Jenny Mallett (my standard 2 teacher)

One of my favourite and most influential teachers at St Georges was beautiful Jenny Mallett.

Jenny was a veritable force of nature.  A large woman with a booming, strident voice, she always carried a big wooden ruler that she would rap against the wall to make a loud noise if she was angry or wanted everyone to be quiet.  But she never once hit anyone with it.  I was scared of her to start, but soon I began to realise that under the tough exterior, there was an extremely caring, affirming and wonderful person.  As someone else once said, "We all got to experience that growl at times, but inside Jenny was the biggest marshmallow filled with love."  She was the kind of person you felt you could confide in and you could always rely on her to give you gentle words of encouragement and honest feedback.  But woe and betide if you misbehaved or made her lose her temper.  She had a very low tolerance for laziness or bullying or serial misbehaving.

When I was 9, I had Jenny as my class teacher and I loved being in her class except for Fridays when we would conduct one of her dreaded mental tests.  Jenny would shout out "times table questions" in rapid succession and we would have to write the answers as quickly as we could in to keep up.  And you certainly didn't want to get more than a few wrong or you would be in big trouble.

Jenny taught swimming too and her strident voice would boom out across the pool as she stood, bouncing on the diving board, giving instructions to the swimmers.  The more excited or upset Jenny got, the more she would bounce and we often anticipated her bounces becoming sufficient to launch her large frame into the pool.  But it never happened while I was there.  However it was rumoured that a few years previously, Jenny had got so upset with a student who would not follow instructions that she had leapt off her perch into the water below with a mighty splash and dunked the poor chap.  This was a school legend and I very much doubt it ever actually happened.

Some treasured memories of Jenny

• Jenny organising the bi-annual school plays like Oliver and Tom Sawyer.  She directed each play and was a logistical genius, organising and facilitating every little thing to the tiniest detail.
• Going to squash every Friday out in Goodwood.  Jenny would drive the bus and then organise the matches. The student who won each week was rewarded with a delicious, cool drink of power-aid.
• Jenny as the head of my school house (Shaw) and wanting to make her proud at school galas and athletic sports days.  I remember her wonderful exuberance when I broke the high jump record and when I won 4 cups in one year for high jump and long jump (first place in my age group and in the age group above me.)
• How Jenny loved sport and her coaching of the  Under 9 rugby (the barefoot league as it was known.)  I really enjoyed rugby though I wasn't very good at it to start.  According to mum, I used to stand on the field and suck my fingers.  Later on, however, I got better and won an award for most improved rugby player.
• Jenny's wonderful and distinctive belly laugh. She had such an exuberance for living.
• Jenny's mum who worked in the library.  She was such a warm and lovely person - I think that's where Jenny got her warmth from.
• Jenny's brother David who coached us in rugby in later years.  He went on to become one of South Africa's most successful coaches of all time, inspiring the national rugby team to an unprecedented number of successive victories.
• At dad's funeral in 1995 (17 years after school), I kept it together until after the service, when Jenny came to give me her condolences and I burst into tears and had a beautiful cry in her full bodied embrace.
  

In 1999, Jenny died young at age 48.  She went diving and had a aneurism or something like that. It was such a sad day when I heard of her passing.  I just couldn't imagine the world and especially the world of St Georges without her powerful presence. She was larger than life and enriched the life of her students in so many way. If there is such a thing as heaven, she is one of the first people I will look up and get a hug from.