Another Kick at the Can

Another Kick at the Can

For this, my final year, I am getting a second kick at the can to teach grade 8 subjects - and I'm truly glad that I am.

Last year, for the first time in my career, I was assigned grade 8 Science, History, Geography, Health and Physical Education.  I was not happy with this assignment.  "For heaven's sake, I have two years to go.  Just leave me alone and let me teach what I love - Music!"  However, for the students, this was a far better setup than having me teach 4 other classes of junior music, and this grade 8 class having 4 different teachers for these subjects.

 A year ago, I was scrambling to get all those new grade 8 lessons ready in time and really didn't feel that I had done a bang-up job until well after Christmas.  I had many, "If I had known that, I would have done it differently." moments.  This year is truly different because I now know the content.  I know what the important information is, what activities were interesting to the kids, and more importantly, what didn't work.

Last year was eerily similar to my first year of teaching - except, in contrast to then, I had many years of teaching experience and classroom systems in place that had yet to be developed 35 years ago.  Though it was similar, it was in no way as traumatic.

So, even though I would much rather be teaching full time music for this last year, I am, believe it or not, very excited to have been given these same assignments one more time.  Another kick at the can to get these subjects right.  "Yay!  Olly olly oxen free!!"

Elder Teachers

I remember going to my first Ontario Public School Men's Teachers Association (OPSMTF) meetings in the late '70's.  Yup, in those days our Federations were separated by sex; there also being the Federation of Women Teachers Association (FWTAO).  I recall looking around the room at my fellow teachers, all of them older than I was.  Many of the executive were principals and vice-principals, as they had yet to be legislated out of union affiliation by the government.  I looked up to these teachers as the elders of my occupation.  They were not only experienced teachers, but they understood the strength that collective bargaining gave us.  Many of these teachers had resigned their teaching jobs in December 1973 and participated in a cross-Ontario wildcat strike that set the stage for Bill 100 which would come into effect in 1975.  Bill 100 would give teachers, for the first time, the right to strike and the right to include working conditions in their collective agreements.

Bill 115, passed by the Ontario legislature this September 2012, removes teachers from the Labour Relations Act, outlaws any teacher strike action, and imposes a non-negotiable contract.  This action actually doesn't affect me much.  I'm all set.  I will retire at the end of this year relatively unscathed by this action, but I am not going out without fighting for the future of those teachers, younger, and more vulnerable than I am.  35 years ago, senior teachers did as much for me.  I am now at the end of my career and I am not going to let this action go unchallenged.  After all, I now bear the standard of the elder teacher.

You Never Know

You Never Know

I ran into a mother of an ex-student recently.  I had taught her daughter 30+ years ago at DM Eagle.  She proceeded to tell me how much her daughter had loved grade 5.  "But do you know what has stuck with her for all these years?".  I didn't know.  "What you did when Jaime M's father died."

Jamie had been a student in my class when his father died suddenly.  Jamie was absent for many days.

 "When Jamie returned to your class," she continued, "the class was wild - paper airplanes flying, students out of their seats, lots of noise... but you were at the back of the room with Jamie - oblivious to it all.  You were where you needed to be.  This made a lasting impression on my daughter."  I thanked her for sharing the story and asked her to say hi for me.

But you know what?  I don't remember that incident at all.  It just goes to show, that in all you do, in all your interactions, you never know what others will take away simply by watching you do what needs to be done.

I Could Never Do That Now

D.M Eagle, Years 1-5:  Reading, writing, math, spelling, grammar, phys ed, health, social studies, science...  How to keep it all interesting?  Yeah, I had readers and spellers and math books (really, how interesting can these actually be?) but I had no science, social studies, or health texts.  To teach a topic in one of these areas, I used brainstorming (not much of a storm, really, if I'm the only one) and web diagrams to arrive at subtopics.  I then researched the information (no Internet in the 1970's) and created the activities.  It was tedious and time consuming.  Ontario curriculum-based texts and usable Ministry of Education curricula were years away.  Because of my background, the activities where I was able to be the most creative were centred around science.

I returned to the University of Windsor and visited my zoology professor where I managed to get a dead, in a bag of formaldehyde, weasel that we dissected to see the musculature, internal organs, and circulatory and skeletal systems.

The students who chose to prick themselves, used antigens A and B to determine their own blood types.

Space science allowed us to study Newton's 1st and 3rd laws of motion, do lots of cool activities and use air rifle CO2 cartridges to create "rockets".

We made ice cream with a manual-crank ice cream freezer (I love yard sales) and learned how ice at zero degrees, plus salt, can take heat away from a can of cream and cause it to freeze at temperatures well below freezing.

When we studied electricity, I brought in a car ignition coil so the students could shock themselves with 30,000 volts of electricity.  During this electricity unit, a student brought in a cattle prod.  He explained to the class that it was used to get the cows to move where you wanted them to go.  He then asked if I would like to feel the shock.  It ran on D batteries.  How much punch could it have?  I agreed and told him he could press it against my thigh, through my pants.  I found out how much punch it could have - holy crap!  Of course THEN he explained that cows have very thick hides.  I think I limped for an hour.

John's family (yup, cattle prod kid) had a cattle farm and butcher shop on site, so we took a field trip to his farm as part of food studies in Health.  We saw the cattle and the barns and learned about their care, all narrated by John, and then the butcher showed us how he butchers a side of beef.  When we were done and we went outside, there, in all its glory, was this large farm tractor with a flatbed trailer piled with bales of hay. John remembered from class discussions that I had once driven a tractor and cut weeds as a summer job.  "Mr. Farrer," he asked expectantly, "Would you like to take our class for a hay ride?  I've got it all set up."  The look on John's face, the reaction of the other kids to his suggestion, the large farm machine offered for me to drive...... what else could I say?  My class piled onto the trailer, the hay bales were cut open and we were off.  I drove out of the farm and onto the county roads, hay flying and kids screeching...... best class trip ever!!!   I could never do that now.

I Can't Do This

     September 9, 1977, the end of my first week of teaching my very first class - a 5/6 split.  I had been up every night, long past midnight, for 4 days trying to prepare enough work to keep one group busy long enough to teach the other. I had no systems, no routines, no units prepared, useless, airy-fairy curriculum documents, and tons of marking.

      I got picked up after work that first Friday, stepped into the passenger seat and burst into tears.  "I can't do this," I blubbered.  "I'm exhausted. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to fix this."  I continued to sob.  "I have to quit.".  We drove along, my ex-wife calmly reassuring me that I could do it.  "Don't quit. Just do one more day. Just one day at a time. It will get easier."

     And it did - slowly, dauntingly, exhaustingly, arduously (you get the idea).  It got better.  I'm very thankful that I didn't quit that first Friday 35 years ago.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  A career of a thousand weeks begins with just one more day.

Donna Hutton

     I didn't always want to be a teacher.  Many teachers did have an influence on me through the years.  Mr. LaMare (I hope I spelled that correctly) my grade 7 science teacher at Oakwood School in South Windsor (who later became a high school principal) is the reason I went to university for Biology.  After getting my BSc I discovered that with only a bachelor degree any job prospects would entail, to a great extent, washing test tubes.  No field of study interested me enough to continue on to a graduate degree, so I went back to school for another year and added a BA (psychology) to the end of my name.  Then again, a year later, there was that same question, "Now what?"

     I was playing in a band at the time with Danny Bonk and he had just finished teachers college, so I figured, what the heck, applied to the Faculty of Education and got accepted.  As part of the prerequisites I had to go and observe at a school for one week .  I knew the principal at D.M Eagle through a mutual friend and so I called him up and arranged to observe there. He told me he had the perfect teacher in mind for me, Donna Hutton.  Donna taught Kindergarten in the morning and grade 4 in the afternoon.  After the very first day of observing I bounded through my front door and announced "I love this!  This is what I want to do!".

    The final part of teacher training required a placement in a school for a month.  On a whim, I scanned the list of associate teachers who had agreed to take on student teachers that session... and saw "Mrs. Donna Hutton".  I went to the Faculty of Ed office and put in a request to be assigned to her.  (I found out later that Donna had never before, nor ever did after, put her name in to have a student teacher.)  That month at D.M. Eagle, refining my teaching skills under Donna's direction, was the most instructional of my whole year of teacher training.

     It so happened that D.M. Eagle's enrolment was increasing and they would required two more teachers that coming September.  Donna went to the principal (in those days principals hired the teachers for their building) and told him, "If you don't hire this kid you're crazy."

     I didn't always want to be a teacher but now, I couldn't imagine doing anything other than teaching.  Thank you, Donna.

     Footnote:  My wife, Connie, long before we were dating, was working as a supply teacher at Belle River Public School and Donna Hutton, having retired from teaching, was volunteering in the library.  Donna, once again, went to a principal and told him that he'd better not let this crackerjack of a teacher get away.  Connie was hired.  It was years later that we discovered the significance Donna had had in both of us becoming employed teachers.  So, what else could we do, but invite Donna and John Hutton to our wedding.