akuts son as the Headmaster, and what it took to grow up in a closely-knit community through the eyes and memory of a pupil is a story that has to be told, the story of any pupil. And this is the story
At one time, I had truly believed that I'd experienced enough drama in my life. Clearly, I'd been wrong. It all began the night before I was due to start my final year of school-the night of my eighteenth birthday. Since I had been considered "missing" for three years, I had failed to finish off the last year of my education. This was why I needed to let loose a little. I was turning eighteen and was finally legal to drink, so, why not? The next morning, I would be going to school with a bunch of ladies three years younger than I was. Even if it was for no other reason, I felt this entitled me to have a little fun. The night started off well enough: Girl meets boy. Girl gets dared to buy boy drink and kiss him within fifteen minutes of receiving said drink. It sounds like it would have been plain and simple, right? Wrong. I had no idea that his kiss would be the kiss to end all kisses. One taste of him, and I was lost for the first time in all my eighteen years. But I wasn't meant to feel anything... Three years of living in Hell had taught me that. But, this man ... just ... awakened me. I went home that night feeling both alive and scared shitless at the same time. However, that wasn't the worst of it. The very next day at assembly in school, we were all introduced to our new headmaster... None other than the very same man who had-just the night before-locked lips with me in the most hypnotic, take-your-breath-away kiss I had ever had. Yeah, I am seriously screwed. He's a forbidden fruit that I long to taste again. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get that kiss out of my head. So badly, I want to escape him, his presence, his ... everything. It seems, however, that the universe has other ideas.
Bill Schroder is the stuff of which teaching legends are made. Strict, yet kind and tolerant, he blended a magic mix of care and discipline to bring out the best in his pupils. In A Headmaster's Story, Bill shares the story of his life, offering many insights into the challenges and rewards of teaching. He describes how he was a natural leader, and that helping young people realise their potential was his life's calling. Bill also charts how his teaching philosophy developed as he taught at and led a variety of schools, including SACS, Western Province Prep, Rondebosch Boys', Westerford, Rhodes High, Pinelands High in Cape Town and York High in George. When he was appointed head of Pretoria Boys High in 1990, Bill took on the challenge of leading one of the country's top state schools and soon earned the undying admiration of pupils, parents, staff and Old Boys alike. At the end of a long and distinguished career, he did not rest on his laurels but went back into the fray, helping to mentor a struggling township high school. Here is a teacher who has left an indelible mark on thousands of pupils, from Cape Town to Pretoria.
Everyone is good at something. But at Lizzie's school this has been taken to extremes. Her classmate Ethan, who previously had no interest in sport, is now incredible at football; her brother's suddenly an expert in robotics; and Lizzie has become really good at being bad. But when she tries to remember what awful thing she's just done, all she has is a blank space in her mind. How come they've suddenly changed so much? And why can't they talk about it? It's as though they have no power over their own actions. Could this be something to do with the mysterious new headmaster . . . ? Surrender yourself to the new hypnotic spell of the Demon Headmaster, with new kids, a new school, and a new thrilling scheme for world domination. Fast paced and action packed adventure, written by the award-winning Gillian Cross. Resistance is not an option.
The third zippy and zany tale by Pamela Butchart sees Izzy and her friends plunged into more primary-school craziness. This time, they decide that their new head teacher is a vampire rat, based on his being slightly scary, having the blinds drawn in his office during the day and the fact he's banned garlic bread at lunchtimes. Now they just have to come up with a plan to vanquish him... Another brilliantly funny longer read for the newly confident reader from the best-selling, award-winning, author-illustrator team, Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham. Read more of Izzy's adventures! Baby Aliens Got My Teacher The Spy Who Loved School Dinners Attack of the Demon Dinner Ladies To Wee Or Not To Wee! There's a Werewolf in my Tent There's a Yeti in the Playground The Phantom Lollipop Man Icarus Was Ridiculous
An immensely talented writer whose work has been described as "incandescent" (Kirkus) and "poetic" (Booklist), Thomas Christopher Greene pens a haunting and deeply affecting portrait of one couple at their best and worst. Inspired by a personal loss, Greene explores the way that tragedy and time assail one man's memories of his life and loves. Like his father before him, Arthur Winthrop is the Headmaster of Vermont's elite Lancaster School. It is the place he feels has given him his life, but is also the site of his undoing as events spiral out of his control. Found wandering naked in Central Park, he begins to tell his story to the police, but his memories collide into one another, and the true nature of things, a narrative of love, of marriage, of family and of a tragedy Arthur does not know how to address emerges. Luminous and atmospheric, bringing to life the tight-knit enclave of a quintessential New England boarding school, the novel is part mystery, part love story and an exploration of the ties of place and family. Beautifully written and compulsively readable, The Headmaster's Wife stands as a moving elegy to the power of love as an antidote to grief. "A truly remarkable novel, I read the second half of The Headmaster's Wife with my mouth open, my jaw having dropped at the end of the first half. Thomas Christopher Greene knows how to hook a reader and land him." --Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls "An accomplished and artful storyteller, Greene has surprises in store as he unspools a plot that becomes as poignant as it is unpredictable." --Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed "Greene's genre-bending novel of madness and despair evokes both the predatory lasciviousness of Nabokov's classic, Lolita, and the anxious ambiguity of Gillian Flynn's contemporary thriller, Gone Girl (2012)." --Booklist
Taylor Antrim’s novel is a darkly comic, clear-eyed look at hidden worlds whose complexities and rules can be understood only from inside: the insular hothouse of boarding school, the thorny dynamics between father and son, and the self-delusion of blind ideological commitment. Dyer Martin, a new history teacher at the prestigious Britton School, arrives in the fall ready to close the door on the failures and disappointments of his past: a disastrous first job, a broken relationship, and acute uncertainty about his future. James, a lonely senior, just wants to make it through his last year unscathed, avoiding both the brutal hazing of dorm life and the stern and unforgiving eye of his father, the school’s politically radical headmaster, Edward Wolfe. Soon, however, both Dyer and James are inescapably drawn into Wolfe’s hidden agenda for Britton, as the headmaster orders Dyer to set up and run a Model UN Club for students. As the United States moves steadily toward a conflict with an increasingly hostile North Korea—whose pursuit of nuclear technology is pushing the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon—Wolfe’s political fervor begins to consume him, and he sets in motion a plan that will jeopardize his job, his school, and even the life of his own son. With precisely controlled, deceptively subtle storytelling, The Headmaster Ritual is an insightful and captivating examination of the halting, complicated course young men must chart to shake off the influence of fathers—and father figures—while refining their convictions about the world and their place in it.
