A GOOD START – HISTORY OF prairie SCHOOLS

Introduction

I invite you to look at this book I recently put online, for free.  It is a fun look at the present school system in my province and then with flashback to parallel situations years ago.  As a teacher, seeing such a wide variety K-12,  I had a privilege few get.  As the child and grandchild of teachers I got to hear of earlier styles of education and this intrigued me. I decided to do a research project about the history of our schools.

The book is a journey that goes wide – to schools today, and deep- to the past. It is an invitation for us all to reflect. What really goes on in the schools? What are the challenges for kids ? For teachers? The public may not know some of what we teachers see. Some may not realize what earlier generations went  through. I learned a lot doing this research and you may enjoy it. It might even spark discussions with seniors you know and with kids. How did our ancestors prioritize? The schools were among the earliest buildings built and often the best constructed the community could manage.  Why? Because it mattered.

 My mother was a teacher in the 1940s in northern Alberta one room schools. She moved to Calgary later, took art school courses and met my dad.  He used to say you could take the teacher out of the school but you could never take the school out of the  teacher.  She was also a teacher, to my sister and me.  She was, after all, the daughter of a teacher. Nanny came out to Alberta in 1916, attracted by the stories of her brother who had come out a year earlier, also to teach. She taught in northern Alberta too, in even more primitive schools.

At one of them she met a family with five children, all girls, one of whom had lost her hearing after contracting measles. The father was widowed- his wife, a teacher, had died of cancer. He was trying to raise the five girls alone and she accepted his offer of marriage. Together they had three more daughters and Nanny helped him operate the general store and car dealership.  Of their eight daughters, six became teachers. Even the one who was deaf, went to school for the deaf in the US, studied at college in Mississippi and taught at a school for the deaf there all her career.  I come from a line of Alberta teachers.

I always wanted to teach. I would play school even at age 8 and 9 and my parents bought me a large blackboard. I still love all things office, notebooks and binders, and for me walking through a stationery store is an adventure to see what’s new.  I started teaching in 1970, so, 42 years ago. I was one of the youngest teachers in the school, at 20 only 2 or 3 years older than some of my grade 9 students.  I loved it, even with all its challenges of a big city secondary school and 30 kids in each of 9 classes.  I was home for many years raising our four children and then returned to teaching one they finished grade 12. I was away from teaching for many years, for pay but not away from teaching. I tutored, I wrote course material and I learned a lot from my own kids about how kids learn.  I home schooled them lessons to supplement their own schooling.

My four offspring are now adult- one a journalist-researcher, two lawyers, one a medical doctor. None of them became a school teacher. However each of them has been a full time or guest lecturer at colleges and universities. Two have doctorates. So they are teachers too really, and three of them are still in Alberta.

I am now retired and for the last many years of my career I have done substitute teaching. It is absolutely fascinating.   Every year I get older but every year the kids who come to each grade are the same age, generation after generation.  In some ways I am the constant as they move through the education system. In other ways they are the constant for I will go but there will always be kids and schools.   I get to see each generation’s new fashions, their new technology, and as schools adapt to more material to teach and new ways to teach it, I have had the privilege of seeing the same lessons taught many ways.  I learn.

I’ve seen some very touching moments – postcard quality beauty of kids in a colorful parachute in the school park, a child running by me during the Terry Fox run saying “My mummy’s having a baby” and then running by.  I’ve had little kids hug me, confide in me, cry in loneliness to me about being at a new school, confide to my about the heartbreak of a parent dying in hospital.  Kids deal with real life issues and in the schools we get a small window into their lives.  I’ve had grade 11 boys who were pretty ‘tough’ in juvenile offender terms, confide in class discussion how they want to raise their own kids, morally. I have been struck at how highly some kids speak about their parents, unbeknownst to the parents.  They would love to have seen that loyalty.

I’ve taught a few kids who were dealing with serious illness, some who have already died now, and their courage stays in my memory. The little girl in grade 7, with leukemia, who was taking so many medications but who said that the pain was not too bad really. The sister and brother with cystic fibrosis whose every breath was a struggle but who had humor and wisdom in class discussions anyway.   I find it impossible to despair about the world when I work with kids.  They are so primed for hope, so joyful about life’s little things. Even the high school kids, with big challenges academically, tight deadlines, huge social pressure, are in an environment humming with life, vibrant. You can practically feel the adrenalin, and being in front of a class where razor-sharp wit in the audience is only a step away, is fun.  I am not one mind pouring insight into 30 containers. I am one mind, sharing insights with 30 minds and many of them have fascinating input to give.  It is surprising really that the non-academic kids are so street smart and many are travel smart . A class discussion or writing project can be surprising.  We share our trip through the world and I feel this enormous confidence that the world is going to be OK.  I get to see the future, today.

I am troubled though at what we can’t do for kids that I’d like to. It bothers me to have libraries with half-empty bookshelves, to have clocks not working and pencil sharpeners broken, to have window blinds that are broken and to pass around bathroom tissue because we are out of facial tissue. I don’t like to see kids have to pay fees and I am sad to see it when caretaker numbers are cut, when fewer people have to cover the same tasks.  I love to see teachers teaching, to hear them chatting with kids and planning fun projects.  So many teachers spend a lot of their own money to decorate classrooms and so much of their own time beyond the call of duty.  But I’m sad to see them exhausted because they had other obligations outside of the classroom that took from them time and energy. I don’t think that a teacher of 200 students should have to do hallway supervision or monitor behavior in the lunchroom.  Surely we have people who could do that who would love to do it and teachers could use their time preparing lessons and using their training more efficiently.

I am sad to see budgets for the province spend lower percentages on the schools than they do on health care, lower than they used to spend as if education is a declining priority.

The issue is not about salaries for teachers. It is about what we have for kids, enough textbooks, enough paper, enough computers. It seems that we have every good intention in the world but not the money so we download blame for how to spend what we have.  Individual schools struggle to balance budgets for field trips, supplies, equipment, class size. They can’t afford to do all things well so they have to choose who to make unhappy.  It is not fair. It’s like the old joke kids say about grade 12. You can get great marks, have a wonderful social life and get enough sleep – choose any 2.  In the schools we also have to choose any 2 of our many goals.

I am so impressed by young teachers who try  hard despite it all, the phys ed teacher who planned an whole Olympics unit for the school, the  music teacher who taught every grade dances for the concert. I am impressed by the middle aged teacher who has all her kindergarten classroom color coded and all things so much in place that the kids feel very secure and clean up on their own, like a little army.  It’s great to see competence in teaching.

I don’t know how we’d manage without some of our caretakers’ devotion. They are there saving the day every day, unjamming pencil sharpeners, clearing ice off steps, filing sharp ends off door latches, wiping up vomit.  They understand furnaces and boilers and lives depend on them. Some are retired from other professions. One who very much amazed me was a decorated military officer.  We put our trust in these unsung anchors to the system and they deserve our trust.

There are some outstanding librarians in the system too, and some aides. Ones who will find you a book about 100 year old trees, by just recalling where it would be, and will track it down, ones who speak several languages and flip between them for kids, with ease.  The librarian in charge of purchasing can set up an area bookshelf and magazine rack that is current to today’s issues and news. Some of our librarians make libraries state of the art for research and beautiful with posters.

Our secretaries are frequently the backbone of the school.  The head secretary is generally poetry in motion, juggling complaints about room heating, course registration, school scheduling and lost keys, photocopier malfunction and the whereabouts of a student and doing it all with calm and efficiency.  They are the go -to people and often they have been at the school longer than most of the teachers.

I am impressed by the parents who come, nervously, to interviews, pulling up in their cars and vans, enduring any bad weather, and any inconvenience to find out about their child in school. I love it when parents crowd a meeting to argue to save their community school, when a few courageous ones summon up their courage and attend a school board meeting and argue passionately for what they want.  I love seeing parents drop off their kids in the morning, picking them up at end of day- that easy informality that also means guaranteed love. They entrust to us their most precious possessions for a few hours. It is a privilege.

Schools shape us because they are a key part of childhood. Kids may be out of the eye of government leaders and business executives most days but they are coming up, they are the next in line to run society. How we treat them matters.

I talked with a millionaire a few years ago who was irritated at so many charities asking her for money. She said that they should itemize a few actual things they needed and maybe she could get those for them. She wanted specifics.

I have written this book to help us recall the original dream for education, the vision of those who built the sandstone schools and those who taught in one room buildings for the sake of education.  If we are a rich province, and we are, our schools should feel it. Our kids deserve the best we can give them and not to be shelved as a low budget item.  But maybe, knowing that, we would be wiser to not just ask the government or the public to just generally ‘fund schools’ better. The secret of return to respect might be hidden in what the lady told me- we in the schools should show others what we need and where we ‘d like to do more, specifically.

I hope you enjoy the chapters. I hope they trigger memories, laughter, discussions, joy. Your childhood mattered.