Shona Campbell
(with input from younger sisters Kirsteen and Ailsa)
I attended Tealing Primary School from 1981 to 1988. When I started I was in Mrs Kohler's class and the school had 50 pupils. By the time I reached primary five, the fall in numbers meant that Tealing had become a two-teacher school and Mr Sturrock taught me for my last three years. By 1988, there were only 33 pupils.
I remember the school getting its first computer, a BBC (I don't actually remember ever using it!), the inter-school sports days with Auchterhouse and Strathmartine, school ski trips to Braemar, and the tuck shop "pickled onion space invaders and a cola quenchy cup please". In 1988, to celebrate Dundee's 800th anniversary, we had a year long project on Dundee. The masterpiece being a mural/collage the length of the library wall that took weeks to do, a postcard picture of Dundee from Tayport, everyone adopting their own landmark (I was lucky enough to get the big gas cylinder!). There was the garden path between the school and the School House that we had to look after. A proud moment for all of us was when we won the Dolphin Trophy, two years running for the most swimming badges earned per head in Scotland (or was it Dundee?).
In the autumn we would build leaf barricades in the narrow passage at the back of the dining hall. We would run and jump then build a bit higher. In the summer we played handstands in the pitch to the cry of "Forks, Knives and Carrots", would make potions at the witchy tree or play housies at the housie tree. In the winter we would play on icy slides (my rubber soles were never the best), roll snowmen and burrow tunnels in the heaps of snow left at the side of the playground by the snowploughs. When it rained we would congregate in the Sheddies. We would play "a fast train to ....... " I used to watch in rapture as the older kids swung on the rafters, then when I was a big primary 7; it was my turn to show off. It is the playground that my most vivid memories revolve around.
(Shona went on to university and is now an accountant with Deloitte in Glasgow. Her sisters are both at university).