Serendipitous Music Teacher

1977 Student Teacher

As a new graduate in 1977, my plan was to be hired as a Kindergarten teacher.  This was directly attributable to my awesome practice teaching experience with Donna Hutton at DM Eagle.  As it turns out I was hired at DM Eagle to teach a 5/6 split, and did so for 5 years.  When the opportunity to teach grade 3 within the building came up, I jumped at the chance.  Surprisingly, teaching grade 3 turned out not to be my bag.  I didn't hate it, but by then teaching grade 5 had become (and still is) my absolute favourite homeroom to teach.

1983/84 - nice moustache eh?

During my first year of teaching grade 3, I had the experience of having George Merrett as my acting principal.  He was replacing a principal who was off on medical leave and this was George's first principalship.  (Years later at AV Graham, George was again my principal.  After all these years I still admire his leadership style and he remains one of my favourite principals.)  One day George pulled me aside and asked if I had ever considered administration.  I replied no.  He told me that I should consider it because I'd make a good one.  He continued to "work on me" during the school year.  The following year at DME, we had a fairly ineffectual principal.  George's encouragement was still resonating in me so I took his advice... I started my Masters in Education, a prerequisite for the Principal's Course, and made a transfer to AV Graham in order to get intermediate experience.

It was 1984 and there I was at AVG with a grade 5 home room (bonus!), teaching grade 7 rotary history (intermediate experience) and working on my Masters (more schooling).  I was on my way towards being an administrator.  In 1988 I began helping out the music teacher, Alison Rosznyai, by playing bass guitar for the school's Travel Band.  Lots of fun.  And then it all changed.

1973 - rock and roll hippie guitar player

Alison pulled me aside one day and told me that the board had approved a year's leave for her to go to France for schooling.  The principal at the time, didn't want Alison's program to change while she was gone.  "So I told him you could do it, Rick," she told me.  "He asked me if you could play all the instruments and I told him of course you could."  Now,  Alison knew that I had gotten stuck playing baritone in grades 9 & 10 and could play the recorder that I had learned at the faculty of Education, but that was my total experience with written music and band instruments.  My moxie to that point had been as a self-taught rock and roll hippie guitar player.  "So what?  You can do it," she continued, "Go see him, tell him you can play the instruments, and then learn how."

So that's what I did.  That summer I took home a flute, clarinet, sax, trumpet, trombone, and tuba and taught myself how to play and read music for them.  And that's how a teacher with a BSc in biology and a BA in psychology serendipitously fell into teaching music.

So what happened to becoming a principal?  Was it just a pipe dream?  No, but I think the process provided me with a reality check.  Even though I believed I would have made a good principal, I came to the realization that I didn't become a teacher in order to give up teaching to become a non-teaching supervisor.  I wanted to teach.  And I discovered I wanted to teach music.

In hindsight, there was no other way that I could have become a music teacher, barring the above circumstances and people.  Most of my life appears to have been directed by circumstance - not to be confused with luck.  Was it destiny?  Fortune?  Lot?  Fate?  No, I don't think so.  I still had the freedom to make choices.  I believe it has been more eventuality than kismet.  Conditions beyond my control, people who have come into my life, and situations that I could never hope to have created, have all conspired to shape me.  Of that I am truly grateful.  And as I am now being similarly shepherded towards the next chapters in my life, I pray that I choose wisely.