When I was student teaching, it was intimidating to be in front of actual students. My supervising teacher however had shown me how she did it and I was sort of able to follow in her footsteps as she now sat at the back and observed me. However the university professor also came out to observe me and having that presence also at the back of the room, both of them grading me, was stressful.

It’s not that I was unfamiliar with being marked. Most of us by that point have spent many years being students. It’s just that now it’s our chosen career at question. There’s a lot at stake.  The same held true when I got my first teaching jobs and the principal had to inspect new teachers several times before we’d get our permanent certificate after two years.

When the principal walks in the room, we teachers of course want the students on their best behavior and a little misunderstanding the students have, we don’t necessarily try to correct.  The kids think they are being watched. They think this inspection is about them.  It’s not, but they don’t know that.

Still, you can’t count on them behaving.  When strangers come to sit at the back of the room, kids crane around and wonder who the new person is.  One asked me once “Is that your mom?”

Teachers are regularly evaluated all through their careers, sometimes subtly with an administrator dropping in to watch, but often formally with meetings to set goals, look at performance, plan how to improve.  Right now in Calgary teachers are hired at first on a temporary basis till they get permanent certification and after that they in theory can be reassigned to any school in the system, any year.  In some ways I guess they’re like athletes who could get traded, so there is an uncertainty to it, a vulnerability and with that, theoretically, a pressure to always work hard.

There are teachers who have taught their whole career at one school in Calgary but that is very rare. One Latin teacher was in the system and mostly at the same school for 50 years.  But the norm is to move around, to do a few years at each of several schools at least early in your career.  This means that there is a lot of assessment of a teacher going on, where you are and to figure out where you can move to.

There is talk in the US and in Canada of making teachers’ jobs even more tenuous, of making job security depend on the marks the students get.  In theory that sounds great.  Boards ideally hire teachers whose students all get honors. The problem is of course that not all students are able to get honors however hard they try and we need really good teachers for those who score middle grades too. We need especially good teachers to motivate students who come up from a disadvantage, who may be so frustrated they could drop out, and a big success in that case may be to get the student just to stay in school, to try  and to pass.

So I am not in favor of hiring and firing teachers based on student marks.  It’s an interesting item of feedback but not, in all fairness, the only one. This rating of teachers has always been done. In frontier times it was also stressful.

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In 1905 when Alberta became a province, each local school board was supervised by a person from the Department of Education who was named the ‘inspector’. This person’s job was to go around to every school a few times a year, to check on the building, the supplies, the attendance records and forms but also and mainly to see if the teacher was doing a good job.

Typically the teacher had never seen this person before, did not recognize him, and might even mistake him for a travelling salesman.  He would usually slip into the back of the classroom unannounced, and view things with an officious and critical air. He might speak to her. He might not.  He sometimes would call upon children to answer questions, to see if they had been taught well. He might have the students line up and inspect them for clean hands, finger nails, tidy hair, clean teeth and determine how thorough their lessons on health and deportment had been from this inspection.  He would look at the teacher’s timetable, notice how well she disciplined the class, reflect on if the children were sitting up straight enough and if she was stern enough.

He would make observations in his little notebook and then disappear and the teacher was then free to worry for the next several days how her fate was sealed.

The inspection report he made was submitted to the Department of Education in Edmonton, copies also to the teacher and to her local school board.  She got the news at the same time others did and sometimes the report was read aloud at the next school board meeting for the world to hear.

In order to get permanent certification to teach, a teacher had to write a written exam but get also two good reports from this inspector. If the reports were not good, the teacher would be out of a job.

Teachers in later years have shared stories about these early inspections, about the nervousness they felt in the 1920s and 30s as these mysterious strangers visited and left.  They need not have worried so much probably. It turns out the inspector though thorough and demanding, also came to help. The inspector often had suggestions for how to make life easier, and had power to get a bit more funding for improvements to the building or supplies.

In 1926 one teacher was surprised that the inspector came right up to the front and sat in the teacher’s desk. She was even more surprised when he jiggled his foot and got it caught in the mousetrap she had set under her desk.  Another inspector sat in the only big chair in the room and it collapsed under him.

Some of the inspectors were very tough. One, in  1915 reamed the teacher out for teaching the children the wrong direction to start making the figure 8 from and for the next few weeks she had to practise with them the other way.

The young teachers, new to the whole situation, were often terrified the inspector would quiz a student and get a wrong answer. One inspector asked the Canadian boy in geography class “Who is your neighbor to the south?” and he said the name of the boy sitting behind him.

In rural areas, a stranger to the area was however very visible and even his arrival in town by train, or his car’s presence on the road, was noticed and whispered about.   One for instance had a Model A Ford that stood out for its rarity and kids told the teacher when they saw it in town, or going down the dust roads.  Others stood out like a sore thumb because their horses and buggies were new to the district.  The teacher also need not have worried overly because the inspector could not come too often. The territory they had to cover was huge. One covered in northern Alberta all schools in Edmonton,Westaskiwin and Athbasca.

This early warning system helped the teacher and many then rushed around to clean the classroom and look super organized.  The teacher flew around the room tidying up, making sure all coats in the cloakroom were hung up, all desks clean.  One teacher felt all was fine when the inspector arrived and as he sat down noticed with shock that someone still had not hung up their coat. She yelled at the class about it, only to discover the coat in question was the one the inspector brought.

Some inspectors also were in charge of hiring and would go around to high school students in the 1940s to see if any would like to become teachers later.  The inspector was not in fact, ‘ the other’. The inspector often understood the hurdles very well. One, arriving on a cold winter day, huddled right in there over the stove  with the kids and teacher.  In 1930 a school inspector was angry at the teacher when he saw the smoke from the smudge pot she made to keep out mosquitoes. But he did order for her screens for the door and windows.

 In 1934 a school inspector brought Bibles to all the students in grade 5. One brought magazines including National Geographic for the school library.  In 1941 in tough economic times, the inspector gave the teacher a $25 voucher to buy school books. She had to plan carefully. A medical history book  alone cost $10.

If a student was doing well, in 1936 he was empowered to also allow skipping writing the final exam, or even skipping a grade. This type of individual adjustment is less easily accomplished in 2012 but it does sometimes happen.

Some inspectors were harsh critics though.  In 1910 Inspector Russell criticized one teacher for not being strict enough and for underuse of the strap.  He said the teacher failed to show adequate leadership.

 In 1924 an inspector at King George criticized the teacher that the boys’ line was ” not falling in properly” as it marched. Some in 1950 judged the room not on activities there but on the noise level, even if there were group projects.

Some of the inspectors were teachers and loved to teach. They would give suggestions not just criticisms.  Inspector Buchanan in 1935 had a reputation for sometimes taking over a class if it was about English or Latin.

The visit of the inspector in rural areas was sometimes quite a surprise though. One time in 1936 an inspector arrived to find the school empty, all of the students and teacher having run across the field to help out after a small airplane crashed. He left a note saying “I was here”.  Another time he arrived to find all the students playing baseball outside in the early afternoon. The teacher told him, nervously, that  it was an extended lunch hour. 

The second stranger – the truant officer

Once education was made compulsory, there had to be a way to enforce it. Parents may be tempted to keep the child home to help out at the farm and though governments knew this was a legitimate excuse once in a while, to keep a child out of school all year was not good for the child.    The Alberta Act of 1905 had said that public education was to be available to everyone. By 1915 anyone up to age 15 had to go to school.  In 1916 students must attend from ages 7-15 or until they had passed grade 8. If they were 14 and had a full -time job they also could quit.

 These ages were increased over the years to 16 and by 2012 may soon be 17. Salaries were tied to attendance too and truancy was considered a serious offence, worthy of the strap.

In some areas a key issue was whether the parent endorsed the absence or not.  This continues to be a consideration. If the parent thought the child was at school, a note from the school about the absence often resulted in a very humble student returning after strong discipline from a parent.  The game then, from the kids’ point of view if  they skipped/ play hookey/ were truant,’ was to not let the parent know and to leave for school and go home from school at the regular times.  

The school districts appointed someone to be a truant officer. Since schools got funding based on how many students attended, there had to be close records kept of who was there. A school could be closed if there were not enough students or lose funds. Given that, the inspector checked attendance lists closely and the truant officer did rounds to find and apprehend those not attending. Sometimes a truant officer was even paid based on the attendance record he was able to enforce.

In 1917 it was very tempting for students to be truant however.  Once they left home each morning, they did see a lot of other ways they could spend their time.  Parks beckoned, wandering over  the hills collecting crocuses or climbing trees. Creeks beckoned for fishing. Stores beckoned.  The truant officer used to go to schools and get names of who was not there but one inspector had the idea that the officer should really be going not to where kids were not, but to where they were – to theatres, playhouses and bowling alleys.

One officer in 1917 went to schools 944 times but also went to 104 picture houses, 32 bowling alleys, and spent 61 hours on the street looking for students who were truant. He issued 410 warning notices to parents and even took 65 cases to court.  The theatres complied. On a typical Friday, the film would be stopped, the lights turned up and the truant officer would appear at the front. One time in 1931 he caught a boy skipping and the boy later grew up to be the superintendent of the entire school system in Calgary. It was Carl Safran.

It turns out that many kids, good kids, try antics in childhood. The schools had to catch them and deal with them. But the schools also had to remember as they teach the rules, they are still dealing with kids.