My teacher, Mrs Keizer had a heart of gold
Special Features
February 22, 2013

My teacher, Mrs Keizer had a heart of gold

Fri Feb 22, 2013

by Shirley Dias-Spycalla

What can I say when my heart is broken? I received the sad news on the 19th February and immediately it was though the sun had ceased to shine. Many adults find they have that one teacher among others who meant the world to them, who helped mould their characters and showed them right from wrong. To me, that one teacher was Mrs Keizer.{{more}}

A disciplinarian, she also had a heart of gold. In fact, she almost (but not quite) made me feel I wanted to be a teacher too!

A year or so before our volcano started erupting, Mrs Keizer came to Montserrat on Government business and came to see me at our beach bar at Barton Bay, Plymouth, where I was helping my husband, Lou. What a lovely surprise that was, as I hadn’t seen her since I was 17. We invited her to dinner the next evening and we had such fun. Despite my desperate hand signals below the tablecloth, she regaled Lou with naughty things I’d done in school, including singing a terrible calypso about the headmistress of the day and using salt to make a cake instead of sugar. Needless to say, I failed cookery. It wasn’t funny back then, because I had to stay after school and write 500 lines!

I’ll miss Mrs Keizer very much. It is my greatest wish that I will meet Mrs Keizer, my favourite teacher, some day in the future in the presence of our Holy Father. You may be sure, I’ll have to behave myself then!