VALETE
VA LE TE
expanded as demand increased. He was also in charge of the 2nd XI football team and this too enjoyed many a successful run. Though the occasion when they lost a key match having played the entire game with 12 players on the pitch is best forgotten. Another job he thoroughly enjoyed was teaching evening classes at Wandsworth Prison. This he did for many years, managing to enthuse the inmates in the finer points of sculpture in wood. Though he does remember one lad insisting that he had ended up in the wrong class and could Geoff give him some tips on digging tunnels and doing the pole vault. By this time Geoff was also studying for a BA degree with the Open University. He researched aspects of design, education and emerging technologies, in particular, the consequences for society of using electronic communication and a new
harsh baptism for a new teacher but a marvellous opportunity to toughen up and work with some inspirational staff. He maintains that his first salary promotion was a reward for making a replacement wooden ear for the Headmaster’s rocking horse and for being a regular member of the staff ‘breaking up fights’ rapid reaction force. During this time he was also teaching evening classes to adults in Merton. One memorable moment was when a very elderly lady insisted that for her first project she wanted to make a violin. Geoff tactfully advised her to go and make a towel rail instead. At age 26 he moved to the London Borough of Sutton as a Head of Department. As it turned out, a very timely move that caught perfectly the wave of enthusiasm for a new subject in schools called Design and Technology. His direct style produced the results and his D&T department
GEOFFREY RUTTER
Terry Walsh
G eoffrey Edward Rutter was born on October 18th 1951. A grammar school boy, he was educated in Staffordshire, and in 1970 joined Shoreditch Teacher Training College in Surrey, on a site that subsequently became part of Brunel University. Shoreditch specialized in producing teachers of, what was later to become, Design and Technology. In those days all students studied two subjects and in 1973 Geoff qualified as a teacher of D&T with Games and PE. For the first five years of his career he worked in the London Borough of Merton in what he describes as a school with challenges. It was a
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