The First Five: A Short Story Inquiry into the

The First Five:
A Short Story Inquiry into the Beginning Years of Teaching
Marc Gariépy
Department of Integrated Studies in Education
McGill University, Montréal
August 2015
A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master
of Art
© Marc Gariépy 2015
Abstract
This thesis uses narrative inquiry to explore the plight of new teachers in the Québec school system
through the eyes of the writer. The six short stories advance through time along the lines of the
researcher’s career to provide cohesion and coherence. The goal, therefore of this work is to provide a
silent sounding board for new teachers as they explore the writer’s exploits in teaching during the time of
researcher’s tenure as an ESL teacher. It is to be understood that the writer and researcher are the
same physical being but are guided by different forces. The writer seeks to tells stories and write
creatively while the researcher navigates through the tales using tenets of narrative inquiry:
Commonplaces and the Curriculum of Place. It is my hope that these stories will help new teachers to
stay in the profession and have a long and fruitful career.
Résumé
Ce mémoire de maîtrise utilise la méthodologie de l’étude des récits à fin de mener une réflexion
personnelle sur les difficultés rencontrer par les nouveaux enseignants du système scolaire québécois et
ce, à travers le yeux de l’écrivain. Les six nouvelles littéraires présentées traversent le temps en suivant
la carrière d'enseignement du chercheur. Cette ligne temporelle apporte une cohésion et une cohérence
à l’ensemble de l’oeuvre. Le but est donc d'offrir un interlocuteur silencieux aux nouveaux enseignants
pour qu’ils puissent avoir une conversation intérieure sur leurs difficultés en enseignement et celles
vécues par les personnages de l’écrivain. Il faut comprendre ici que l’écrivain et le chercheur sont la
même personne, mais ils répondent à différents critères d’écriture. L’écrivain, lui, raconte des histoires
et laisse sa créativité le guider. Le chercheur, pour sa part, encadre les récits avec les principes de
l’étude des récits: les espaces communes (​
Commonplaces​
)​
et le contenu pédagogiques des lieux
​
1
(​
Curriculum of Place​
). Je souhaite que ces nouvelles littéraires aident les nouveaux enseignants à rester
dans la profession pour qu’ils puissent avoir une longue et enrichissante carrière.
2
Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank the students, teachers, and other staff members with whom I have
worked over the years. They have lent me their stories and I am grateful. Many thanks to my friends,
colleagues and long standing ones alike, for encouraging me to keep going.
I would like to thank Dr. Mela Sarkar for believing in me when I applied to McGill and Nathalie
Denneny for writing a stunning reference letter. As well, I would like to thank all my professors at
McGill. It was a privilege to be in your classrooms and I hope that I have done justice to your teaching.
I extend my gratitude to Kimberley Sanchez-Soares for her guidance and honest criticism.
Gracias,​
Kim. To Hélène Marchildon, Virginia Parker, Pierre-France Côté, and Susie Levesque I
thank you for your comments and questions.
I can go no further without acknowledging the incredible contribution of Dr. David Dillon to my
work. Your patience, understanding, and knowledge are herculean in depth. I took you out of your
comfort zone and convinced you to follow me here. I am glad that you stayed. Thank you for the tea
sessions that were memorable, intellectually stimulating, and a lot of fun. They were a great reflection of
you as person and a mentor.
I would like to thank Teresa Strong-Wilson for helping me to truly understand narrative inquiry
and to open my mind to so many writing possibilities.
I also would like to thank Michaela Field for her editing skills and comments. Such mastery of a
language at your age is a gift. Never stray far from your love of reading and writing.
I thank my parents and cousins who took an interest in my work. My father is my number one
fan and kept me believing in myself. My mother is not a teacher by trade but she has taught me more
than she will ever know. Thanks Mom and Dad.
3
Mostly, I would like to thank Stéphanie, the love of my life. Without you chérie, this thesis
would never have been completed. Thank for letting me do this and taking care of Théo and the rest of
our lives while I was holed up in the basement writing. You are my inspiration.
And to Théodore, the greatest joy in my life, I say thank you. Thank you for being the force that
drives me to be a better person, a better teacher, and a better father. I love you, my son.
4
Table of Contents
Abstract
1
Résumé
1
Acknowledgements
3
Table of Contents
5
Introduction
7
Searching for a Methodology
Narrative Inquiry
11
12
Commonplaces
Temporality
Sociality
Place
17
17
19
20
The Curriculum of Place
Sense of time
Enskilment
Education of attention
Wayfinding
21
22
22
22
23
Short Stories
24
Catalyst
25
I’ve got the fourth
31
The whirlwind of potential violence
41
The last cattle call
47
Métro, Boulot, Dodo
54
The other side of the Desk
64
Inquiry Conclusions
Catalyst
I’ve got the fourth
The whirlwind of potential violence
76
77
80
82
5
The last cattle call
Métro, boulot, dodo
The other side of the desk
84
86
88
Summary
91
References
92
6
Introduction
“Devant l’inquiétude soulevée dans plusieurs pays par le manque d’enseignants, la question se
pose de savoir pourquoi ces derniers sont si nombreux à quitter la profession.”
(Karsenti, Collin, & Dumouchel, 2013,​
p. 550)
​
Since my first day on the job, I have really enjoyed teaching, yet I see many of my colleagues
drowning in a mess of discipline problems, lack of motivation, and general dissatisfaction with forces
beyond their control. Those people became the impetus for this thesis. I seek to lighten the emotional
load of teachers, specifically those in the burgeoning stages of their careers. I would like to help them to
accept those things that cannot be controlled mostly in relation to classroom management. The
Canadian Teachers’ Federation stated in 2004 that 30% of new teachers leave the profession within the
first five years of teaching (Karsenti et al., 2013), which lead me to question why this was, is, and will
continue to be. In the process of trying to help, I am exploring in this thesis my own emotional reactions
to events from my teaching past (either personal or shared by others) using narrative inquiry as a guide
to weave together what is real, imagined, and created to ultimately assemble a collection of short stories.
I had just begun my career as a tenured teacher, during my seventh teaching year, when I
decided to write about classroom management, since the anecdotes of my early teaching years still rang
in my ears and stung in my mind. I learned the hard way, through trial and error, what worked for me. I
looked for help from more experienced teachers and used their advice as I saw fit. I was not looking for
solutions, rather I wanted principles to guide me. I experimented with different ideas. I had some
magnanimous failures in the first few years attempting to apply the ideas I got from other teachers to suit
my personality and teaching style. It was not easy, but when I started to have more success than failure,
I decided that I might have a knack for this management stuff. I wrote a workshop entitled “the ABCs
of Classroom Management” based on the notions that one must Accept with serenity, Be the boss, and
7
Create the culture. The notions were a premise to allow me to explore themes like acceptance of
elements beyond our control (e.g. lack of parental involvement in a student’s life or ministry-level
curricula). I also tried to instill in my participants a sense of responsibility for the leadership of classes
but not at the expense of personal well-being (i.e. Be the boss but take care of yourself too.) Lastly, I
tapped into the personality of my participants and in a way, gave them permission to be themselves in
class. This would ultimately help with student-teacher relationships.
I presented my workshop at a few Speaq (Société pour le perfectionnement de l’enseignement
de l’anglais, langue seconde au Québec) and Speaq-campus (aimed at TESL students) conferences
with enormous success at first and then pitiful attendance at the end. Over time, my workshop material
had gotten stale and no longer appealed to my audience. I wanted to continue my exploration of
classroom management and its impact on teachers so I applied to McGill’s Master’s programme.
The combination of the road I had travelled as a practitioner and the guidance of my professors
at McGill have led me here.
I am an excellent classroom manager as my students and principals have attested to me or to
each other in the past. I do not intend to sound trite or obnoxious; I have worked hard on my classroom
management (CM) to get to where I am. Achieving sound management practices takes time, effort,
patience, steadfastness, creativity, and understanding. It is also at the epicentre of sound teaching
practice. “From a management perspective, a teacher’s immediate task is to gain and maintain the
cooperation of students in activities that fill classroom time” (Doyle, 1980, p. 6) My prowess in CM did
not come without many years of self-doubt, self-evaluation, reflection, and error. Many of my short
stories touch upon some facet of CM since I feel quite comfortable discussing it after having spent so
much time working on it. I believe that teachers rarely take the time to talk about CM in an open and
8
honest manner. It is a bit taboo to share stories of inadequacy and expose weakness to other teachers
and staff at a school. Hargreaves (2001) discusses the idea that teachers tend to be colleagues and
competitors simultaneously with their coworkers and as such we rarely sit and shoot the breeze about
how to improve management practice. We very readily give our opinion on a student’s despicable
behaviour or general nastiness, but we are not so forthcoming with analysing our wrongs and miscues in
management situations since "all collegial relations among teachers are a peculiar combination of
closeness and distance." (Hargreaves, 2001, p. 504) The distance is a safeguard against reproach,
criticism, and judgement. Talking about classroom management opens oneself up to all of those. CM is
like underwear in a professional setting: everyone has it but no one wants to see someone else’s or
show theirs. Writing stories as opposed to talking about CM allows me, as a writer, to initiate a
dialogue with a teacher and not be in the room. I will never hear the response but I will have started a
conversation from a safe distance for my interlocutor.
My stories are about hardship that does not make to the headlines but might cause teachers to
question their career choice. Many times in my career I have not known where to turn for answers and
found that looking inward was my best resource. After self-analysis came listening to anecdotes about
classroom activities from other teachers. I eventually became aware of the fact that there was a veil over
the stories being told; teachers coloured their anecdotes to put themselves in the best light. I have
attempted, through my narratives, to remove the veil that I have placed over myself and my practice in
these stories.
There are many reasons why a teacher might leave the profession but I am focusing on
memories of mine that caused me to question whether I was cut out to be a teacher or that left an
impression on me. Classroom management is a strength for me whereas administrative red tape and
9
organisation have often been my downfall. It is no surprise that these are discussed in my short stories. I
define CM as the initiation and development of interpersonal relationships with students and the
management of group dynamics. I believe that “the quality of teacher-student relationships is the
keystone for all other aspects of classroom management.” (Marzano & Marzano, 2003, p. 6)
10
Searching for a methodology
The first idea for my thesis was to devote myself to preaching the good word about classroom
management by conducting a series of interviews with teachers having at least 5 years of teaching
experience. I would then record their reactions to and insight into CM case studies written by me and
compile the results in an almost empirical fashion. My hope was to show how effective classroom
managers naturally follow the sound CM practices expounded upon in the reading I had done on the
subject. I began to question why it seemed so easy for some to manage a classroom and so difficult for
others. It was not a question of study or academic knowledge. It could not be. It must be due to
common practices among effective classroom managers.
I abandoned that idea since I felt that writing the equivalent of a ​
How To​
book would not serve
my purpose. I accepted that my research would have been dogmatic and not allow those for whom I
was doing it a voice in the results. In essence, they might not even find it useful or pertinent for their
particular teaching situation. I could not see how these teachers would be able to reflect on their
practice in a free and self-directed fashion with the way that I was approaching the subject. I decided
that I should look for other ways to approach the problem.
Coaching and mentoring new teachers became the best way for me to help them. I started to
read about the positive effects of mentoring on new teachers. I accepted to give workshops on
classroom management devised by the school board for new teachers. My own past workshops were
very rewarding and so through these new ones I was hoping to start conversations about CM and offer
solutions to aid new teachers in their management. I felt that this form of action research would most
benefit teachers. Again, I hit the same wall as before: my solutions did not necessarily fit the style of
11
teaching or personalities of my participants. I continued my search for a methodology that would be
more appropriate for me.
Narrative Inquiry
My third and final attempt at methodology was narrative inquiry. There is a strong connection
between teaching and narration since teachers are very often storytellers (Carter, 1993) and, as such,
we tend to communicate through anecdote. I began to write stories about teaching that would
sometimes delve into the dark and emotional side of teaching, while others would discuss my reasons
for becoming a teacher, and still others would follow a teacher through his daily routine. Although CM is
very present in what I write, there are other aspects of teaching that Narrative Inquiry has pushed me to
include. I was able to tell my anecdotes and leave the reader the responsibility of taking what he or she
deemed useful. There was no dogmatic sermon; there was no judgement on what was appropriate or
not; there was no limiting solution. There was only the author’s words and the reader’s use for them.
There is such a plethora of caveats about narrative inquiry that approaching it seems to be a
fool’s gambit. Renowned thinkers on the subject, Chambers, Clandinin, Fowler and the like, warn us all
of the pitfalls and trials of this relatively new way of research. It is to be understood that narrative inquiry
is not just telling stories (Bell, 2002; Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007; Johnson & Golombek, 2002) and
that it “differs from more traditional uses of narrative in education, that is, from didactic and strategic
uses of narrative.” (Conle, 2000, p. 50) Although the story and the artistry behind it are at the heart of
the inquiry, there must be more than just that narrative. Therein lies the dichotomy in narrative inquiry:
writing narratively (as opposed to descriptively or analytically) while researching with a specific research
objective in mind. When we teach in a magistral fashion, we often stand in front of the class and
surround knowledge with story to essentially interest our students and help them to remember the
12
material we are presenting. In much the same way, narrative inquiry allows the researcher to discuss his
or her topic using story.
Fowler warns us in a very clear way that “teachers must be careful with the stories they tell and
write.” (Fowler, 2001, p. 6) This is a message to the teacher as well as the researcher. As much as the
teacher must be aware of the impact that one story may have on his or her students, so the researcher
must be convinced of the relevance of a given story. Fowler continues her thought by reflecting upon
narrative inquiry and its place in educational research. Her fear is that those who inquire narratively do
not frame their narratives through theory sufficiently. The artful writer must be grounded by the watchful
researcher. I have relied on the concepts of “Commonplace” (Clandinin et al., 2007) and “Curriculum
of Place” (Chambers, 2008) to steer my creative writing ​
à bon port​
. Both of these were instrumental in
focusing my writing yet freeing me from the constraint of simply reporting my teaching past rather than
exploiting and exploring it.
In the aptly-named article ​
Research that matters: Finding a path with heart​
(Chambers,
2004) Chambers expounds on the postmodern interpretation of autobiography (see ​
Roland Barthes
par Roland Barthes​
for one of the first examples of this) which stipulates that memory is flawed and the
“I” is nothing more than a contrived character based on that memory. Here we may find fear and
uncertainty because we must deconstruct our memories to reconstruct them following both heart and
purpose. What I write is true to the extent to which it brings my reader a further understanding of my
research goal. It is mostly real in the realm in which I put it. I must let go of the singular notion of
absolute truth since it impedes me from achieving the goal of my research: reflection on the emotional
burden of teachers in their early years of teaching and reprieve from that very burden through
reader-writer silent discussion.
13
I was not prepared to be so autobiographical in my writing yet the veracity of my texts demands
it. “I understood what it felt like to be pressed, however gently, to remember something I did not want
to.” (Strong-Wilson, 2012, p.36) I went beyond what I deemed to be comfortable and safe. I have
exposed parts of my teaching past that I would have kept hidden had I not begun to write about it.
The beautiful Rimbaud quote: “​
Je est un autre​
” (Philosophia, 2012) evokes the idea that the
written ​
I​
and the writing ​
I​
are not the same. I am saved, in a way, by this concept. I report, create, and
imagine simultaneously, because I am not just giving an account of my past; rather, I am telling a story
from my past. Freeman discusses how the autobiographer uses artistry to “truly serve the content of his
or her life” (Clandinin ed., 2007, p. 136) and the narrative inquirer must do the same. I have taken this
further to mean that the narrative inquirer inescapably must be to some extent autobiographical and that
these notions of objectivity and reality are not necessary nor are they desired in this particular research
method. Freeman also discusses an entire human life in all of its “ambiguous, messy beautiful detail”
(Clandinin ed., 2007, p. 134) There is nothing messier in teaching that learning about how to manage a
classroom. This essential element of pedagogy that is central to my stories melds well with messy details.
It is still daunting to be steadfast in a decision to veer off the beaten track of research but it was
well worth the risk to embrace arts-based research in my case.
The advantage of narration as a form of learning is that the reader or listener takes what is
important to them and leaves what appears to be irrelevant. If we follow Bruner’s (1991) idea that “we
organize our experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative” (p. 4) we
can see that story is central to learning and human experience. The management of a classroom is tied to
the management of self and one’s emotions, so it became evident to me that I had to step toward a
14
storied version of what I intended to transmit. How my stories are to help teachers is left for the reader
to decide.
This combination of story and study might seem a likely pair but in fact it can be volatile when
they mix. Whereas the story brings the reader to a familiar place of leisure, the writer cannot allow
himself or herself to be swayed by narration at the expense of the true goal of the methodology: to
inquire into one’s subject through story. As such, the writer inescapably requires two minds: that of the
researcher, who delimits the paths on which the writer may tread and the wordsmith. The researcher
also verifies that what is at the origin of the inquiry remains true to the end.
Along with an aversion to administrative paperwork and a fascination with classroom
management, my inquiry through narrative is steeped in emotion. Emotions are often fleeting yet
strangely repetitive in teaching. I have experienced euphoria, despair, helplessness, frustration,
complacency, anger, sadness, hopelessness, and even pain in my tenure as a teacher. These emotions all
exist ​
eodem tempore ​
in the teacher and it is up to her or him to find a way to sort them out and
eventually use these to her or his advantage.
The researcher in me only allows the writer to delve into the personal lives of my characters if it
pertains to teaching or the emotional repercussions of teaching. It might be advantageous to the narrative
and more interesting for the reader to know about vices or habits or even the social background of the
characters but that may not serve the purpose of my inquiry, nor would it add validity to what I am
attempting to do. Therein lies the beauty and danger of narrative inquiry: it is an engine with the potential
to explode in all directions but the transmission and powertrain cause it to move forward or backward.
For example, my first draft of ​
I’ve got the fourth​
was highly criticized by a colleague of mine
for its lack of purpose. At one point in the story, my character sat at a bar and drowned his classroom
15
management sorrows in beer and wallowing self-pity. I owe that passage to my affinity for Charles
Bukowski’s writing. In another context it may have been relevant or even interesting but not for my
inquiry. My colleague told me to read ​
The Anger in our Miss Marple​
by Leah C. Fowler, which is an
excellent example of narrative inquiry. It was eye-opening for me as I began to realize that this was to
be my methodology.
In her handbook on narrative inquiry, Clandinin states “there was no one resource for those new
to the field or those trying to stay connected which they could turn to” (Clandinin ed., 2007, p. ix). This
typifies what I have felt since coming to narrative inquiry. ​
W​
(the writer in me) had ideas and narrative
paths going in many directions while ​
R​
(the researcher in me) feverishly read anything he could get his
hands on to tame, contain, and ultimately give true meaning to the stories. ​
R​
had to draw a map so that
W​
could not get lost in his own story.
R​
finally focused on a very direct way of keeping ​
W​
on the straight and narrow. In the
Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research​
F. Michael Connelly and D. Jean
Clandinin have created what they designate as checkpoints (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) called
Commonplaces. ​
W​
had to respect the three Commonplaces: Temporality, Sociality, and Place to truly
“understand experience” (Bell, 2002, p. 209) whether it was autobiographical or based on the stories of
others. ​
W​
now understood that his stories were never in stasis and had to be allowed to start
somewhere and evolve over time. There was also the issue of who his characters were or pretended to
be and how their stories interconnected with ​
W​
’s narrative; he had to create room for them to tell their
own stories. Lastly, ​
W​
recognized the places in which he told the stories but he knew that they
contained and explained his stories.
16
Commonplaces
Not surprisingly, the notion of “commonplace” comes from previous work in educational
research, specifically in curriculum studies.
Connelly and Clandinin borrowed the notion of commonplaces from Schwab’s (1978)
writing on curriculum to sort through and clarify the distinct qualities of narrative
inquiry. Schwab developed four commonplaces—teacher, learner, subject matter, and
milieu—to deal with the complexity of curriculum. (Clandinin et al., 2007, p. 22)
To understand the form and path that my stories have taken, it is perhaps best for me to reveal some of
my writing preferences and to write my interpretation of the narrative inquiry commonplaces.
As a writer, I prefer to write first and edit later. I was not so concerned with a theoretical
framework when I first began to write teaching anecdotes but it became a necessity when I was
arranging my collection. I write the way I would like my students to write, which is logical since the
teacher and the writer are contemporaneous in me. Once a rough draft of a story has found its way to
the screen, then I edit. That is my strongest asset as a writer: I have no emotional attachment to my
characters or my words. I am a brutal editor. Having a theoretical checklist, albeit three elements long,
has often given me clarity when I was stuck on a story. There was in fact a twofold purpose to the
narrative inquiry commonplaces: guidance and clarity. Below I discuss all three separately but they are
inseparable. “We cannot focus on one to the exclusion of the others.” (Clandinin et al., 2007, p. 23)
Temporality
I have placed my stories in a very specific order based loosely on the chronology of my teaching
career. ​
Catalyst​
is about why I became a teacher and ​
The other side of the Desk​
’s main character
is a teacher with 27 years experience. In between are stories that dot my career as a ​
précaire​
(the
French term for a part time teacher) leading in turn to my current position in my current school.
17
I pause now to discuss a bit of morphology. The term ​
précaire​
translates literally to ​
precarious
rather than ​
part time​
in English. Both terms do imply a certain transition or temporary state, but I like
the concept of being precariously poised on a cliff with one foot on the ground and the other waving in
the air over the chasm of unemployment. ​
Part time​
makes one think that there is another more
important or equally important occupation to fill the time (or pay the bills.) In my school board, being a
précaire​
means that you mostly change schools from one year to the next and have no input into what
your teaching load will be. ​
The Last Cattle Call​
is filled with vivid memories of my ​
précaire​
days. It is
hard to say whether I would have put so much emphasis on my beginning years of teaching had I been a
part time​
rather than a ​
précaire ​
teacher.
Temporality is not only placing narratives on a time continuum. We must also let our characters
evolve during the story or else, it is not really a story. The first five years of my career were certainly the
most formative, although probably the most difficult. My stories tend to resolve themselves in a positive
fashion in order to show my reader that it does get better and they will become better and more
confident teachers.
Much like fables, my stories mostly have a moral in them. I want there to be a message about
teaching for the reader to understand while reading. My characters cannot remain immobile and must
evolve for the story to deliver the message. One of the main points I would like to make about teaching
through my stories is that it is ever changing in nature. We, as teaching practitioners, all go through the
same pattern: student, then student-teacher, ​
précaire​
, and finally teacher. There is always a past to
which one is tied and eventually, the teacher becomes a student again since he or she is in constant
transition from one academic year to the next, bringing new students and potentially new curricula. I do
18
not see this as a return to the beginning, but a shadow of who we were when we were students remains.
We follow the same pattern studying and planning although we get better at it.
Sociality
Sociality is about the relationship that an inquirer has with his or her participants and the respect
owed to those relationships. My inspiration comes from my experience in teaching and I include the
anecdotes I hear in staff rooms or around schools as part of that experience. I have been respectful of
the people to whom I can attribute certain aspects of my characters. It is through these relationships that
I have been able to craft realistic pieces that reflect my experience as a beginning teacher.
I take sociality to further mean that I have a responsibility to my readership. Since my goal is to
help young teachers and give them a (silent) sounding board, I cannot subtract my future readers from
my stories. My writing is also much broader than just my practice so there are, to some extent, some
unknowing participants in my stories. Connelly and Clandinin (2006) write about personal and social
conditions, distinguishing between internal forces (feelings and emotions) and outside forces
(environment and working conditions) that play on personal context. I certainly did learn a lot about
myself while writing the stories, and had a greater understanding of who I was as a teacher as I wrote.
As such, I feel responsible for portraying real emotions or ones that resound in me through my
characters. Those emotions also betray the relationships I have and have had with colleagues, students,
principals, and school staff so then these must be plausible in my stories.
At times I have felt contempt and anger towards my coworkers and students. I did not shy
away from discussing those feelings in my stories but I tried to do so with as much veracity and realism
as possible. ​
M étro, Boulot, Dodo​
is a little cheeky, but my intent was to break through the polite
19
barrier and dive into the real emotions I sometimes feel at school. Again, this stays in line with my
guiding principle: help teachers to accept themselves and their working conditions.
Place
My mind’s eye sees every place I describe in my stories. They are very specific and very
personal and inform the story by imposing physical boundaries and making objects and places available
to my characters. There is a definite connection between my characters and the space I created for
them through story. Although “the specificity of place is crucial” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 480)
my readers may very well impose their own imagined space on top of mine. The particularity of writing
about and in a school is that everyone has a reference point; we have all been students, teachers or both
in a school setting. As the writer of the story, I dictate the place of the story as it relates to my
experience of it. My readers, who may seek solace in my stories, can easily impose their own place on
the story. That brings the story closer to the reader and hopefully he or she will draw more out of it.
20
The Curriculum of Place
I have appropriated Chambers’s (2008) work on Curriculum of Place to help me to better
frame the non-academic skills, or the unwritten rules, required to be a ESL teacher in the Québec
school system. It is important for me to be very specific about who I am, where I work, and what I do
to navigate through my work day. Chambers focused on how the land and the necessity of survival has
taught Northern Peoples and the Blackfoot to live and thrive in their respective territories. Chambers
also discusses the notion of mentor and novice which fit well with my research goal. Place brings with it
a specific set of skills and abilities that are needed to thrive and so are transmitted to the uninitiated.
These skills and actions are not always evident or apparent.
My first year teaching had a lot to do with paperwork. There is slew of information that must be
transmitted to a school and school board if one is to continue to work there. I had to find all sorts of
information that was all but a memory to me, like my high school diploma from 1987 and my birth
certificate. The school where I started teaching was enormous and there are sections of it I have still not
visited; I got lost more than once. I had to find the right people to whom I could speak about getting on
the fabled priority list, be they from school board administration or the union. I had to get on the voting
list of the union if I wanted my voice heard. I needed to get substitute work so I found out which
secretaries gave it away at the beginning of the day and poured on the charm. There is no class in any
university entitled “Navigating school board red tape and other items of decorum in teaching.” You learn
through experience and watching others. That is the link I have made with Chambers work; these
unwritten, unspoken rules that govern our lives as teachers.
There are four dimensions of curriculum of place in Chambers’s vision: A curriculum of place
calls for a different sense of time and an “education of attention.” Also, it is enskilment and wayfinding
21
(Chambers, 2008). I have used these as a way of thinking about what a school setting can teach
teachers.
Sense of Time
Understanding the concept of time in a school or classroom setting is essential to a teacher. My
school operates on a 9-day schedule and so days become numbers save for Mondays and Fridays
since they are the saddest and happiest of the work week. We also divide our days into four periods of
75 minutes and not hours. There is a 70 minute lunch and 10 minutes after the first and third periods.
Recess is long enough to get far away from school, but not long enough to get back on time. Time is
different here and the relative length of a period often hinges on the success or failure of a planned
activity.
Education of Attention
Chambers makes the distinction between observing or seeing and watching since “both observe
and see bear within them a mode of distanciation — the very disengagement with place” (2008, p.
120-121), while watching is participatory for both you and the person you are watching. Watch and
learn; not observe, write notes, study, and analyse. There is an immediacy here; there is live action, trial
and error, improvement, and finally instinct when one watches to learn or understand. In a classroom,
this could be watching student behaviour, processing clues on students’ faces while teaching, or
interacting verbally with them (listening being the aural counterpart of watching.)
Enskilment
I have often said that I never truly understood the worth of my undergraduate classes until my
fifth year of teaching. I know now that this was due to the vast majority of my energy and time devoted
to learning what cannot really be taught in a university classroom. These ​
invisible skills​
, like knowing
22
what a snowstorm or free candy on Halloween can do to a class and being ready for it, came to me
with time and patience. I needed them before any didactic or language acquisition theory, however,
when I was secure in my classroom management, I could then applaud the ​
graded skills​
that were
instilled in my at Concordia. My stories are in a way a portrayal of that journey to a greater skill set.
Wayfinding
In my interpretation of wayfinding there is the notion of cohesion. At the end, when the teacher
understands time, watches and learns and is now being watched, and feels confident in his or her
invisible skills​
, then the path is clear and marked. It is a combination of all of these working together in
unison that provides the way. There are the physical paths of a school as well as the virtual ones. In ​
The
Last Cattle Call​
, my character is a bit lost when he enters the school. There is no confidence in his
step, and his face shows fear and uncertainty. At the end, he knows his way around, speaks to his
colleagues, and gets the job and eventually the girl. He has found the way.
23
Short Stories
I have always liked the short story literary genre. Authors like Alice Munro and Joyce Carol
Oates appeal to me through their compact and compelling tales. I found that the first five years of
teaching would fit well with this genre. Like Munro’s use of Ontario’s Cottage Country as a backdrop,
I use a school or classroom setting to put my readers there. The stories change like musical variations on
a theme, but they always come back to art of teaching and the difficulties surrounding it. I hope that my
stories will spark a memory, or touch a nerve, or provoke a reaction. They are meant to stir emotions
and cause reflection. I have tried, as Teresa Strong-Wilson stated while reflecting on the responsibility
of educational researchers “to think pedagogically about how to create productive situations in which…
learning can take place for teachers.” (Strong-Wilson, 2006, p.73) She defines productive situations as
ones where teachers want to participate in learning freely and without obligation. I leave my stories at
the disposal of those wanting to read them and to draw from the narratives what they see fit.
24
Catalyst
It must have started with the train wreck. At 43 miles an hour, the formidable steam locomotive,
loaded with wheat from the Prairies, struck Grandfather Carl’s Hudson sedan, with a sound that would
make one’s stomach turn. It forced the car to barrel-roll down the track until, ultimately, friction and
gravity got the better of it. The conductor was said to have vomited when he saw the carnage that he
had left behind by riding through the car obliterating the driver within. After a mile or two, the train did
eventually stop and the wheat was untouched.
Certainly the train had felt nothing and Grandfather must not have felt his own death either.
Some ventured to say that the drink got him, although most accounts were shrouded in mystery. Those
telling their somber tales were often hushed with bewilderment since he knew the tos and fros of trains
better than most. His death was all the more untimely and unwarranted. It is said that from his workshop
-in the tiny house that he had rented with my grandmother- he could hear the rumble of an approaching
train, glance at his pocket watch to predict both from whence it came and where it was going. They
rented there because it was placed strategically within spitting distance of the railway track. He was
never wrong, almost. Perhaps his watch had stopped that day, or he was distracted by something other
than the onslaught of modernity that was, in the end, his last errant prediction.
Whatever might be the reason for his demise, at 33, Bertha's husband was no longer alive. Just
like Jesus; just like Jesus when he died, she would beam proudly. She did not hesitate to make the
connection between her defunct husband and the Divine. It was soothing to her to know that there was
a Divine. The shock of her husband’s passing at such a young age might be lessened by the mysteries of
the hereafter. God help her.
They had had four children: Ann who was seven, my mother who was five, Paul who was three,
25
and James who was one and a half at time of the wreck. That night she became The Widow Weeping.
The whole city of Windsor, Ontario wept with her. It was of great interest and with intoxicating agony
that they sought to catch a glimpse of, or console the Widow Weeping and her fatherless children.
Eventually something else more exciting would come along that allowed for the collective rejoicing or
indignation to be shifted to another intriguing bit of gossip or misfortune. A bull moose was caught in the
barbed-wire fence at the farm down the road when my grandmother packed up and returned to The
Island. Loads of trouble that moose was.
On Prince Edward Island, she found welcome solace to the passing of Grandfather. She and he
had been wed there but work opportunities had awoken in Windsor for him. They moved there and
automatically became From Away as it is customary to call someone who has left the Island or who has
never lived there in the first place. In the grand scheme of things, it is much more likely to be on the
Island and be From Away than not. The size of population has never been a problem for our Island
province. The fact that she had returned From Away to stay was much more of an oddity.
She was a teacher and could easily supplement Grandfather’s salary. That supplement was no
longer enough since he was dead now and she could not afford the house and the care of all four of her
children even with a teaching post for her to occupy. Her decision to go back home was somewhat
financially motivated and somewhat for the promise of respite from my Great-Grandfather, the fox
farmer.
As farmers go, he was a wealthy one since silver fox fur was in high demand and he was quite
knowledgeable about the critters. He also had no time for trains or other such modernity. There was
little chance he would be annihilated at a level crossing by a fast moving train carrying fur or tobacco or
potatoes that would eventually end up on mainland Nova Scotia. He gave her a house in which to live
26
with the four children. She was still the Widow Weeping but less attractive to worry warts and
serendipitous sympathisers because it had been six months since Grandfather had passed onto the great
train yard in the sky. She had had enough good will for the moment since remorse, respite, and the
bemoaning of one’s circumstances had a short shelf life on the Island. It was best that she get on with
the business of living and taking care of the children. She did just that.
She began to teach once again at the small outpost of a school on Saint-Louis Road somewhere
between Alberton and Tignish in Prince County, the most beautiful of the three according to her and
most of my relatives near and far. The other two counties, Queen and King, in order of immediate
proximity to Prince, were horrid wastelands devoid of anything worth seeing save the house that Anne
built or the capital at which John A. signed.
He lived nearby my Great-Grandfather's land. My grandmother used all of her widowly charms
to get him to court her. He was a man of action and few words; she had many words to spare and so in
a fit so perfect it was breathless, they were wed and moved to Greenfield Park. There was work at an
airplane engine manufacturing company near their first home. Once again, my grandmother and her
husband, who was now named Terry had moved and became people From Away. We all called him
Terry from my uncles to his great grandchildren. I do not know if there is a mythical hero by the name
Terrence, but to our family he certainly was.
The Park had much in common with the Island so they felt at home there. It was full of nice,
simple people who worked hard, went to church, and had deep dark secrets that they kept from the
rest of the population.
When my grandmother’s life had been sorted out, she went back to teaching, without a second
thought. Perhaps Terry would have been able to support all of them with his foreman’s salary but my
27
grandmother was from heartier stock than that. She got a car, a teaching post, and a pension to boot.
For years and years she drove to a grade school in an agricultural area aptly named Apple Valley,
which was not far, but not too close, from home. Strangely, as might be said of her life after the train
wreck, she never turned her head when she backed up her car.
Many a grandchild started praying feverishly to whatever Saint was available when they were to
be driven somewhere by her. Mine was Saint Jude since it was the name of my grade school and came
easiest to mind. He is also the patron saint of lost causes. She was never going to look through the back
window. She always had an eye on the future and the road ahead where she and everyone else were
going. The past, backwards in a way, was not worth the gander.
Life for my mother and her siblings really began in the Park. They were anchored there and
made good on the offer to prosper and plant roots in the fertile soil. It was not the Island but it would do
just fine. My grandmother felt good too. She started her classes the same way every day in a real
attempt to regain normalcy: ​
Good morning, students. It is a pleasure to see you here today​
. The
memory of my Grandfather who had passed away slowly faded with every morning bell that signaled
her habitual greeting of the six and seven year olds clamouring to get into class. This was the way it was
and would be for many years.
The desks in her classroom were arranged in such a way that they made a circle. Her desk was
much larger than theirs so it was obvious, from a purely decorative standpoint, that she was the teacher.
The seating arrangement allowed her to feel the pulse of each child (she never called them kids because
those are goats, don’t you know​
as she would say) through the others next to her. She also felt the
warmth of the collective when she would say things like: ​
Ok, children, let's take a break​
or ​
Let's have
a look at your homework​
. And, although she was meant to nourish them with knowledge, ideas, and
28
insight, it was they who gave her love, comfort, and acceptance. So it went day after day with my
grandmother letting the students into her heart and giving them back the best she could offer.
I can see now, through hindsight, that before I got divorced I saw the wreck coming but did
nothing to get out of the way. My ex-wife was at the controls of the unstoppable train that crushed that
unwitting sad sack plunked haplessly in the middle of the track, namely me. I expected to be safe from
harm when I said ​
I do​
but that was not the case. Reality, harsh and cruel, had more in store for me than
the life I had constructed in my head. That train wreck did not involve bad timing or a stopped pocket
watch but pure and simple loathing, spite, and hate. I was ill-equipped to handle the marriage and its
aftermath. I sought solace from family and friends long enough to garner strength in a future that was
founded on teaching. I was reborn from the ashes and splinters of a disaster: the demise of a relationship
destined to fail.
Being nothing more or less than the Widow Weeping’s grandson, I began to teach not long after
the papers had been signed at the lawyer's office. The paltry dowry was divided and I emerged stronger
and wiser than before, yet still shaky from the whole affair.
I followed in the footsteps of my grandmother, my aunt, my cousin from Boston, and the Great
Aunts who were both nuns and teachers, in my choice of career. It felt right. It still does. Life as I know
it today started when the ink dried on the documents that legalized the end of my failed marriage. I look
to the future and rarely look at my past, if only to be reminded of whence I came and to see where I am
going. I do turn my head when I am backing up, though.
In homage to those who came before me, I start my classes in similar fashion to my
grandmother, who was a teacher: ​
Hello boys and girls; it is nice to see you today.​
The words hark
back to a time before the Park and the Island or even my deceased Grandfather. The safety and
29
security of a job I know well and a paycheck that is reliable makes it alright. The family’s teaching
legacy lives on through me. There is teaching in the family tree and the roots run deep. The family takes
comfort in the profession and the profession takes care of the family.
30
I’ve got the fourth
Author's note​
:​
The conversations in italics are written in English but they are speaking French.
For the sake of uniformity I wrote in one language, however an ESL teacher in Québec works
and lives in both official Canadian languages.
The inside of my brain mirrored that which my eyes saw: empty desks strewn to and fro; papers
littering the empty spaces between awkward rows where pupils once sat; eraser shavings and graffiti
covering table tops; pencil shavings strewn next to the waste basket mocking convention and propriety.
It felt as if I were the last remaining citizen of an all but abandoned frontier town. Rage, sadness,
jealousy, the pain of loss and of losing, hate, longing, bitter regret, hopelessness, and bruised pride
pulsed through my head at supersonic speed so that I could not pin which emotion or feeling I should be
experiencing. I went through them all at the same time desperately hoping that something could aid my
resolve to change the past: to change what had just gone down. These were the remnants of a period
gone terribly wrong.
You see, I had just finished teaching last period. That is a difficult feat on any given day but
much worse on that fateful Wednesday. I teach high school ESL (English Second Language ) but on
that afternoon I was far from feeling like a good teacher or a teacher at all, for that matter. I sat at my
desk viewing the disaster area that was once my class through my fingers involuntarily covering my eyes.
I was like a child watching a movie he should not be watching. I hoped that the monster would just go
away but the tenacious beast still reared its ugly head: the desks were still out of line and the papers
were still on the floor. I preferred not to survey the desktops, which looked as if an atomic bomb of
pencil and marker had hit each and every one of them. The second and final bell rang ushering the buses
to leave. I pictured the few remaining kids in the common area at the end of the hallway. They were
31
jabbering away waiting for basketball practice; they were sitting at a fold-down cafeteria table going
over the chemistry homework or planning their French project; they were going about their afternoons
as if nothing had happened. It was almost insulting to me. There I was at a total loss of words or
thoughts trying to make sense of an event I still could not fathom and they were chatting about the latest
Vibe video. It made it even worse.
The night janitor, who was making his early rounds, filled my doorway for a second and then
moved to the next class without a word. He was a good guy so I felt bad about screwing up his work
schedule. I hastily moved the desks back into makeshift rows and put the chairs back in order. I raced
up and down the class to grab the papers and crunched them together into a big ball: a giant version of
the spitballs we used to launch across the class in grade 11 Physics. That afternoon, after the fourth
period, I realized that I was forevermore to be on the other side of the teacher's desk. I had lost the
private school tie and attitude of my younger days. Those high school antics didn't seem so funny
anymore. I was a stupid kid back then, I thought.
I took one more look at the class and turned off the lights. I headed for the staff room but
stopped at the class next door. “​
I'm sorry. You can go ahead​
” I said to the janitor. “​
Rough day?​
“ he
asked. “​
Absolutely!​
” I wasn't sure how to react. Even the janitor noticed that I was having a crap day.
I must have looked like a real amateur, I thought. G reat! “​
Have a good evening.​
” was all that I could
muster before fleeing to the confines of the staff room. “​
Thanks, you too.​
” trailed behind me as I
stomped off.
As I walked away, I thought about my options and decided that whatever happened, I would
have to face the vice-principal at some point. I could not leave things as they were but I did not know
how to prepare for the repercussions of my actions. What could I do to fend off the inevitable?
32
I fumbled for my keys in front of the door. Jacques was just on his way out and heard me. He
opened the door. “​
Oh thanks, Jacques​
.​
” I sighed as I caught sight of who it was. Jacques was the
French teacher to most of my students. Secondary two is a tough year, he always said. He had been
going at it for over 25 years and his shock of white hair proved the battle-worthiness of his advice. “​
Are
you just coming back from class? What the heck were you doing?​
” Jacques was surprised since he
spent the least amount of time possible in school. I was always amazed at how he could get all of his
prep and correcting done without blowing his weekends. “​
Well, things didn't go too well​
.” “​
What?
What happened?​
” He closed the door and sat on the edge of the desk. You could tell he was as happy
to be there as I was to tell him why it took me 20 minutes to leave my classroom. I looked down
bashfully and mumbled: “​
I said ‘Shut the​
fuck​
up' to Tremblay​
” The student's name was Lionel but
Jacques only knew him as Tremblay. He had taught him two years back and most certainly remembered
him. I saved myself the song and dance routine that happened every time anyone spoke to Jacques
Régent about a student. Jacques called the kids, especially the boys, by their last names. There was no
point saying my student’s first name, since he had no idea. It was a little anachronistic but it seemed to
work for him. I remember being in French high school and not knowing half of the first names of my
classmates; let alone my teachers.​
“Cripes Barrette, pass the ball!​
” I had heard that one a million
times.
I looked to him for a little guidance but he started laughing. “​
So what? There are worse things
in life. He'll get over it!​
” I didn't believe him. “​
Come on, now! I am the English teacher and I used
that type of language in my class? It is completely unacceptable! I don't know how I am going to
get out of this. Should I call his parents? Should I talk to the boss?​
” I had spent a good fifteen
minutes sitting in class trying to find some sort of a solution to my gaffe but nothing came to mind. I was
33
mad at the class for being so unforgivably rude and lazy. I was mad at myself for allowing that word to
echo in my classroom while I was teaching. I had said never. I had said never would I use any foul
language in class. I was able to communicate better than that. I was able to show the students means of
communication that did not involve swearing or bigotry or slander. Never say never.
“​
So in the end, did Tremblay shut his trap?​
” asked Jacques. He was trying to let me see the
silver lining in the grey cloud. “​
Oh that's for sure! Not one student said a word after I, uhmm, blew
up.​
Total silence.​
​
” “​
Mission accomplished, kid.​
” Jacques smiled and stood up. His big knuckled hand
grabbed my shoulder as he turned to walk out. “​
See you tomorrow, Émile.​
” The teachers he called by
their first names... I had that going for me.
I thought about calling someone to talk it out, but at that time I was not sure whom. My parents
were supportive of my career choice but neither were ever high school teachers. They would have
consoled me and told me it would be alright but how was I to fix it? I needed answers; straightforward
answers. That is when I decided to call Frank.
Frank and I went to university together but he nabbed a job at Sainte-Marie de la Pérade, a
posh private school where kids were so strong in English that he could take almost any activity we
worked on in McGillicutty's methodology class and throw it at them. It served me right for trying that.
Where did I get off attempting to teach them something different?
Frankie was always a good one for spinning it just right; in our final practicum he got his CT
(cooperating teacher) to correct an exam that he had given just at the end of it. I still marvel at how he
did it. I thought about how it would be nice to have his savvy and street-smarts. Maybe he could help
me out of this jam. If it had been him, he would have already talked up the vice-principal and told him
34
some heart-wrenching story about students gone out of control and only one way out and no he would
never use that word, no not that one never. I wished I could spin a tale that well.
I called him when I got home. I felt that I should come clean and work it out with someone else.
This was my class, my first contract, my career, my students, my mistake and I was going to fix it.
“Frankie? Yeah it's Émile!” The conversation went on for an hour or so. We talked about good
old times and how nothing we learned at school served us at work save a project here or there. Of
course, over the next five years I would eat my words countless times thanking Dr. Lewis for the tips
about how to time activities or praising Dr. York's overly-detailed lesson plans. When we had covered
the last six months, I asked him: ”Frank can I get your two cents on something?” I told him what I had
done and there was silence. He tried his best to console me but I could tell that he had no more of an
answer than me. At that point I felt very alone. I had signed my own pink slip and was headed out the
door back to the customer service department where I had slogged through 4 years of mindless
yammering to pay for my B.ed. The future was about as bright as a black hole.
Thursday morning arrived faster than I had anticipated. It was 6 am and the last time I had seen
the clock it was 4. I had tossed and turned all night relaying between Jacques' ​
f orget it and move on
attitude and Frank's ​
oh my goodness are you in trouble​
concern. What was I to do? I wasn't going to
see that class until Friday, first period, so I had a little breathing room until then. I hoped that my use of
inappropriate language had not made it to Facebook or on the cafeteria Pony Express as I liked to call
it, where gossipy students ran from one table to another relating the latest dish from students and
teachers alike. It often did not take long for the general mass of kids to find out which teacher was
dating whom or what student was suspended for selling pot. It was an effective yet unreliable means of
communication and I preferred not to be the subject of the messages it carried.
35
I got to school a little earlier than usual. Classes start at 8:40 and I was making coffee at 7:30.
Although I had to teach three periods, I was still focused on what to do for Friday. Circumstances had
allowed me a day to turn around and find a solution to my problem since I only saw my students 4 out
of the 9 days of our rotating schedule. In that time, of course, I had to keep a stiff upper lip and teach
other classes. Luckily, I only had one group of secondary 4 so my lesson plans for Thursday did not
include the activity that turned into an explosive volcano yesterday. It was ten to eight and my coffee
was exactly the right temperature and colour. I had high hopes that this would not be such a bad day
after all. I sucked up my courage and started to trudge to the vice-principal's office. Frankie's pleading
and my own fears of what might happen to me had won out.
With my​
World's Greatest Teacher​
mug in hand, I walked purposely down the hallway.
Students were trickling into school. Unconsciously, I looked into the cafeteria to see if the Express was
riding. Packs of kids sat scattered around the caf. It was round in form and sunken like a 70's living
room. All of the hallways on the first floor led to it so I really had no choice but to walk by. I didn't have
to look up but I did. Had I not I would not have seen Maxime, one of my sec 4 students, running from
one table to the next. His eyes were as wide as a couple of cream puffs. He seemed to be repeating the
same bit of information to each table. He saw me and immediately screamed: “Hello Mr. B!” I was
shocked by this unsolicited greeting; especially one in English. I was not sure if the underlying message
was: “I am learning so much in your class that now I speak English in public without fearing ridicule.” or
“You moron! You swore in class and now you are in trouble. Good luck trying to explain that to your
boss.” I chose the latter to add to my angst and anxiety. I returned his reply and climbed the stairs that
led to the Vice-principal's office.
36
The VP's office was about 10 steps from the stairway landing. I summoned up all my courage,
took a deep breath and grabbed the door handle but it did not turn. The sign stuck on the door read
that M. Bourgot was out for the day. Oh no! I thought, now what? I looked around, kind of lost, and
peered at my watch. The early students, those who were at your door no matter when you showed up,
were milling about the classrooms. I had to get to class so any hopes of reassurance or a solid
tongue-lashing from my boss were lost. I walked back to the staff room a little discouraged but put it
out of my mind. The students I would see in a few minutes became my immediate priority.
The morning went relatively well. I felt insecure about my teaching. I was not sure if the students
would follow my lead since they might have heard something about last period yesterday and then
would challenge me or my professionalism but that was not the case. I had two great periods and was
on top of the world. I smiled my way into the staffroom, picked up my phone on my desk and checked
my messages.
There was one from Frank that simply read:​
so?​
It all came flooding back to me. I still had to
deal with the situation but I could not speak with my VP.​
VP abs. Looking for Plan B​
.​
I had no idea
what Plan B would be but I was pretty sure I needed one.​
Good luck.​
He was as helpful as having the
answers to the alternate version of a final exam. We both knew there was something to be done but we
did not how to fix it. I figured Jacques' speech from the previous night was how most of my colleagues
would react so I did not count on them. I was really at a crossroads and I did not know which way to
go. I had to make my decision now and live with whatever happened. Maybe it was not such a big deal.
No, no it had to be. I vowed never to lose my cool in a class and yet I blew my top and swore at my
students! Whether they deserved it or not I was the adult and had to lead by example. I seemed to be
no better off than last night, although I was much more tired and out of answers.
37
My last period on Thursday was a marked improvement from Wednesday. Since I was on edge
I was much more vigilant than the day before. I confronted students when they were not working and
banned group work for the period. I spent 75 minutes walking up and down the rows of desks checking
that things were getting done. I was exhausted by the end but there were no incidents of which to speak.
I smiled at the night janitor as he pushed his cart along the hallway. “​
It certainly went better today​
”I
quipped as I walked past him. He nodded and went about his work.
That evening I decided to speak with my student, Lionel, before class. It was the only way to
clear the air and move forward for me. At the beginning of class, I would pull him aside and let him
know that my language was inappropriate but so was his attitude. I hoped that he would listen to me
and that it would be the end of his aloofness and disregard for my instructions. It really got on my nerves
and he was going to hear about it. Having spent the whole day worrying about it, having taught three
classes without the sky falling, I allowed myself to be positive. This would work. This had to work. I
hoped it would work.
I slept much better and beat my alarm the next morning. I was in and out of the shower and my
toast barely touched the plate. I was at school at 7:45 but at least it was Friday and I could recuperate
from the past two early mornings over the weekend.
As I entered the building, I saw M. Bourgot. My plan was fool-proof so I decided to pass it by
him. “​
Mr. Bourgot, do you have a moment?​
” “​
Sure Éric​
” he replied. I tried not to look insulted but
my face has been known to have a mind of its own.​
“Actually, it's Émile, sir​
” He apologized as we
walked up the stairs together to his office.
We talked for a little while. He listened attentively as I recounted what had happened. He did
not look concerned but approved of my solution. He spoke to me about the tone I had used with the
38
student and in a fatherly way suggested I change it. I did not get anything practical from our talk but I
did get an OK. In the end, my plan sounded pretty good to the VP so he let me handle it.
I got to class early and went about my pre-class duties with determination and vigour. The chalk
on the board ticked more crisply than usual as I wrote the agenda for the day on it. I tidied my desk and
prepared each of the handouts I would use. I stood at the front of the class, dead centre, and went over
my lesson plan in checklist fashion. I was ready, so Lionel had better be.
The first bell rang and Maxime was at the door. “Hello, Mr. B” he shot at me. “Good afternoon,
Maxime. How are you?” I replied. “Good, good.” he said. He sat down and looked chipper. I
pretended to pay no notice but butterflies in my stomach started dancing at a crazed pace. Was this the
start of another revolution? I did not have time to figure it out since the other students came in one by
one and then in pockets of three or four for the next couple of minutes. Somewhere in the middle of all
of that Lionel showed. I asked him to step outside with me.
Before I had the chance to say anything, he apologized. I am not sure to this day if he
remembered why he apologized but I will never forget that he did. It was quite obvious that he preferred
to be in class with his buddies than in the hallway with me. He tried mightily to find the way to avoid our
little tête-à-tête by saying “S​
orry, sir, I'm sorry​
” quite a few times but I would not let it go. He resigned
to listen to me while the rest of the class sauntered in behind me and most certainly made faces at
Lionel. I could tell by the aggressive looks he shot over my shoulder.
I told him that I was not happy with his behaviour from the other day but that I also did not like
the language I had used with him. The blank stare was priceless and he did not press the issue by asking
for clarification. The catharsis was complete; I was relieved of the burden that had kept me wondering
for two days by that empty look on his face. The bell rang and we entered the class together. He sat in
39
his usual spot with his eyes pointed at the desk, while ignoring the enquiries from his neighbours. They
did not bother him long since I commanded their attention by starting the lesson as I always do: “Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let's begin.”
40
The Whirlwind of Potential Violence
I would like to take the time that I have with you to tell you the story of Jean-Philippe. He was
one of my first students and certainly left a lasting impact on me.
He was a big guy even though he was relatively young: only fourteen; he was as tall as me and
large shouldered. He was a man among boys. His stature was intimidating but his demeanor was
demure; he was a gentle giant. He did not say much since when he spoke he stuttered. He was a born
mechanic and always smelled of oil or gas or both and never had clean hands. They were always
covered in the type of grease that would not leave even if you scrubbed it with turpentine and a hard
brush. I think he kind of liked having dirty hands since he was happiest coming to class after he had
spent time tinkering with an engine.
The other kids in the class were cruel. They themselves had been battered down by life,
parents, school, and society’s expectations and they needed a bit of restitution: a little self-satisfying
payback. Like a pack of snarling wild dogs, they would wait until the time was right to attack their prey.
They would laugh at him but not too much. They were very much afraid of him; of the potentially violent
reaction he might have to their mocking. The wild dogs feared the rhino they had circled. They weighed
how much they could tease him and get away with it. It would be wrong for him to smash, like the Hulk,
a little insignificant peon for simply stating the obvious: You stutter or you smell like gas or your hands
are dirty, yo! He was caught, as I was, as we all were in the whirlwind of potential violence. It was
prison but we trudged on since there was nothing else to do or that we could do. Their upbringing,
perhaps abusive or neglected and my lack of experience made for a perfect combination that heightened
the tension among us. And we all felt it; some days I could even taste it.
41
Every day that I would teach in that class was another nail in the coffin of my pedagogical
innocence. I learned from Jean-Philippe about hate. I learned that he hated English and he hated me for
teaching it. He never said much; he did not have to because I could feel it like a knotted stomach or a
migraine or a muscle strain too intense to ignore. His loathing was like permission for the others in that
class to also hate English and by extension, hate me. We hated together and the violence grew.
It was easier to hate him and those around him in that class than to try to reach them or even
teach them. I hated them with a passion rivalling Picasso’s quest for blue, or Mozart’s mission to
musical perfection. It steamed in me; it seethed out of me, and we, they and I, took comfort in our
mutually antagonistic relationship that lead nowhere. It was better than punching holes in walls or going
home to cry about it or wallowing in self-pity about how much I was an unqualified piece of crap
teacher who could not show a dog on his rump how to sit. I hated them all and specifically him for how
they awoke rage in me. His silence in my class was deafening and his stare was deadly. I felt a chill
down my spine every time our eyes met; I felt the violence in me swell when I would speak and he
would not listen. This went on and on, this circle of potential violence for days and weeks and months
and I had to do something about it because, let’s be honest here, I had a lot riding on my first year of
teaching: I had my worth as a man and my reputation as a teacher to protect. No way was one class,
one student going to stop me from becoming the teacher I wanted to be. I would fight back.
I needed to know that I was at the top of the totem pole of power. I used a scale that had
served me well in the past whenever I was in the throes of a power struggle: Could I take him? Could I
beat him in a fight? The rest of them were puny compared to the mammoth mute named Jean-Philippe. I
felt confident that if ever he came at me that I could anticipate where he would try to hit me. When I
spoke directly to him, he would look right through my eyes. His gaze could melt ice. Having thought
42
about how I would defend myself against his attack and eventually defeat him, I figured I had the
advantage. He would lead with his right since he was right-handed and would probably throw a straight
punch at my face. You see, left-handed people are very much aware of what hand you hold a pen in
since we unconsciously always seek our brethren. He was certainly not one of mine.
If ever he threw his first punch, I would duck, block with my left and let go of a mean right. Of
course I wanted to use my left hand but that would be impossible since it would be busy blocking the
first punch, so I was content to use the other. If I hit his chin it would be all over.
He was only a boy. I think about that now and often. It fills me with regret and shame. How could I let
this get so beyond my control that I had to have a battle plan? My God, what was I thinking? I was
desperate to prove I was good at teaching and to safeguard my manhood. Imagine getting floored by a
child! Not on my watch.
So, I prepared for the worst, like being acutely aware of your surroundings when walking on a
dimly lit street, late at night. My ears were peaked every second of every class. I was constantly on
guard. My eyes darted from one side of the class to the other in constant motion hoping to find fault in
someone’s behaviour so that I might exert my authority and have Jean-Philippe fear me. He was never
afraid I guess, so I continued to pump adrenaline at breakneck speed in 75 minute intervals twice a
week. I saw no other way. I clenched my right fist and cupped my left whenever I spoke to him. I just
never knew if and when he would strike.
This was my job. This was the path out of student poverty and towards career; something I
thought that I would never have. I got to teaching late and I wanted more than anything to make it mine.
These little bastards were not going to stop me from having a career. Some day, this dark period of pain
and hate would vanish and I would become the teacher that I knew that I could be. Some day, I could
43
set aside the threat of violence that was now a given in my class and I would get them to respect me for
my teaching abilities and not my ability to be steadfast in the face of intimidation so as to be more
intimidating than them. I trudged on.
The great day came; the great awakening was upon us. It was a normal day that would have
gone on innocuously save for Jean-Philippe’s sudden interest in having so many supporters.
The activity for the day involved searching for newspaper articles in the fifty or so copies I had
assembled on one student desk: it just happened to be Jean-Philippe’s. I took attendance, explained the
plan for the day, thought nothing of where I had put my newspapers and then sent them on their way.
The other students dropped on his desk with such force that he almost fell off his chair. He stood up,
towering over the lot of them, stared them all down. The bravest walked slowly back to their desks
while the majority dived for their seat. The violence stirred in all of us; the potential was on the cusp of
reality. Oh God, no.
I was stuck in the middle of it all. He looked around with shifting eyes and then locked on me.
“​
Je ne veux pas faire ton ostie de projet, crisse!​
” he said under his breath. “Oh you will do it, son, if it
is the last thing I make you do.” I responded while swelling my chest, making a fist with my right hand
and cupping my left. This was the quietest the class had been all year. The others were in awe at the
showdown between the two of us but none of them wanted to suffer the consequences of messing with
a teacher so they kept their distance; they prefered to watch safely from behind their desks and wait to
see what Jean-Philippe would do next. He felt them behind him, perhaps for the first time ever. He sat
back down and started to empty his desk of all of the newspapers to the floor. They flew left and right;
he was smirking as the newspapers fluttered to the floor. The others were half-laughing, half-scared out
of their wits. The time to act had come; the violence once again swelled in me and I screamed:”Get out
44
of my class before I throw you out!” He did the only thing that would save him from unending ridicule,
he tried me and pushed the limits of propriety by looking at the kid sitting next to him, who was whiter
than a ghost, and said: “Qu’est-ce qu’il a dit?” I ripped the desks in front of me out of the way and
looked down on him and said: “Get the fuck out, now!” He stood, eyes shifting left and right and
walked out. It was a shallow victory for me but still a victory. I was relieved but I still had to deal with
the rest of them. I told them to grab a newspaper, sit at their desks and find an article, alone. No one
complained but no one really did the assignment. That was fine.
I met him. Jean-Philippe, a few years later in another school. He sought me out. He was in the
adult ed section of the school learning to be a mechanic and I was still teaching high school kids. He was
nineteen and I was flabbergasted. This kid wanted to talk to me after all that we had been through? He
did. He told me that he had completed his Sec IV English after having tried 3 times. He was strangely
proud of that fact and I took it as a compliment. I think that that was his point. He wanted me to know
that he had carried on; he was successful in part because I had pushed him through. We shook hands
and as I looked down at my hand, I smiled. The grease stain he left on my palm was unmistakable.
I know now that I had to walk that path, with him, to get to where I am and who I am today. I
also know that he never hated me specifically rather what I represented: authority, repression, the
pointing out of his ignorance and inadequacy, mental strength where he, at that point, only had physical
but was unable to harness it. We shared, for me, a regretful time in my teaching career although it only
amounted to some strewn papers and some profanity. I struggled for the rest of that year to get them to
learn, to know, or to respect. It was an uphill battle every class. I even gave a kid a nosebleed when he
jumped on me in a mock attack. I was too hyped on protecting myself so I put my hand out to stop him
and hit his nose. He laughed; his buddies laughed; his parents laughed when I called to apologize and
45
explain myself. It was a year made to break any teacher or show them that the only path to salvation
from the chaos was violence or the threat of it. Along with swearing at a student, I had made one of
them bleed. How far did I have to go? I never got an answer; they just got used to me.
I am not sure what has changed over the past fifteen years. I know the violence still lives in me. I
don’t deny it; I have embraced it. It is part of me and part of my teaching. That focus and rage has been
diverted, though, from focusing on kids like Jean-Philippe to my passion for teaching and my respect for
my students. They feel safe with me; Jean-Philippe and his classmates did not. They were right not to; I
had no idea what I was doing. For every Jean-Philippe in our teaching lives, there is someone that we
did not reach. There is that nosebleed kid who makes me think that I still have so much to learn. I have
so much to learn.
46
The Last Cattle Call
This summer air is thick and palpable like pea soup at a cabane à sucre that makes you question
whether to eat it with a spoon or fork. There is this dark quality hanging low from the sky like a failed
ceiling; you need a flashlight to peer through the morning haze. It’s a quintessential Montreal area
summer day: hot and muggy.
My flip flops make a clicking sound as I walk from my car through the parking lot into the stout
and stoic building. The sun does its best to push its way through the clouds but they will not let it pass.
Although it is not even noon, I feel rivulets of sweat beading down my back. My face must be red and is
certainly wet by the time my hand reaches for the door.
We are all there like lambs going to slaughter. I am reminded of workers trudging their way to
the factory; sad faces doing back-breaking work all for the misery of necessity. The foggy air mimics the
smoke from the chimneys and our collective demeanour recalls the emptiness in the black faces of coal
workers after lunch: the prospect of returning to the mine. Summer is over for us.
As I enter the red brick building, I cannot help but notice the brown trim that encircles it. I do
not know where they get that colour. The only way to describe it is sad and depressing goose crap. I
swing the door open and I am struck by how many offices there are. The ghosts of the previous
September still haunt this place. I was here last year on some training session and have seen the beehive
in full operation. People walked around with purpose; you could tell that I was a tourist or a newbie or
just lost. “​
La formation​
?” I asked a secretary or janitor or principal for all I know. She pointed to the
sign and sighed having most probably been asked the question a hundred times before. Gosh I hope that
it was not a principal.
I stand where I stood a few months prior and view the long corridor. I cannot help but ask
47
myself: who works here and where do they all go when the bell rings? There is something otherworldly
about all of the clockwork movements that go on in the 15 minutes between periods during a regular
working day in a school. It all seems to be orchestrated by some invisible conductor. The students find
their pathways and tend to stick to them. Perhaps the familiarity makes them feel more secure in the
lawlessness of recess. The teachers and staff weave between students, like the harmony to a beautiful
chorus, finding faster and more efficient ways to get from A to B through the predictable melody of
students shuffling to their lockers.
Now that the vast expanse of the cafeteria is empty, I can see the faint traces of where the kids
had gone from the pencil and scuff marks on the walls.
I think about movies and tv shows like Ferris Bueller and Freaks and Geeks that show big
American comprehensive high schools where all sorts of hijinks would happen. Mostly we saw the
schools and their goings-on from the students’ perspective and the teachers were, well, idiots. There is
usually the embodiment of defiance rolled into one gum chewing, sarcastic, shitty teenager versus the
clueless, pop-bottle glasses wearing professor trying to impose his authority. Women teachers are
usually smarter, braver and much more respected by the tv students than their hapless male
counterparts. I pray that I do not become one of the clueless ones.
I feel like a treasure hunter without a map; I have an idea where the prize is so I have to
navigate by feel and instinct. I watch the others walk by me going seemingly to the same place. They are
dressed like me in a half-vacation, half-appropriate way. The tops are beach worthy but the bottoms
cover politely. The footwear is a dead giveaway; no one wants to be here but no one can escape it. We
click our flip flops along as the cattle call assembles us all.
You can figure out who worked a job in July by the degree of desperation in their eyes.
48
Unemployment Insurance pays the rent and not much else. If you do not work enough hours during the
school year, it does not even do that. I am pretty much at the end of my rope and bank account.
Mooching off my parents is getting old. I need something solid this year. I need to find out where I am
on the list.
The list, the list, the priority list: it is an agglomeration of names that stand one on top of the
other in a strange arbitrary fashion. It certainly seems that way to me. I am older than most of them. I
have more education that most of them. I have taught as long as most of them, so then why do I sit at
position eighteen under the weight of the seventeen others? How am I ever going to get out from
eighteen? How does it work? To whom do I speak about climbing the ladder?
There is a strange and sweaty symphony playing here. It is terribly humid in late August on the
North Shore of Montreal. It is stiflingly so today. We breath in a sigh of relief as, one by one, we trade
freedom for financial security for the duration of a school year. Numbers matter; the competition is
fierce. We are all in the same boat but we all want out: whatever it takes to get a full time position: a
permanence​
! The strategy is mind-boggling. If you take a higher percentage at a small school you might
climb the ladder faster but you will not get as much subbing. That is beer money or cute shoe money or
grocery money depending on how big your teaching load is. Big schools tend to move things around
more so you might end up with a bigger load. Small schools allow you to better endear your principal.
What did Gina take? Where? How much? 75%? Hmmpf. Better talk to Mrs. Ragouttier at ESP; she
knows things... 15 years later I look back and cannot imagine that I was once in the middle of all this.
People just seem to know what to do and where to go. I seem to have missed the memo or
training session or university course where you learn not to look panicked and pained while waiting for
your turn to speak. PDM, PST, ESO...where are these schools? Those around me talk about them as if
49
they were local coffee joints and I could not even point them out on a map. They smile and give each
other a wink, a handshake, or ​
la bise​
(two cheek kisses.) They talk about their summers in St-Sauveur
or Hull. They remind each other of that time when in that school they did such and such a thing to
principal so and so. I am lost. I should know what to do but I haven’t the slightest idea. I see some
people talking to principals and laughing and shaking hands and the like so I decide to try to do the
same until I realize that I do not know anyone here.
By careful observation and dumb luck I fall upon the list of possible teaching loads (​
postes​
) in
English. Alright! Now we are getting somewhere! I try decoding the page but I am having trouble. I
have divined that ​
ang​
is ​
anglais​
and that the first 1,2,3,4, or 5 in the 3 digit codes represents the
different grade levels. That is the extent of my knowledge; the rest is gobbledygook. DA, CPM, 300,
TED...wow! I am fluent in English and French but this is an entirely new language with no known
matrices.
Alessandra taught with me last year and she thankfully says hi. Now I have someone to talk to
so that I do not stick out like a sore thumb so much. She eyes the papers I have rolled up in my hand.
“Are those the ​
postes​
for this year? Where are you on the list? Are you ahead of me? You are! What
are you taking? Don’t take Hubert; I have heard bad things about it.” Alex is nervously chatting away
while I pretend to listen and think about where I want to land this year. We finished school about the
same time but I lucked out (in a manner of speaking) since I started working while still at Concordia.
I really thought that I had turned the ringer off my phone last night...What time is it? 9:00 am.
Crap, I have to answer. ​
“Monsieur Gariépy? Ici Monsieur Un-tel. J’ai eu votre nom de Madame
Chose et elle me dit des grandes choses, la Madame Chose, sur vous. Est-ce que vous voulez
enseigner à mon école? C’est un 67%.” ​
Ok wait, this guy wants to give me a job -teaching in a
50
school! I want that! “​
Vous savez, Monsieur Un-tel, que je n’ai pas terminé mon Bac. J’ai encore
un cours à l’université​
.” I tell him in a slow and determined French. “​
Ce n’est pas grave Monsieur
Gariépy, vous serez remplacer pour le temps que vous devez prendre pour vos études.”​
How
could I say no? “​
Est-ce que les élèves ont un livre?​
” I tried to sound like I knew what I was doing.
“Connaissez-vous Quiet Time?”​
No. I had never heard of that book before. “​
Oui, oui. Je le connais
bien.​
” I’d figure it out.
Four years in and I was getting good at navigating my way through the murky sea of part timers
at the end of August. I knew who my competition was: they were my colleagues in English. With the
ebb and flow of hiring, retiring, and baby booming, we tended to get onto the elusive priority list in
blocks.
“​
Marc, j’ai un poste pour toi si tu veux.”​
My principal from last year came to scout me out.
“​
Mais, Monsieur Tralala comment pouvez-vous?​
”​
“J’ai fait le tour des profs et ils ne prendront
pas le poste à mon école. Tu peux revenir, tu sais?”​
So let me get this straight: this principal walks
around and talks to the people who are ahead of me on the list. He figures out what they are all taking
for the year, spots me, and hands me a job on a silver platter? Where is the democracy? Where is the
priority? How could I say no?
At the end of June 2002 there was only one full time position available. To many, including
myself, this was absolutely disheartening since I would probably have to spend another year being a part
timer. That of course meant that I did not know where I would go to teach and that I would be at the
mercy of the full timers who chose their teaching loads in June, as opposed to me and my cohorts who
fought to get the scraps that were left over. One day I would not have to go through this hell again.
As with most meetings in a school or the school board or anything else education related I was
51
in the minority: I was a guy. I am a rarity if you look at statistics but I am quite comfortable being the
underdog. I glided over to my colleagues and tried to divine what they might take this year, but my
manly charms didn't always work. Year after year I garnered the courage to ask and got to know them
better and better. Through pity they would tell me as I feigned innocence although everyone knew what
I was doing: I was weighing my options and choosing my school for the next year...that was when I was
still a ​
précaire​
.
This year I was in the seventh position to speak or choose, if you will, so the prospect of getting
90% or more seemed likely and I would probably not be unseeded by my nearest competitor.
August rolled around once again and by now I had a handle on the goings-on at the cattle call.
We were pushed into the cafeteria of the largest school in the school board like cows to the slaughter or
the milking machine: same difference. I was able to pick up the list of available positions in English and
found not one but eight available. Eight? Eight! Eight and I was number seven to choose. I would be a
full timer by the time I finished the sentence: ​
Je vais prendre le poste à…
She was there too, with a colleague of mine who was ahead of me in the pecking order. I was
unconcerned with my lower rank since the prospect of never returning to this insanity made me giddy
irrespective of the job I would get. Lina, my English buddy, introduced me to her. She was tall,
Stéphanie, and had a smile you could see across the room and down the hall. Her brown hair framed
her round face and her nose was unmistakably French. She was nowhere near my triumphant position
of being on the edge of income security and job safety but was content to show her face to the
principals there so that she might pick up any leftovers in French. She could have gone anywhere in the
school board, but in the end she chose to return to Oka.
“​
Marc Gariépy?​
” said the disinterested HR lady at the front of the room. “​
Oui, c’est moi!​
”
52
With a sigh and a roll of the eyes she asked: “​
Qu’est ce que vous allez prendre?​
” I felt a shiver of joy
right down my spine but that could have been sweat. “​
Je vais prendre la permanence à Oka!
Woo-hoo!​
” “​
Parfait. Félicitations. Alessandra Clark?”​
There was one left and Alex got it. She was
about as ecstatic as me. The HR people were not but it did not matter. I was as ​
permanent​
as a black
marker. My ​
t âche​
(teaching load) was 28 periods per 9 days well above the average of 24.6. It was
going to be a tough year with 4 preps and 7 different classrooms. It did not matter since I had just won
the teaching lottery.
When I finally left the little glassed in enclosure they used to milk/slaughter us, she was gone. I
really wanted to see that smile again. I was happy to find out later that she had snagged a position at
École Secondaire d’Oka. My first grade level meeting at ESO saw me facing her but she dropped the
class we would have both taught. That did not stop me. She came into the city with another colleague so
that the three of us could work on a rally together. She saw my measly student apartment, and rumour
has it, my dirty laundry. That did not stop her.
We were married on July 7, 2007. She teaches French and I teach English but in different
schools now. Our lives together began on that sweaty and stuffy August afternoon of my final cattle call.
53
Métro, Boulot, Dodo
The commute
Every morning, I sit in the staffroom and peer out the window onto the school bus drop off. I
look over the piles of corrections that need to be graded and filed but they do not seem to get done.
Sometimes, I close my eyes and pretend that it is a dream; that this paper wasteland is an illusion.
Indubitably, I wake up with a start from my dallying since there is always something to correct. The
more I try to wish them away, the more they get piled up. When I need to stand up to see the guy who
sits in front of me, I begin to tear down the paper wall. It is both a cathartic and regretful time when I
dump pronouns practices into the recycling bin. I also feel bad having lied to my past self when I put
them on the desk with the promise of looking them over in the future. The future is now and my present
self doesn’t really feel that bad. Honestly, do I need to keep an exercise on which the majority of
students got 10 on 12 or better? The small minority may have gotten 6 but let us be honest here, they
are slower at getting the message than pouring molasses on cold day. Irrespective of the times that I
have said: John, you have got to apply yourself and be serious about the work that you do, they still
submit bunk. You win some; you lose a few.
I am more interested in thinking about my next project or planning my next activity than sitting at
my desk to correct papers or exercises. It is much more stimulating to see the look of excitement in their
eyes when I tell them that we are going to the computer room to do research on foodstuff than to play
drill sergeant when we get there.
I can see the little darlings, note the sarcasm, exiting the buses. Each vehicle is like a yellow,
mobile ant farm as it stops to unload the students with the promise of returning that afternoon. It
unceremoniously chugs off the school grounds in search of more students to shuttle. The kids look
54
longingly at the buses willing them to come back and whisk them away. When that doesn’t happen, they
turn and trudge to the student entrance. They look so dejected one would think they were off to prison.
Six glass doors that peer into the depths of Hades await them. We like to call it the locker area.
The stench of sweaty teenager is almost unbearable. At times, I take the long way outside rather
than to be stuck wading through the whiff of questionable hygiene practices of the occupants of the
locker bay. Strangely, the kids don’t seem to mind each other’s rankness but we teachers do. We mind
quite a lot. There is sort of a solidarity of stink since very rarely in my career have students complained
to me about the odorific overage of some of their classmates. Although I am considered a “nice”
teacher, I am a man and as such I am glad that misguided gender roles are assigned very distinctly in a
school. I am not maternal enough for “Sir, Simon stinks” thank goodness. I am more of the screwed up
uncle that you go to for a laugh and a bit of don’t-do-what-I-have-done advice. It works for me.
Luckily, the walk-through the putrid factory lasts seconds since the staff room is a stone’s throw
away, down the hall. A staff room is like a locker room but with more perfume and somewhat less
swearing although, it depends on the day and like the lockers, on who is there at the time.
Catty teachers rip apart students or other teachers from other staff rooms in an attempt to have
meaningful conversations. There is no greater unity when complaining or criticizing in harmony. We
don’t talk about pedagogy. We talk about how that kid who was suspended last week for selling
cocaine cut with Drano should be expelled but that won’t happen since the principal is useless and the
school board doesn’t want to handle the bad press. The collective “we” thinks he should be expelled
and does not understand why its will is not being done by the decision-makers. These people are so far
removed for the day-to-day realities of a school. They just don’t get it and if they’d only listened to us,
wouldn’t the education system run so much better?
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It is unbeknownst to many non-education types that all of the problems in education are solved
in the staff rooms of world’s schools. Yes, it is true. We know everything and we don’t care what you
think because you are not a teacher.
Every once in a while, I leave my window gazing catatonic state to put in my two cents about
student X or teacher Y. I try not to play their reindeer games but it really is so much fun to laugh at
Rudolph from time to time.
The first bell rings and some teachers scramble to get to class. Others simply waddle.
Depending on the season or the weather, teachers are either happy and joking or completely
exasperated. The cloud of stench in the locker area is replaced by a cloud filled with the combined
humour of the teachers. It is suffocating on bad days and brightens the whole room on good ones.
The short corridor I take to go from staffroom central to my learning kingdom (i.e. my
classroom) is narrowed by lockers on one wall and the students who occupy them on the other. What
great luck to be surrounded once again by disenfranchised youth. Lucky, lucky me. They pay no heed
to me or my tea cup or anything else for that matter. They are the fortunate ones since their lockers are
in the hallway and not the caged locker area discussed above. It is nice to see that they let some of the
animals run free. In truth, the students are never in the locker area when the cage is pulled down, as
much as some teachers might wish it. Imagining hundreds of screaming teenagers breaking their
fingernails on the steel bars as you walk through that jungle is far too plausible.
Now in all fairness, the kids deserve a bit of space but does it have to be smack dab in the
middle of the English wing of the school? Couldn’t they put the lockers in Phys. Ed. or Math or French?
It turns out that no, we ​
t êtes carrées​
are stuck with them. I try to be patient; I really do. Some days I
am like the biblical Job; some days I am Job’s lesser-known evil twin.
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The students clutter together even though by doing so they completely block the way forward.
Whether you are in education or not, I would like you to one day try this little experiment: Walk into a
school when the first bell of the day has rung. Try maneuvering through a corridor without touching
another soul. Simply say in your loudest and most authoritative voice: ​
Excuse me, pardon me​
in a
continuous loop. Here is what will happen: Students will not look up since that would be acknowledging
your presence. They will, after repeating yourself two to three times, move anywhere between 30 and
45 degrees of their initial position allowing an undernourished 12 year old with stunted growth to move
4 feet in the right direction until he is stopped once again. I am 5’ 11” and weigh well over 200 pounds;
there is no way I can get by without bouncing 3 of them off my shoulders amid their dirty looks and
surprised faces.
How exasperating to push through little clusters of hapless teenagers trying desperately to
pretend that I and the 400 other people in the corridor do not exist. Other than being the bane of my
existence at that exact moment, there is no reason for them to be there. Go to class, boys and girls.
Even at arm’s length they think that I am bellowing at some other student since most do not
even look my way as they make their feeble attempts to move. My favourite situation is when I finally
make it to my locked classroom with tea, books, papers, and keys in hand and the hapless kid in front
of the door doesn’t budge. I say, ​
excuse me Brigitte​
and she looks up, surprised as if I shouldn’t be
there in the first place. What I really want to scream is: ​
Hey Dumbass! Move your sorry self out of the
way so that the ONLY PERSON WITH A KEY can get to the door handle​
but I don’t.
Workspace
When I arrive at my destination, I know that I am safe. It is my classroom since I am the teacher
who teaches there for most of the 36 period opening hours. This is an important point. I decide on the
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goings-on here although I could very well teach in any other classroom in the school, students and adults
alike ask if they can use MY room. It is not mine. I do not own it. I have not invested time or money
into it, but somehow I have appropriated it. I do my best to feign ownership because of the implication
that I have control of the space, but it is very limited.
For the 75 minutes that I receive students, they sit at a desk, which for the time they are with
me, is theirs. Their sense of ownership is greater than mine; just try to change the seating plan. The
spectrum of reactions goes from euphoria to disbelief to anger. Why do I have to move? Why should I
sit here? I promise I won’t talk anymore. These are all valid questions and arguments but I just do not
listen to them since, as stated above, this is my classroom and I decide who sits where.
The Views
Classrooms are more or less the same in my school save for a desk here and there. The door to
all of them has an inserted window in the middle of it that covers about two thirds of the height. It is to
ponder whether it was installed to allow those outside to look inside or for those inside to have the
opportunity to see out. The former might be to spy on good teaching and bad learning or vice versa; the
latter might be to point out the door to freedom from the academic prison. I often wonder why teachers
sometimes cover this window. I somehow think that it is a way for them to quash any attempt a student
may make to wane his attention elsewhere by watching for whom will walk by the door. Perhaps,
teachers like the privacy it provides them so that they can be real and true to the students without the
fear of ridicule from colleagues or sanctioning from the administration. Perhaps they are bad teachers
and do not want others to see how bad they really are.
Reference Books
Inside the class one sees a bookcase directly on the left. It is grey melamine and not meant to be
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used for any other purpose than to hold too many dictionaries in place since many of my students have
their own. The bookcase is nothing short of ugly as sin; it is sturdy though. There are even 5 French
dictionaries in case students would have a surprise French exam in my English class. The French
reference books help students who do not know a word in their mother tongue and must resort to the
degrading task of either asking me for help (to which I more often than not reply: use the dictionary) or
to using the dictionary.
The thesauri and dictionaries fill the three shelves in a mismatched mosaic of blue, black, yellow,
and white. The duct tape used to repair them is also sometimes red. There is a sense of importance
imposed on these reference books as if they were put there to save every one of the students from
eventual stupidity. “Use me and you will never fail again”, they taunt. They are objects of authority and
aid; they are the teacher without the blood and skin, which might explain why students take such joy in
defacing them. I often wonder what student would bother to write ​
Fuck the School​
on the side of the
reference books. Is it the anonymity and the captive audience that these books provide? No one really
owns them, yet everyone uses them.
I have seen teachers allow students to use the dictionaries as props for the windows that never
stay open. That might explain why there is so much duct tape on them, since actions always speak
louder than words and students are excellent observers. Misusing dictionaries will almost certainly
engender their abuse and defacement. It would be impossible to teach without them even though I have
a computer and projector at the ready on my desk. During exam periods, many of my kids ask if they
may use the dictionary. Very rarely do I say no and they beam with satisfaction and relief. They usually
do not make the exam any easier; they provide a safety net. Some kids bring a dictionary and never
open it perhaps hoping that the magic of knowledge will be transferred directly to their brains.
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Black, Green, or Chalk Boards
Flanking the atrocious bookcase and the door are two chalkboards. I would like to write
blackboard here but I have not seen one in any other colour than green since the early days of my
career. There are whiteboards and Smartboards too but I have been blessed with neither for the
moment. I have been promised a Smartboard, which comes automatically with a white board but for
now my class is an archaic throwback to a time when teachers wrote with chalk and students took
notes with pens and wrote on paper.
Some people (including me) still use the outdated colourful nomenclature blackboard, which
recalls a time when the strict black spied menacingly on us as students. The comforting green boards do
nothing more today than invite students to write graffiti on them at the end of class. During class,
however, they beckon students to attention and welcome their eyes to the wonders that I might write on
the board, while debunking the myth of the intimidating blackboards of yesteryears.
Follow me
The boards are my domain and the students feel an exhilarating sense of intrusion when they
leave a happy face, or a ​
I love Mr. G​
, or a thank you message on the board at the front of the class.
The one on the side is reserved for information like when my next remedial class will be or the date of
the next reading exam. These do not require much space and messages are often intermittent; I do not
give reading tests all the time. Students are much more likely to write something on the side board than
the front board so I use it for very special lessons that require concentration and a disarming lack of
balance. There is one lesson I teach about the appropriate use of modals (modal auxiliaries are killers!)
when I ask students to turn all of their desks 90 degrees to the right. They are giddy when they do it;
they are unsure what will happen next. They look at the side greenboard and can only see arrows,
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words, dots, and percentages. Their sense of where they are and how things work no longer hold true,
but over time they have learned to trust me. At the very least, I have the reputation of being a
trustworthy teacher, which allows me to push the envelope of proper seating arrangements a bit.
Less Space than Usual
Since they are huddled in the narrower part of the class, I can see all of them more clearly. The
impede on each other’s personal space; their desks are much closer than usual. As a general rule, I do
not do this type of classroom shuffling more than once a year. I am afraid that they will eventually want
to break free of the bonds of close quarters; they will find a reason to pick a fight. It does not happen; it
never has. My students bond better when they are closer. They are happy with less personal space
whereas I am not. I cannot stand it. It drives me a little batty​
. They seem to be serene and at ease with
someone else’s desk butted up against theirs; they find comfort where I would be highly uneasy.
Time to go
The decorative trim around the centered window of my door has slowly been peeled off by
students waiting to come in or those waiting at the door at the end of class for the bell announcing their
departure. I am pretty sure that students are responsible for this minor damage since I would question
the sanity of an adult standing at my door pulling back quarter round. I wonder how solidly braced that
window is, since it is held on by three solid sides and one dangling fourth.
The students who are at my door first often have nowhere else to go so they await my arrival
like chocolate cake on a Tuesday night. They are happy to be part of my classroom and ask for
amnesty from the cruelties of teenagehood. I accept to grant them shelter as always. Those who arrive
late could care less or have found so many better things to do like smoke a cigarette, eat an apple, or
wait in line for juice instead of coming to class on time.
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Hello Goodbye
Those who are not prone to speaking during class or only when called upon, shout or whisper
goodbye to me when they leave. They stand in the classroom and not near the exit, so that they might
say something to me. It is sort of a salute to my vain attempt at teaching them or motivating them to do
something extraordinary like speak English in my English class.
Some say ​
t hank you​
to me. It is a very recent and distressing occurrence; I am still trying to
find an appropriate response better than: “No, no... thank you!” as if that were satisfactory. How does a
teacher respond to being thanked in such a natural and honest way?
Teacher Appreciation week is just that: one week! It is the time of the year when the principal,
through the P.A. system thanks us for “all our hard work.” In French she says: “​
t out votre bon
travail​
,” which should be translated by “good work” or “good works” making what I do sound like a
form of charity, but at the end of the day it still remains a job. Perhaps higher monetary compensation
would be a better way of thanking teachers so that we may shed the shackles of our charitable natures.
Until then, I’ll take the pat on the back but it still remains more poignant coming from the mouth of a shy
fourteen year old as she holds her books up like a shield, looks sheepishly at the floor, and mumbles
“Thank you, Mr. G” when she exits. You are welcome.
The Walk Home
Once the space of my classroom has been vacated, I always feel a sense of relief. The desks
are often put back haphazardly and so I have to straighten them. In all honesty, there is no rule that
forces me to do anything to the desks but I like to put things back as they were for the next teacher or
the next group that I teach. I erase the chalkboard and turn off the lights. The walk back to the
staffroom is much less frantic. Most students have returned to the cage and those who remain closer to
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my class are chatting away calmly about their first period. My cup is empty so I might even be dangling
it from my pinky since I threw out the rest of the liquid and tea leaves in the garbage in class. The door
shuts true and clicks so that I know that it is locked. I smile at the kids hanging out in our neighbourhood
and they smile back or say “Hello, Mr. G!” When I reach the staffroom, I expertly balance books,
papers, and teacup in one hand while opening the door with the other.
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The other side of the Desk
The old teacher reached for the spectacles in his jacket pocket with a determined smirk and
placed them delicately on his nose. His face betrayed his age: the scars of many years of giving lessons
and grading papers crinkled around his brow and cheeks. His laugh lines were deep set and the
wrinkles made his eyes appear to be forever in a state of bliss. It was as if he were permanently recalling
a joke that had a hilarious punchline. He cleared his throat amid the din of chatter that had risen while he
shuffled from his seat on the stage to the podium at the center. The clamor and clatter hushed for a
moment.
It was rare to see someone like him, a simple high school teacher, giving a commencement
speech. The university was trying something new and the selection committee had fallen on his name. He
had once said to the Dean that he would be happy to help the Education Department in any way that he
could. How could he refuse?
He was nervous but truth be told, not that much. He had seen them before these neophytes
coming into the profession; he had actually taught some of them at Rosemere High School. The kids
liked him, Mr. Field, he was an alright teacher. This was not lofty praise but he took it as such. Although
no teacher wanted to kowtow to a popularity contest, it was easier to do the job with willing
participants. He was very happy to be that kind of teacher: one who was liked when he taught and
forgotten soon after.
It was early November when I was phoned first; it was a call from heaven. During my
elementary school practicum, the principal of the little grade school where I was working took a shine to
me. Good thing since her affability put me on a fast track to the big time. She told the principal of the
massive high school in the same city that I was a good teacher. I wouldn’t have qualified as one back
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then but a way into the school board was enough for me. The secretary was calm and knowledgeable; I
was a nervous wreck.
27 years of experience had taught him to be patient and kind but to speak firmly when
addressing students. He cleared his throat a second time and said: "Let's begin, ladies and gentlemen."
He had said that over and over again in his classes. Some of the baccalaureates looked up and smiled,
others unconsciously straightened up in their seats, and still others quickly turned around and placed
their hands on their laps in a mock salute to the schoolroom desk that was conspicuously absent in front
of them. It was a throwback moment that filled the auditorium with laughter and the yearning for a time
when they, these future teachers had been on the other side of the desk. Now Field had them where he
wanted them.
I was in over my head. I had to find out where this school was and I had no idea. I was an
intern at that little school in the middle of the quaint old town for six weeks; the rest of the area was like
the Far West to me. It was a vast expanse of territory adorned with the promise of a better life but I had
no idea what was beyond the mountains. In this case, the mountains were bridges, two of them. One
would think that finding the address of a high school with an 1800 student capacity would be easy but
that was not the case. First, I had to find the school board and then the school. I had the name of the
city where it was but that was not the name of the school. Unfortunately, it was named after an obscure
historical figure that once stayed overnight in the little town. That was long enough to have his name
forever memorialized. It took me fifteen minutes to figure it out. Serves me right for branching out and
switching shores (born on the South, working on the North Shore) to get a job. It was that, though, a
job.
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"It is a great pleasure to stand in front of you today to deliver this commencement speech. As
Professor Sharp said so eloquently, I have been teaching for longer than many of you have been alive. I
really like my job. It has its ups and downs but overall it is a good job. They pay me to connect with
young people in a way that few of my contemporaries can; it is truly an honor to be able to do this. I
assume and I believe rightly so, that I was asked here to talk to you about teaching; to dispense to you
some knowledge, some words of advice, or some insightful strategy so that you may avoid the many
pitfalls that have dotted my career. I can tell you now that you will absolutely not fall into the same pits
as me; you will most definitely dig your own.” He paused for effect, hoping that they would laugh. A few
snickered. “This is not a slight at your relative inexperience, rather it is a look through the window of
your future. Understand, ladies and gentlemen, that it is not the failings or the falls that matter; it is how
we learn from them that truly defines our mettle. We should always be learning as teachers and mostly
about ourselves: about our capacities, our shortcomings, our tolerance, our adaptability. The books, the
theory, and the advice you have received up until now give you the slate on which to write; it is now up
to you to grasp the chalk.”
I had found Ground Zero for my teaching career: the birth of a teacher. There was no fanfare
and the best I got was a quip from the secretary: “Don’t forget to check your pay stub because
sometimes I make mistakes ​
t ee-hee-hee​
.” I was dumbfounded and just smiled. I hoped that she was
joking. She just turned and looked at her screen again.
First period: chemistry. I hated chemistry in school and not much had changed. On that day, I
especially hated it since I actually had to give a lesson. At ten to nine, I went over the book and asked
a guy in the department but he said that his specialty was Physics. Thanks a lot Mister Einstein but how
66
is that going to help with the periodic table? Cripes, I hate this job. I sucked it up, hoped that I would
not get lost and made it to room E-221.
“What I have for you today is a lifetime's worth of my experiences and observations as a
teacher and that is the extent of their worth. These are things I have done and heard that have remained
with me over the course of my teaching career. I leave it to you to do with them what you please.
My words might put you to sleep; they might touch you; I hope very deeply that they will
entertain you. Please, for this very privileged moment of your career, sit back and enjoy the show." He
smiled and unfolded the looseleaf sheets on which he had scribbled a few notes among the chuckles and
smiles of his audience.
You’re the sub? I was asked 6 times in total. When I answered yes, infallibly, the kid who
asked looked around and smiled. The entourage surrounding Mr. or Ms. Inquisitive would then branch
out to different areas of the lab dawning knowing looks and smiles. This was not welcome comfort for
me; it shook me to the core. Did I look that incompetent? I tried to look mean but my sweaty forehead
and gaping mouth gave me away. I worried about wearing deodorant. Did I put some on or not? A
couple of these kids smelled pretty ripe but no one seemed to notice save me. It is ok for them but I
could not show fear, let alone release the stench of fear. God help me; I hope I’d put some on.
The bell rang and I stood there with the class list wondering how I would get 30 jabbering
teenagers to stop talking and listen long enough for me to take attendance. I started slowly by saying
someone’s name: Julie André? and then looked around frantically for a face, a hand, a sneer, some form
of recognition of the label given to them at birth or at a later and more ceremonious date. Come on,
Julie, where are you?
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He had thought about these things quite a bit. He did not want to throw out some boring rehash
of their classroom management or methodology classes; he wanted them to think about teaching. He
was a great advocate for the philosophy behind teaching; there was something more to it than spewing
historical facts or geographical statistics at the students and then testing their ability to retain them. That
link, that connection, that symbiotic pathway between teacher and students was the essence of teaching
in his mind. The trick for the teacher was to be able to be at the right distance from the student. If he
were too close then the student would consider him an equal; too far then the student would deem him
unreachable. Teachers could also easily be on a completely different path: the high road. One looked
down from the high road. That was a big mistake in his book. Those profs had empty seats in the front
rows of their classrooms where students did not want to and were not invited to sit. There were
somewhat like educational lepers.
There seemed to be so many things to say and yet he had had trouble writing his speech. His
experience was just that: his. He could not impose his way of doing things onto others as if he held the
secret to the perfect lesson. He threw caution to the wind and let his instincts and his notes guide him.
I heard gum popping in the back of the class and a faint “here.” One down and 29 to go. The
next few kids raised their hand and were much more vocal. One of them, his name was Andrew,
screamed “PRESENT” and the whole class laughed. OK, wise guy, I thought, you and I are going to
have a problem. I shot him an over-the-glasses teacher glance that I had practiced in the mirror. It
seemed to work.
"I will begin with sleep: get a lot of it. Sleep is essential to every living creature and its benefits
are well documented in several scientific journals. If you want to teach well: sleep well. Your best day of
teaching is today so, be ready for it. It is certainly ready for you. When you are not at your best, it
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shows. You can teach on limited hours of sleep or with the remnants of a cold or a sore back. You just
cannot teach well, however.
Black markers are for art class, not for History or English. In the latter classes they are more
often than not for graffiti. Your students, through their silent behavior are talking to you. Listen to them;
do not ignore them. Telling a student to put away inappropriate material does not make you nosy; it
shows that you care. You care about the state of the classroom and the people in it. Share that with
your students; make them the guardians of propriety and good manners.”
“Thanks, ANDREW, but you did not need to shout. So that is everyone. Take out your
textbooks (the class moaned) and turn to page ten (the class moaned even more loudly.)” That was
pretty much the first time I had been paid to say that. It felt good but I was still terribly anxious. Every
second word I said was either umm or ahh.
“You are only their teacher and that begs the question: Who the heck are you? Do not assume
that just because you are standing at the front of the class that you are in command. Students listen to
you for two reasons: they want to or they feel they should. Make sure they espouse one of those two.
Respect your students but do not love them. They will bring you joy, sadness, excitement,
adoration, hate, conceit, understanding, underhandedness, frustration, and respect covered in contempt.
The time you spent together will have different impacts on each of them and on you. They may never
want to see you again; that is ok. They may tell you one day in the future that their lives were impacted
by your teaching; that is fantastic. They may tell you that they should have worked harder in class since
now all that material has returned to haunt them in their working lives. There is no telling how you will
change their lives.”
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I could see them fidgeting in the seats as I read directly from the textbook. The cred I had
gotten from my comeback aimed at Andrew was starting to fade. I could feel their attention waning with
every word that I read. I looked up; one student looked back. There was a collective sigh of boredom,
of disbelief, of mutiny when I paused to see who was still with me. I began to worry and looked at the
clock. 55 minutes to go; Now what?
“Be on time. You will thank me for that one. The one advantage you have over the students
albeit limited is your control of time. Once the bell rings, however, they control time. If you can, write
your agenda for the class and the date on the board, and clean it. Greet students at the door and make
them feel welcomed. You will show that you are ready for them and they will have no choice but to be
ready for you.
Make the right number of photocopies, be prepared, allow your students to have off days, and
apply the rules consistently for everyone. Never judge a book by its cover. Just because they are silent,
does not mean that students hear you; just because they are loud, does not mean that they are not
working. Never cease to be amazed by your students.
You will get better. Do not think that if you have an awful class, things will never change. They
certainly will if you accept the fact that over the next 30 years you will be learning how to teach.”
I went over the instructions that the teacher left in my head: Read from page 10 to 13 and
practice exercises on page 14. They can work in teams if they are well-behaved and alone if not. What
is well-behaved for her? There was no screaming or shouting but little conversations had broken out all
over the lab. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but the noise just got louder.
His list seemed so very long and really quite tedious. He had tried to put all that experience into
a neat package as many before him had tried. The further the old teacher read, the more he started to
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lose them. He could feel them slipping away; he could see their "I have heard it all before" attitude
through their posture. One guy was slouched to the left staring at the pretty girl next to him. One woman
was fidgeting in her seat trying to find a way to get comfortable and still appear to be listening. A few
others were staring at each other in exasperation at the rehashed and rehearsed fodder that was coming
out of the old man's mouth.
I was experiencing my first popcorn class. Think of dried popcorn kernels sitting at the bottom
of a pot. They are all very quiet and obedient until you add oil and heat; then the random popping
begins. It is hard to predict where the next one will go off and when there is enough heat in the pot then
it is almost impossible to stop it at all.
Sometimes Field let it slide and allowed his students to nod off. He knew full well that they
would pass anyway so the effort was not really worth it. It got to him once in a while but not that often
anymore. He was used to watching young people waste their lives away although the really sad cases
were few and far between. In the end, they would smarten up and get jobs, or just find a way to survive
after they had finished high school. He had expected more from these people though. He wanted to give
them something to grasp; a brilliant insight into his 27 year journey in teaching. He could not leave it like
that. It was not working. Give it to us straight, he thought he had heard or perhaps imagined. The years
of strife, of endless hours of preparation and correcting, of waiting for his students to achieve an
enlightened state, came to a head. And so, the truth began with a toss of balled paper and the loud rap
of his fist on the podium.
Now the class was in full on recess! Students were talking to each other from all four corners of
the room. Some magical signal, that I did not see nor see coming, had been understood by the kids. For
them, class was over and fun had begun. I had to do something! Someone had thrown an eraser at the
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only kid who wasn’t talking to anyone. Who was it? “Did you throw this?” I asked about 5 guys close
to the little nerdy boy. They all smiled and chuckled “no” until one of them said “ I was just trying to
pass it to my friend, sorry George.” George nodded and cowered even lower in his seat. I think that
George was on to something.
"Teaching hurts, ladies and gentlemen! Get used to it.Teaching is the toughest job you will ever
have; you will never be so emotionally, psychologically, and physically drained as when you finish your
first full semester teaching. You will spend your holidays and weekends recovering from colds and
ailments that adrenaline took care of when you were on the job. Summers off, ha! More like
convalescence to me.
The students will test you! They will make you feel insecure. They will prod you and try to get
you off balance. You will question your career choice. You will rue the day that you signed up for this
crazy teaching gig.
25 minutes left and there was complete chaos in the chemistry lab. I had to get them back but I
was not sure how. I did not know their names so calling them out would not work, I was about as lost
as they were when it came to the science, and other than screaming at the top of my lungs, I did not see
how I would do it.
You will feel powerless to change the system. You will look out at your class and think about
what wonderful projects you have for them. They will not listen because you are just a first year teacher
and they will not believe that you can do anything besides follow a textbook.
You will feel alone. You will feel like no one can understand what it is that you are going through
and much less how crappy you feel because of it. It's a lonely place at the bottom of the barrel, ladies
and gentlemen, and that is where you will be one day. You will have two choices: you can bottom out
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and leave the profession or you can stick it out and become the teacher you have always wanted to be.
According to some statistics, half of you will leave the profession in the first five years. I hate that
statistic and that is why I am here today. I was going to wow you with some fatherly words of advice
and woo you into staying but that did not work out the way I had planned. I can only speak from my
heart since speaking through my hat did not convince you.
Andrew! “Andrew, please listen up!” “Hey I am not the only one talking, teach!” he replied.
“Why me?” Great now I have to argue with a 15 year old in front of 29 other 15 year olds. That is
going to work. I had to act fast. “Hey listen, you guys have to do this work one way or another, right?
You can work in teams, quietly, until the bell rings. What do you say?” The begging was a little much,
but I was at a loss for any other solution.
I hate to say this but I love my job. I am not supposed to love it but I do. I am supposed to
consider it a job that pays my bills and fulfills my duty to society by making me a productive member of
it.
I wake up every morning with the anticipation of the new day. The possibilities are endless and I
remain in wonder before them all. Maybe Gary will have finally read the chapter before class. Perhaps
Sheila will not be chewing gum when she walks in. Could it even be possible that Freddy has his
notebook and a pencil?
Gary usually muddles through the chapter as we take notes; I have a garbage pail and a scrap of
paper for Sheila and there is always someone with a spare pen and a sheet for Freddy. The day that
they do get their act together is a great day. You may think that this sounds like small potatoes but, boy
oh boy, does it make my day.
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The noise level had started to come down when they realized that Andrew, I guess he was the
smart ass of the group, was talking to me. Had I done it? Had I connected with this kid long enough to
distract the others?
So why bother, you ask? There is no greater thrill than watching your students do the
assignment correctly or finally get the grammar point or solve that bothersome equation by themselves.
By themselves! Thanks to you! You will do that; you will make them learn; you will take them as far as
they can or choose to go.
“Jimmy, get over here!” said Andrew without looking at me or acknowledging my offer. That
seemed to be the signal for group work time. Suddenly, as if it was rehearsed, the students formed
groups of two or three and began chatting. I am not sure how much work was getting done but at least
they looked like they were doing something.
“It will be without a shadow of a doubt the most difficult thing you will do in your life, but don't
you dare quit! Don't you dare give up! Don't you dare give in to the impulse to become a secretary or a
salesman or an accountant. With all due respect to all of those professions, you are a teacher.” With
that, Mr. Field took his spectacles off and put them back in his pocket. He shuffled back to his seat and
sat. The sweat had beaded on his brow and his throat was dry.
Mercifully, the bell rang 20 minutes later. I surveyed the class and found that it was not in such
bad shape. I straightened a few chairs and picked up a few stray papers. I had never been so happy to
hear the chime of 11:05.
The Baccalaureate crowd as well as the professors on the podium were in shock. They began
to politely clap as Field exhaled in relief.
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I made my way to the staff bathroom once I had locked the lab. I walked up to the sink, turned
on the water, took off my glasses, and covered my face in cool liquid. Alistair Field, I thought, you are a
teacher.
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Inquiry Conclusions
In terms of chronology, my stories follow more or less the timeline of my career. They can also
be grouped by theme or issue. Some are more about battling the forces of the school board and
administration, or at least trying to understand them, and others were strictly about classroom
management. ​
M étro, boulot​
is about my current situation. It is about the secure routine we get to when
we have been teaching for a while. ​
The other side​
turned out to be a projection of when my fear of no
longer connecting with my kids becomes reality.
I find that many teachers on the verge of their retirement do not fare well in their final years in
teaching. The rift between themselves and their students widens year after year until I see them just
trying to survive to get a pension. This has been my personal experience and I find it disheartening. I
wanted to leave a small trace of that in my stories for my readers to see that even the old codgers were
once bright newcomers with vigor, promise, and passion. The rest of my stories do revolve around my
experience teaching.
As mentioned in the introduction, I found myself split with two personae when I wrote. ​
W​
(the
writer) would get an idea, or a spark if you will, and start to write stories while ​
R​
(the researcher) let
him write. ​
R​
would then review the text and argue with ​
W​
about the use of such a word or episode
from their past. ​
W​
would sometimes get ganged up on by ​
R​
and ​
R​
’s wife. She was usually right about
this or that so changes were made.
My wife is an incredible editor and researcher in her own right. She really helped ​
W​
to focus
and forced ​
R​
to deepen his understanding of narrative inquiry. She was a great help to both. Involving
her was an important part of the process of writing and then writing about my writing from both an
audience perspective (she is also a high school teacher) and an academic one (she has written a
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Master’s thesis of her own.) Below you will find my analysis of and what I have learned from each of
my stories and what I wish to leave to other teachers since “stories exist within a community in which
readers make something of them.” (Carter, 1993, p.8) Even with a plot at the back of my mind, I found
that they each took their own directions. The stories led me to the end. The stories themselves became
collaborators in their own elaboration. It was a truly humbling and magical experience.
Catalyst
“A teacher wants to teach. I mean why else would you take a shitty salary and really long hours
and, and do that job unless you really love to do it? What is your incentive?” (Gotham Schools, 2011)
Matt Damon comes from a teaching family, as do I. According to the information provided in his
interview with Reason.tv, his mother is a teacher. In this exchange, he eloquently defends teachers and
calls into question the reasoning of his interviewer and, surprisingly, her cameraman who throw out
quasi-facts and statistics like ten percent of teachers are bad and that it is impossible to fire a tenured
teacher. I have never seen a cameraman asking questions in a broadcast interview but I assume that
since it involved teaching then, everyone is an expert.
This type of unfounded criticism is infuriating. I find myself, along with my peers, having to
defend our jobs or our supposed benefits like having summers off or a tenured job with little threat of
firing or reprimand. Even though these are untrue, they are perpetuated by ignorance and
misinformation. Karsenti, Collin, and Dumouchel enumerate several factors leading to the high teacher
attrition rate in Quebec including “mauvaise relations avec les acteurs éducatifs et sociaux” (2013, p.
562), which encompasses how the public views teaching and teachers. Although not the only reason for
these pedagogical dropouts, it does play a part in the decision of some to stay or leave the teaching
profession.
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It would be much easier to quit and try something else to avoid the stigma of being a full time
educator. I could put less effort into pushing my students beyond their perceived limits. I could stop
thinking so much about how to better involve my students in their own learning and to get them excited
about it. I could have not returned to university after a ten year absence to pursue a degree that will only
benefit me personally and in my classroom. I could have done all of those things but I cannot. I am a
teacher.
I wrote ​
Catalyst​
in hommage to my grandmother and my family. Nana was one tough cookie. I
cannot imagine facing the death of my wife and being so far from home with four children to raise. Along
with family support, I believe that teaching was a great comfort to her as they were to me when I went
through my divorce. Splitting with my ex-wife was the catalyst for me to begin to teach.
Temporality in this story is evident. Before I set foot in a classroom or I fell prey to a
relationship doomed from the beginning, I had teaching in me. At the end, my character echoes the
words that Nana and probably many of my family’s teachers say and said. I have learned that it is the
base on which I stand when I teach.
My memories of Nana and Aunt Ann, the two teachers closest to me growing up, were of poise
and grace. They never seemed too frazzled or too tired to be useful, as I get from time to time. I realize
now that my vision of them, even through a young boy’s eyes, is what I aspire to be as a teacher.
I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my grandmother growing up at our family
cottage. That place became more and more significant to me as I wrote. The traces of the places I
wrote about can be seen and heard there. In the story, I wrote about PEI and Greenfield Park but it is
impossible for me to disassociate my grandparents and their story from the cottage. These bounce off
the walls every time I walk through the door. I even did a fair part of writing at the library in the
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neighbouring town. This place is mystical in my family history and in my teaching. Over my careers, both
teaching and academic, it has been a place of peace and reflection for me.
I often caught my grandmother and her grade book at the kitchen table before anyone at the
cottage was up. As soon as I walked into the main room, she would run to the stove and start making
pancakes for her chubby little grandson.
Seeing Nana work late or wake up early was normal to me. I never had a second thought about
my career choice because she spoke about teaching in such a positive way that anyone would have
wanted to be one.
Through sociality, I have been brought closer to my family. I have tried to respect them and their
memory if that was the case. They are a much bigger part of my teaching than I had ever imagined. At
our yearly family gathering I was surprised at how interested many people were in my work. Teaching is
one common thread that binds us together.
As Damon so eloquently put it, why teach unless you love it? What is the incentive? The issue I
am trying to explore is the origin of the desire to teach, which I sometimes forget when the job becomes
difficult or even impossible. I need to be grounded in the familiar (or the familial) at times so that I can
refocus on the positive aspects of teaching rather than succumb to petty criticism or give up on a difficult
student or class. Out of respect for my family, those who have gone before me, I carry on.
I feel there is something true and pure about the desire to teach. Those who know teaching
know that there is nothing easy about it, but there is often something satisfying in doing it. I have never
forgotten and remain eternally grateful to the profession for giving me purpose.
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I’ve got the fourth
As I began my career in teaching I also began to make mistakes, as everyone does. Being new
to teaching though, I thought that every little error was monumental. I looked around me and saw very
confident people who seemed to have it all together. I doubted my ability to teach and manage a
classroom effectively. I felt angst when trying to find the right solutions to my CM problems. My
self-confidence was in the toilet. Often the most experienced teachers would say: ​
Yep, I have been
there​
or worse ​
Gee, I don’t have any problems with Billy.​
Those were like a slap in the face for me.
I’ve got the fourth​
is a narrative look at ​
I have been there​
. I can point to episodes in my
career where I taught ineffectively, I lost my temper, or I said or did something completely
inappropriate. Somehow, I consider these to be rights of passage and I have mostly gotten over the guilt
or negative repercussions that these actions may have had on me. I question why there must be a right
of passage in teaching. Beside the repetition of the mantra, ​
I have been there​
, there is really no reason
for new teachers to go through what I and others did.
And then, I call into question how far removed I am from episodes like these. I sit atop my
fifteen years experience and look down on those that I counsel and mentor, but really, I am nothing
more than a teacher like them. The time I have spent learning and honing my craft offers me the benefit
of perhaps less surprises in classroom management, but it does not eliminate them. I am as likely to have
classroom management issues as the next teacher. I just have more resources now than in my early
years to deal with them. My character in this story gets tangled in the emotional web of teaching and
teacher collegiality (Hargreaves, 2001) while finding a solution to his so-called problem.
I chose to use the school where I work now as a setting for this story. It is a safe place for me,
since I know every nook and cranny. I have a privileged relationship with the principal, colleagues who
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know and respect me, and a reputation with the students that is eight years in the making. I have
everything going for me when I teach in this place. In contrast, my character does not.
This choice of environment betrays a fear I had of losing my strong foothold in my present
teaching situation. There is fragility and vulnerability in teaching. I surrounded my character and my story
with places that are familiar to me to steady my fragile state.
I gave my character a name different from mine as a way to further remove myself from the
story. Initially, I did not want my stories to expose myself as a teacher and my practice; I wanted to stay
in the ivory tower that I have created at École Secondaire Rive-Nord and preach to the pedagogical
neophytes.
So there is something anachronistic about this story. I think it portrays a realistic episode in a
hypothetical teacher’s career, but I am writing from a safe place. The timeline in the story does not
necessarily follow my own teaching career since I have taken from elements all along that continuum.
As opposed to Barette’s quip about throwing spitballs, I was a pretty calm and nerdy high
school student. I admired those who stood up to teachers or who goofed off in defiance of the rules.
Teaching allows you to be both a student and a teacher at the same time. My high school experience as
a student was very different from my teaching one, although I have tried to never forget what it was like
to be a student.
It does not make teaching any easier to know that being a student is no cakewalk. Even though
the teacher education programme in Québec has gone from three to four years, we as teachers are very
close to our high school days when we begin to teach. Indubitably, we relate somewhat to our students
through the eyes of former students. There is that line that we walk on, drawn in the sand, when we
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realize that we are teachers and they are students. Usually, there is an issue with discipline that requires
us to “be the boss” of the class. This is when I am sure to be on the other side of the desk.
I decided to only write in English for this short story as opposed to the others. At first, I wrote
my conversations in French slang (Joual) but it did neither justice to the characters or my
French-speaking counterparts in my school. Here sociality was at work since I wanted to respect the
people who unwittingly played a part in this story. In a sense, it is not as realistic but provides more
anonymity for my “participants” since I chose the words that the characters speak rather than having
them speak to me. This story is not about specific places or time or even people; it is a mishmash of
uneasiness that I have felt throughout my career. Just like my students, I never really have both feet on
the ground while I am teaching. I happily spend my time being unbalanced and acting on or reacting to
situations as they appear.
The whirlwind of potential violence
The Anger of our Miss Marple​
(Fowler, 2001) was a model for this particular story through its
portrayal of a teacher at the end of her rope. She was tired of the disrespect and the nonchalance of her
students. She took matters into her own hands and shocked all of her students in the process. The root
my story is similar but the outward expression of anger is more physical and directed towards one
student. I find Marple to be much more poetic and professional, although she set fire to a wastebasket
full of paper, whereas my character is on the verge of violence. The immediacy and personal nature of
violence were what I wanted to explore.
It is perhaps in me to be a bit violent or to turn to violence when a situation appears out of
control. Violence is a means of control: yelling ​
shut up​
, directly confronting a student, and deliberately
shoving desks are ways that I have taken to regain control of my class. It is momentarily helpful but not
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something that works in the long run. I am not terribly proud of myself since these means are not truly
effective and create a wall of mistrust and fear between myself and my students. I can count years
between the times that I have resorted to this type of classroom intervention, thankfully.
I like to think that I can distinguish between (gratuitous) violence and physicality. I have had to
truly think about that through ​
The Whirlwind​
. As a teacher, I have my presence felt both through my
voice and my physical presence. I teach standing in the centre of the class; I move from one side of the
room to the other and gaze erratically so that the students do not catch onto my rhythm. When a student
seems off task or is not listening, I focus on him or her. I might stand in front of the row or look directly
at him or her. I might even stand in front of the desk. I question, however, how much of what I do is a
veiled physical threat or an “appropriate level of dominance” (Marzano & Marzano, 2003) necessary to
maintain a sound learning environment and to help keep students on-task.
I cannot say whether I put fear into the hearts of my students but I know that they feel my
presence in my classroom. The question I ask myself is: Is it right to bring violence, however subtle, into
class?
I still struggle with the notions of physicality and violence. On one hand, I am responsible for
maintaining order in a classroom and with a bunch of kids among whom many know nothing but
violence. I have no choice but to deal with and deal out violence, whatever form, from time to time. It is
sometimes a question of protecting other students from a violent kid through an assertion of power.
On the other hand, non-violent gestures like maintaining a low voice level and a positive outlook
towards students have been much more effective in my classes than anything resembling violence. I
return to violence when I see no other option, or when I have lost my patience, or mostly when I have
lost control. That is the most shameful thing.
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Along with shame, however, there is an element of exuberance and pride. Regaining control of a
unwieldy classroom can be exhilarating for that moment. The students give up or give in and the lesson
continues. That feeds my teaching ego and I go on with great zeal.
The distinct combination of students in a classroom represents place. As I watch them, they
watch me. We understand together what is appropriate behaviour or boundaries for each other. The
four elements of Chambers’ (2008) curriculum: time, attention, enskilment, and wayfinding are
necessary for survival in difficult, if sometimes violent, classrooms. The place, the classroom, is therefore
changed by them and changed by me. We exchange roles as well. I am mostly the mentor but
sometimes must be the novice. I do not know them; they must show me. Over time and with much
focused attention, I find the way.
On a personal note, the fact that my student actually came back to see me as a “gratified
graduate” (Hargreaves, 2003, p. 509) to say that he had also carried on was an ending I never
expected. That kind of epilogue is a rarity in teaching.
The last cattle call
There was a haze of competition mixed in with camaraderie at the annual ​
séance d’affectation
when I was a part-timer. When someone got a good teaching position, you might say “good for you”
out of one side of your mouth and “bastard” out of the other. Backroom deals were made among
principals looking for quality ​
précaires​
to teach multiple levels or subjects and teachers just wanting to
put butter on their bread. I have seen some part timers refuse a position in August only to be hired in
September. It is a shady affair. There are those in the know and the newcomers who will most certainly
be exploited at least once at this stage of their career. You have to work at being in the know.
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Cattle call​
is a tip of my hat to those who have to do this every year. I sit in a place of privilege
being a full time teacher. Now, I am in the know; I have found the ways to get information through
intense trial and error. I had mentors to show me how to do this and I try to pass on my knowledge to
the novices, but I fear that trial and error is the only way to go forward.
As teachers, we gather and process information at every turn. It seems that some invisible force
doles out nuggets of knowledge that are vital to all but only available to some. Were it to be the simple
act of pedagogy, teaching would be easy. There are numerous hoops through which one must jump to
keep one’s career on track and achieve the safety of tenure but almost none of them have to do with
talent. (Allen, 1986; Hargreaves, 2003; Karsenti et al., 2013)
I find that strange. My colleagues are invaluable to me but I can’t wait for some to retire.
Seniority is tied to teaching assignment more evidently in mine, than perhaps any other Québec school
board. It is just a matter of time (and not classroom innovation or passion) before you can choose your
golden years’ teaching load. Everyone will get there, whether they are extremely inspiring or terribly
stifling teachers. This perhaps where I can agree with Damon’s interview nemesis. Good or bad, we all
have a last cattle call and eventually become first or second to pick our teaching loads in our schools
regardless of our passion for teaching.
The flip side is that my position after years of hard work is safeguarded. The scale on which our
priority is measured is the same for everyone: time. It is fair, to whatever extent that can be, for all.
There is less than three days of seniority between myself and my closest colleague on the list. Essentially,
we are equal; she may even be a better teacher than me. But, through our rise up the protected seniority
list, we have also found our niche; what school, students, and level curricula make us most happy in
teaching.
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There is no easy resolution to this conundrum. It is hard when you start teaching but you climb
the ladder and then you are rewarded with tenure and security. Perhaps then you focus just on teaching
and not on your plight to get to there. Perhaps then you rest comfortably on your laurels and wait for
retirement. I have seen both phenomena happen, but mostly my colleagues work hard. I cannot say if it
would be better to throw out the seniority notion and leave the deciding to administration. There are bad
principals too, and if you listen to the grumbling in staff rooms and I include myself in this, then most of
them are.
Métro, boulot, dodo
There are innumerable forces and wills at work in a school. Events happen; contradictions
abound; people do stupid things. Students do not really want to be there but they have no place else to
go. Teachers can be just like gossipy teenagers when the staffroom door is closed. I count myself
among that number. The age gap between myself and my students grows yearly, although those in my
class remain the same age. Only their faces change.
For the three years that the students are in my school, they are its inhabitants. Once they leave,
they are replaced by others who are similar but not the same. Time passes and slowly, clothing styles
change, musical tastes evolve, and sports become more or less popular.
Movement is a large part of my day. I am lucky to work in job that allows me to move in my
class or back and forth to my staff room. In contrast to what the French expression Métro, Boulot
(work), Dodo implies, I am not chained to my desk between commutes, but my routine is undeniably
set in stone.
My story, as circular as it may seem, intersects with hundreds of other stories every day. A
school is a playground full of storytelling and stories to tell. Through ​
M étro​
I have discovered many
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stories that I tell and that are told to me throughout the day. This “resonance” is what drove my inquiry
into “producing more and more stories through metaphorical connections.” (Conle, 2000, p. 53)
Again here, I used a place that was so very familiar to me and a time in my career when I was
comfortable as well. I listened to what the school and the people in it were telling me.
Seeing the same students at the same time bodes well for regularity and familiarity. I can anchor
myself to their movement. I can listen to their story before and after class depending on whether they are
coming or going. This movement reinforces the ideas of temporality and sociality since their movement in
and out of my set routine implies a before and an after to be repeated from September until June. There
is a choreographer watching over our movements and she times them perfectly.
The objects and places in the school also speak to me. The reference books in my class
represent a catch-all solution to the ever-diminishing emphasis we put on grammatical correctness and
appropriate vocabulary. Basketballs, in and of themselves, do not make you a better player, yet
dictionaries should make you a better writer. I cringe at that thought.
The cafeteria is reserved for students only, although there are no signs. Those few teachers who
walk through it do so quickly while trying to disappear. They remind me of students who come into the
staff room to get the recycling bins. There is someone out of place. We share this space for work or
study and yet there are very strict lines that we follow to be parts of the whole. Space is shared but
distance and ownership are respected.
I call myself Mr. G in this story as my students and most other teens in school do. My teaching
persona is important to me. It allows me to embrace my job and keep my personal life separate, at least
in my mind. There are times when new teachers at my school will look up puzzled from the door
because someone is asking for “Mystère Jé.” I closely guard that name and persona. I have drawn from
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Mr. G’s experiences and this separation within myself is both deliberate and desired. “Self-study is a
method of examining the self, or the construction of the self.” (Strong-Wilson, 2006, p.60) My teaching
name carries with it a way of being that differs from the person typing these words, however we are one
in the same. I watched and acted as him; I saw what he/I did. I looked from his vantage point to find the
stories that his environment, both people and place, told. At the same time, I lived through those events.
The other side of the desk
In a class I took with Teresa Strong-Wilson, we discussed the double narrative. I thought it was
an interesting literary tool to use in Narrative Inquiry. Two stories could run concurrently and somehow
come together. Although it sounded like a good idea at the time, I did not consider it for my writing.
The other side​
is a way to knock myself down a peg. I have felt that I can be a know-it-all
while writing these stories. I write about my experience but I try not to point to it as if it were the only
way to do things. It is perhaps not always clear so this particular narrative reminded me to stay humble.
As I was writing, the story stalled; it just stopped moving. What I was trying to avoid became
the writer’s block I could not shake. I had started to preach and I sounded paternalistic and boring. The
idea for the second narrator came from Allen’s (1986) take on the “classroom agenda” (p. 445) where
he states that students have two objectives in a class: to socialize and to pass the class and discusses the
strategies they use to achieve those goals (Allen, 1986, p.445). I put Field the younger into a hotbed of
students looking to chat without getting into trouble and I extended that idea to Field the older’s failing
attempts to capture the audience. The stories began to weave together in a way that I had not
anticipated. I was “continually trying to give an account of the multiple levels (which are temporally
continuous and socially interactive) at which the inquiry proceeds,” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p. 4)
which became the shifting from past to future in a double narrative.
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There is much value in all teaching experiences. The old teacher sits back in his chair having
seen it all and doles out his advice. The young teacher is quick, relates more readily to the students, and
finds solutions on the fly. Tempering one with the other calls into question the superiority of one teacher
over the other.
At what point do I become (or have I already become) a teacher in decline? Other than having
made more mistakes than a younger colleague, do I really have something to show them?
I am quite secure in my assertion that I am a good teacher. I have proven to myself, my
students, and my colleagues that I can manage a classroom, give a sound lesson, and stimulate my
students’ curiosity. As with sports, though, a good player does not necessarily make a good coach. For
most if not all teachers, there is an imaginary line in our career when we start to lose the connection with
our students. I am forever petrified of that line. Being in a class with my students is essential to me. It is
the reason why I get up in the morning with a huge smile on my face. I stare down retirement and
obsolescence with failing eyesight hoping to stave it off for a few more years. So far, I am winning.
During my recent return to the school benches as a student, I was immediately struck by the
sheer volume of research on every topic in education. I was excited to hear what my professors had to
say about teaching, and the conversations and debates we had in class were incredibly informative and
stimulating.
A beginning years teacher has just been through university. Their ideas are more up to date than
mine. They thrive on innovation and energy. Some of my youngest colleagues impress me with their
dedication and vigor. They have got it down pat. Other than watching them go, I do not see how I could
help them be better teachers or classroom managers. They will find their own way without me.
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So there is a balance in teaching. Somewhere between youthful energy and the wisdom of
experience we find an effective teacher and classroom manager. She has the strength and acuity to
perceive management issues (off-task behaviour) quickly but she has the wisdom to know how and
when to intervene. That is perhaps the ​
raison d’être​
of ​
The other side​
. It is easy to blame one’s
performance on rookie mistakes. It is also easy to hide behind years of experience and find some
excuse not to deal with management problems directly. Chances, that is what we are given, chances to
make up for our lack of experience or to get off our duff. As teachers, we can always strive to be better
and I think that this is what drives good teachers, young and more mature alike.
There is a 27 year gap between Field the younger and Field the older who speaks of years of
teaching from subbing to permanency and everything in between. The conversation between the two,
although each was in his own narrative, made clear that learning as a teacher never really stops. We can
even learn from younger teachers and from our younger selves.
.
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Summary
I have taken six snapshots of a career spanning over fifteen years and laid them out in short
story form​
. From the impetus to teach to a vision of the twilight of my career, I walk among my
memories, contrived and otherwise, to explore what it means to me to be a teacher. This meaning is a
greatly emotional one grounded in strife, conflict, and family. The stakes are high; my teaching self is on
display when I hoped it would not be. I have challenged my own preconceived notions of what
classroom management is and who is really an expert in that aspect of teaching.
I did not think that I would have been so autobiographical in my writing. I did not think that I
would come to the conclusions to which I have come either. This has been a disturbing experience for
me. The solid stance I had when talking about classroom management and teaching has been shaken by
my very own reflections on my stories. I did not seek answers, rather I sought to question paradigms I
have created about who teaches well and what they do to achieve harmony with themselves and a
classroom. I still have much to learn.
91
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