Lim Kok Kee
Lim Kok Kee
Class of 1963. SGSS
Teacher at SGPS
I wanted to be a teacher in St Gabriel’s because I wanted to carry on the tradition. I was among the first batch of students in 1953 when the school was founded. There were just eight classes for the Primary School and two classes for the Secondary School with only eight teachers.
I was quite playful in school. When I was in Secondary 1 and 2, my classmates and I would throw a basketball down from the classroom to the basketball court as we wanted to play right after the school rang. As this was rather dangerous, the Brothers would scold us for this rash act.
When I returned to St Gabriel’s to teach, I was just an ordinary teacher who taught aesthetics. But I gained a reputation as a volleyball coach for two fantastic teams. One of my volley pupils was Mr. Glenn Bachelor, who later returned to St Gabriel’s to teach.
As a teacher, there was a “supervisor warning system” that the teachers In St Gabriel’s used. The successful system worked like this: The first teacher who knew that the supervisor had arrived would send a student to alert the other teachers. But there was one instance when it did not work. By the time the pupil had alerted the teachers, the supervisor was already sitting inside a classroom! The supervisor then “commended” the teachers on having such a good system.
Adapted from an interview by Mr. Jonathan Chen, SGPS, 2011