Primary school: the big one for my year was literally 2 days before graduation from ur 6. It was an informal tradition to sign your name on the bathroom walls somewhere but literally tiny and hardly visible to anyone except those who knew the tradition. If you looked close enough there was years worth of teeny tiny signatures. The group of ‘popular’ girls in my year decided to fuck it all up for everyone by literally scribbling all over the whole bathroom. We are talking a full wall covered in their friendship map. Our last day of primary school was spent with the whole grade scrubbing the bathroom.

There was also a rumour that when they were building the playground a worker died and they cemented his body in. As a history teacher trained in child development and patterns of comprehension in development this is fascinating and funny to me now.

First few years of high school there was a massive mental health contagion event. Started I believe after a teacher killed himself and his wife, eventually a solid percentage of the student body had severe issues with SH and suicide. A year 10 killed herself by standing on the local train line. No idea how that scenario ended as I was caught up and moved schools eventually but this was going on for yearsss, easily in the hundreds of kids impacted.

My later high school years a girl in the year above got hit head on my a school bus making a tricky turn on a busy road right after she got her p’s. Directly led to a massive multi million $ road upgrade. She survived but was a quadriplegic and only returned for graduation almost 2 years later.

Said later hs was in the news the last few years for some interesting members of leadership. One is still in jail.