Mrs Meakins
Mrs. Meakins provided her own supply of dustless chalk, and
kept her own blackboard duster to clean the board. If some other teacher had
used here classroom (Room 408, from memory) for teaching, and used *other*
chalk, someone else would have to clean the board, and Mrs. Meakins would stand
at the back of the room, as far as possible from the dust (which would make her
sneeze).
Pencils used in Mrs. Meakins' class had to be sharpened to a point, sharp enough
to hurt when you tested it with a fingertip.
Learn by heart: x equals negative b (pause) plus or minus the square root of
(pause) b squared minus 4 a c (pause) *all* over 2 a (for finding the roots of a
quadratic equation)
"Stop rolling your eyes like a dead duck in a thunderstorm.."
Fred Tryster to Mrs. Meakins (paraphrasing Shakespeare):
Why art thou patient, woman?
Thou shouldst be mad!
And I, to make thee mad,
do mock thee thus.
Stamp, rave and fret,
that I may sing and dance.
Mrs Meakins described calculus as black magic in Form 3, but by Form 4 she considered us mature enough to start learning it.
One day she named Leon Bach "Euclid 1", Fred Tryster "Euclid 2", and Steven Prawer "Euclid 3". Or maybe it was the reverse. Does anyone remember why?
"Mathematicians are lazy". This was the principle Mrs Meakins always told us to use in trying to find the simplest way to solve a problem. Not all of us seem to have absorbed this fully, as in a later year, I remember Mr Watt describing Naomi Medding's thought processes regarding a problem she had handed in: "How many ways are there to solve this? Now let me find the most complicated way and use it". (Fred Tryster)
Does anyone remember practicing how to draw a parabola or a sine curve?
At one point Mrs. Meakins wanted to establish a MENSA group within her class.
She felt that there would have been at least 10 students who could have achieved
MENSA membership (based on IQ). Mrs. Meakins was herself a member of MENSA.
So this is why Steve Ehrenreich was kicked out of Maths 1 day!!
If you can add memories of Mrs Meakins please email them to the Webmaster