Stories

Cathy Scott, former SIDE teacher librarian, reflects on the way Headmasters and Principals in WA distance education, beginning with Clarence Eakins, have valued school libraries in improving student literacy. She talks about some ways in which the SIDE school library has used information technology to promote literacy through online teaching and resources.

I am Helene Piper (nee Raffan) and my family has had continued contact with the Western Australian distance education schools since 1941 when I studied Correspondence Lessons for 6 months before going to the local Winchester School, a one teacher school 3 miles from our farm. As was common in those days, when I was in what is Year 8 in 1947, I did Correspondence Lessons again as did my sister Joan in 1950 while based at the Winchester School.

I, my twin sister and older brother first began Correspondence School lessons in the early 1960’s whilst our family was living on a pastoral station in the Gascoyne.

I commenced school in 1937 at Walgoolan School and did about six months there before the family moved to Dalwallinu and I went onto Correspondence lessons with my mother supervising. Mother had had some teaching experience – she had been through teachers’ training college and then spent a year or two in one-teacher schools in the Dalwallinu district before changing her career to nursing.