The longest standing member of Badock’s Wood School Miss Fitzgerald has retired this Summer after 44 years in the education sector.
Miss Fitz has to be one of the most popular members of the Southmead community, teaching generations of Southmead families during her 40 odd years of dedication at Doncaster Road School, which started all those years ago when she was a student.
Miss Fitz worked through lots of changes during her time there, one being the change from Doncaster Road School to Badock’s Wood Primary. There have been lots of staff coming and going over the years some who made very good friends with Miss Fitz and who all have their own stories to tell.
I had the pleasure of working with Teresa for almost 7 years. What a pleasure it was too, seeing the smile on the childrens’ faces each morning as she served them their first meal of the day at Breakfast Club, then again later on as she played all sorts of singing and skipping games with them at break time and lunch time.
The enjoyment the children had when staying on after school for Lego Club, Rounders, Cooking Club and many other Clubs Miss Fitz helped to run.
Walking into the office on a dull, rainy day, welcomed with several vases of freshly cut flowers placed around the reception, brightened my day! Thanks Miss Fitz it certainly did help!
On an evening out Miss Fitz is always the last one standing, she somehow would manage to make friends with almost every stranger in the building and still be the last one on the dance floor – always outdoing the young ones!
One of the best parts has got to be when we organised a celebration for the Queens 25th Birthday, we had entertainment throughout the afternoon for the children, a lovely party tea & and then ‘the Queen’ arrived at our celebration – visiting each class, dressed in her best frock, silver hair and white gloves! I don’t know anyone who could have pulled that off better, the children all loved the fact ‘the Queen’ came to visit us at Badock’s.
Any visitors to school wouldn’t leave without meeting Miss Fitz first, they would be greeted with a huge welcoming smile and a cup of tea of course.
As well as all of this she would spend hours and hours at school preparing displays at Harvest time, a magical rainforest (with sound effects!!), and making props and amazing costumes for all of the plays and performances.
There were lots of tears on the last day of term when the children found out Miss Fitz was leaving, but every child received a lovely thoughtful little gift of seeds which soon put a smile back on their faces. Badock’s won’t be the same without her there!
(More photos to follow!)
