?We had a special goodbye assembly last Thursday and almost everyone in the hall was in tears,? said Gillian Tucker. ?Some of the children I hadn?t even taught, so I think it was contagious. It was a very emotional assembly that we had.?

During the assembly a number of students and former students gave tributes including one person that Mrs. Tucker taught in the late 1950s. This former student described Mrs. Tucker as ?stern but also loving, compassionate and gentle?.

At the end of the school day, as Mrs. Tucker was helping her students pack up to go home, so the Royal Gazette spoke with some of her current students.

?My teacher is nice,? said Keonnae Smith, 8. ?I am going to miss her.?

Victoria Ledo, 8, said, ?Mrs. Tucker is a great teacher to us. She lets us have parties and she lets us have activities.?

?She is friendly and nice,? said Tre Caines, 8. ?I am going to miss her.?

Although it?s good to retire, Mrs. Tucker hopes to come back sometimes as a substitute teacher.

?I often say to my husband, ?how many jobs are there where when you leave home you know you are going to be greeted with hugs and kisses when you get to work? Some of the students come running up for a hug in the morning. It is so nice.?

Mrs. Tucker trained in Canada, and lived and taught there for 15 years. She returned to Bermuda in 1988 and has been teaching at Gilbert Institute since 1992.

?I didn?t really choose teaching,? said Mrs. Tucker. ?When I left Berkeley I wasn?t sure what I was going to do. While at school I had indicated that I might want to do teaching when we were talking about careers. After graduation from the Berkeley Institute I received a letter saying I had been appointed as an assistant teacher. Initially, I wanted to be a secretary. In those days, you were a nurse, a teacher or a secretary. There weren?t really a lot of options for women.?

She accepted the post and found that she loved teaching and working with children, particularly younger ones.

?Teaching is very rewarding,? said Mrs. Tucker. ?To see the children learning and to see a child who may have come into the class very shy and retiring and then become outgoing and confident. My favourite age is seven, because they are still innocent and haven?t yet become cocky. You can see them starting to change at eight or nine years old. They?re fun at other ages, but I like seven.?

Mrs. Tucker said she has seen the teaching profession change during her almost five decades of education.

?When I first started it was a matter of the teacher being at the front of the room telling the children what to do and the children doing it,? she said. ?The children seem to take more of a responsibility for their learning. They are more independent in their learning. You can give them a task and they will just go with it. Children definitely question more. It is a good thing, because if they have a question about something why not ask and find out the answer??

She said today?s classroom atmosphere is a far cry from the one she grew up in.

?When I was growing up, you just sat there and did what the teacher told you to do,? she said. ?I can remember that I was afraid to raise my hand and ask a question for fear I would be chastised or shouted at.?

With her own experiences in mind, Mrs. Tucker always tries to make her classroom non-threatening and open to different ideas.

?You make a classroom non-threatening by listening to what the children have to say,? she said. ?You try not to say, ?no, that?s not right?. You say, ?that is very interesting. Maybe we will come back to that line of thought?.?

She said classrooms are now more geared towards individual learning styles.

?You try to teach the children to their learning style,? she said. ?Some children are hands on so you will make sure you have materials they can use. Some children are visual and some children are auditory learners. They learn best by hearing. You try to accommodate all of those different learning styles.

?I find that teachers are now more willing to let children take more responsibility for their learning. It seems to be a matter of just bringing it out of the child. Kids are very smart. Teachers give a topic to them, and have them explore it.?

Mainstreaming children with special needs and learning difficulties has also become more common in recent years.

?I feel that mainstreaming is a good thing if the child is fitting in with the class and not being overly disruptive,? Mrs. Tucker said.

?If a child is being very disruptive, a school like Dame Marjorie Bean Academy might be more appropriate. If the child can fit in and work along with the para-professional, then that is fine, because it teaches the other children how to deal with someone with special needs.?

Mrs. Tucker said she didn?t have a lot of words of wisdom for teachers coming up behind her.

She did say, ?you have to have lots of patience, and you need to be open minded and listen to what the children have to say.?

Mrs. Tucker and her husband have a blended family of four children and six grandchildren.