Janet (McLellan) Stewart
I attended Tealing Primary School from August 1944, aged five, until 1951 when I left, aged twelve. The head teacher was Mrs Elizabeth Hill who taught primaries five, six and seven. Primaries one to four were taught by Miss Cant. The number of children varied during the year, when their fathers took a "fee" to work on another farm or in another parish. In the same way, new children regularly came in to the school from outside the parish. The number of children in each primary was usually five or six.
Our daily routine was the same throughout the year, but in the summer days we were allowed outdoors in the playing field for drawing and nature study lessons. Most of the children had school dinners, which were cooked in the school kitchen by Mrs McKay and served in the dining hall, a wooden building which still exists today. We were also given a small bottle of milk to drink each day. My long-held memory of the school is of the huge coal fire in the big classroom, surrounded by frozen bottles of milk thawing and of the smell of wet woollen gloves drying by the fire.
(Janet went on to work in a day nursery and then left to train as an enrolled nurse. She still lives in the village with her husband Fred).