My story is in no way all sweetness and light, cute and slushy. It's earthy, gritty and heartbreaking, yet also rewarding,challenging, life-changing and vital. Kath Padgett was a naive, newly qualified graduate teacher of modern languages just as Dawn were topping the charts with 'Knock Three Times,' Spangles were the sweets of choice and orange miniskirts with shoes from Freeman, Hardy & Willis all the rage. This is the tale of those teaching years ...the characters and dark humour, the rawness, deprivations and instilling of hope as much as education. Sharing a social history of the time - including original letters received from parents - Kath deals with playground tragedy, first foreign trips and staff room politics, emerging on a career path that saw her ultimately spend 46 years as a teacher. I never taught anywhere other than Yorkshire, but those formative years were my grounding, as empowering as they are poignant.