Margaret Buchanan, who has spent her whole career at Warwick Primary School in Wellingborough, said she started using guinea pigs in the classroom after reading as a trainee teacher that they were good teaching aids.
When she started out, Mrs Buch
anan lived in Kettering so she used to get on the train with the guinea pigs in a shoebox on her lap.
At Wellingborough, she would get on a bicycle she kept at her friend's house and cycle to the school, in Dulley Avenue, with her pets in the basket on her bike.
She recalls one morning when the lid blew off the shoebox and a plucky guinea pig hopped out and scampered across Doddington Road. Luckily Mrs Buchanan was able to rescue it.
She said: "I remember reading that guinea pigs can be handled as soon as they are born and that they are born with all their fur which makes them wonderful for children to hold."
Mrs Buchanan estimates that she has had about 10 guinea pigs in the time she has been at the school and very often the new replacement would get the same name as its predecessor.
She said: "I'm a bit like the Vicar of Dibley in that if the last one was called Snuffles, the next one would be called Snuffles. They are great stress-busters – the children will stroke them to help them calm down or if a couple of pupils had a row, I would say, go and pick some grass for the guinea pigs. By the time they'd fed it to them, they'd be friends again."
When Mrs Buchanan started at the school, pupils were still using pen
and ink pots and there was great excitement if they managed to get a black and white film.
She has taught three generations of the same family and started a guitar club. One of her favourite memories is the day the club met for tea in her back garden and they all played their instruments. She said: "The flexibility in teaching has gone. I remember a pupil once bringing in some fungus and we spent the rest of the week studying it.
The rules are more laid out now."
