In my first six years of primary school my studious efforts and good behaviour paid off and I always did very well at school, and enjoyed good report cards. I had great friends and classmates, but equally important to me as this peer approval was the approval of the teacher and, by extension, my mum (who also happens to be a primary school teacher, but not at our school).
For six years I succeeded – but all of this changed in my seventh and final year of primary school, when Ms Campbell became our teacher.
Unlike all the other teachers at our school, Ms Campbell was new, and so came with no reputation as to her nature or strictness. We were to be her first class, and so as we walked into our first day of P7, I was nervous but also excited about the new school year commencing.