| Our next interview is with our longest serving teacher! We bring you... The Gill Interview Our third interview in our series is with Gill and at the end of the holidays I went to her home for a chat. I found out that her full name is Gillian (with a G) Abernethy. I was told very clearly to make sure her name was spelt correctly � please!! Sitting on the deck watching the interview was her black and white cat, Monty. He has a little bit of black on his chin which looks exactly like a neatly trimmed goatee. His full name is Montgomery, although he�s only called that when he's been naughty. Gill decided on that name because� well, because she liked it. I guess that�s as good a reason as any! Monty�s favourite activities include sleeping, eating and bird watching. He was an extremely good rat catcher in his prime, sometimes bringing his catch up under the deck for Gill to find. Usually she found and disposed of them although she missed one once and by the time she found it, it was very� ahhh, �ripe� is probably the most appropriate term. Gill�s hobbies include eating out and going to the theatre. She loves the whole experience of a live show as opposed to going to the movies. Her absolute favourite hobby is travel; she adores it, and who doesn�t?! Now she is looking for more money and time with which to indulge her passion. She also mentioned the gym but was hesitant about whether she enjoyed it. Suffice to say she goes. Period. Gill also reads a lot. She likes the Little Women series by Louisa Alcott and is particularly enjoying The Cross Stitch series, although she is waiting for Jill to lend her the next book in the series (after Jill gets it back from Kerry�! Obviously it�s a good series to read!). Another of Gill�s passions is doing as little as possible in the holidays. And don�t we all share that particular passion!? Her favourite types of music are Rock �n Roll from the 60�s, Country and Western and some classical (mainly Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Dvo?�k � and don�t we all know how to spell those�!). Gill thinks autumn is the best season of the year. Mainly because it has cool mornings and evenings while the days are still warm and sunny. She also thinks the trees are absolutely beautiful. I asked her if there was anyone she would really like to meet. After some thought she decided Tutenkhamun would have been interesting � but even Gill isn�t that old! Gill�s first job was in fact going to Teachers Training College to train. Believe it or not you got paid to go in those days! So why did she choose teaching as a career? It certainly wasn�t for the money, working conditions or holidays! Gill thinks it�s the role modeling she saw. The good teachers inspired her to think that she could do that job � and the others made her think she could do a whole lot better! She actually wanted to be a teacher since she was at Intermediate school � which was a surprise to her parents because she never seemed too keen to go when she was a student! Haven�t we all experienced that feeling!? If you don�t already know, Gill has been at Green Bay School foreeeeeever! She started there after living and working overseas. As to what she really likes about the school, she says it�s the people (well that goes without saying� but I will say it again anyway!). We had an interesting chat about the children she has taught, along with their parents that she taught � so that proves she�s been at our school a long time! She has taught all the different levels of our school from Year 0 to Year 6. She thinks that each Year level has something nice about it but particularly likes teaching Year 3/4 (Brenda please take note!) And what would Gill like to have done if she hadn�t gone into teaching? Again, Gill gave this a bit of thought before deciding on interior design. She likes the idea of giving input in designing and furnishing other peoples� homes, but NOT on Changing Rooms. One of Gill�s many memorable (if not always shareable) experiences was finally going for her big OE when she went to Britain to travel and work. It took six weeks to get to Britain because she went by ship. It was cheaper than plane in those days. (Don�t bother trying to work out how long ago that was thank you.) Finally I decided I had enough inside information about Gill. I left for my lunch after thanking her for her time and saying a quick goodbye to Monty who by this stage had decided I was safe to ignore and was curled up in his cat box sleeping. Return to the top of the page... |
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| Loosely translated... 'Stand tall, live life' |
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| Celebrity Profile... Term 4 2002 |
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