Description:One of Swynnerton’s best loved characters, Miss A Sanders (back row centre holding a bouquet), Headmistress of the County Primary School, left the small village school for the last time in July. If you recognise anyone else in the photograph, please contact us.
Miss Sanders declined to say goodbye to the children in the buildings, instead, a coach arrived at the gates of the village school after lunch and in place of the usual end-of-term inattention to lessons, the whole school went off for the afternoon to Miss Sanders’ home, at Ashley Heath. There surrounded by her charges, she received bouquets and a purse containing the personal contributions of the children as a parting gift.
Miss Sanders who came to the district from Watford, near Rugby, had devoted most of her life to teaching which she regarded as a vocation rather than a profession, and the qualities of what is perhaps the most important of the vocations, patience, understanding, wisdom and integrity she possessed in abundance. There were few children who had passed through her hands, who had not benefited from her kindly understanding.
In one direction, at least, Swynnerton School achieved a distinction under Miss Sanders, brought about solely from her love of hearing children’s voices. With Miss M Jones, who had taught at the school for 16 years, choral verse speaking was undertaken as a regular part of the curriculum and the results had been much in evidence at musical festivals in the district.
This article was published in the Stone Guardian on Saturday 30 July 1955.