I am in an elementary school assembly. The students, in 2012 are not seated on chairs at all but in rows, on the floor. They are asked to rise to sing O Canada and the words are displayed on a screen from a computer display.  They sing along to the taped music, their young voices lifting in the air. It is a French immersion school so they sing the first half in French, second half in English. I would sing along but would rather listen. I love the sounds of hundreds of young voices. I love their joy in life, their simple assumption of a safe nation with fair laws.   They do not know wars were fought and people died to defend those freedoms. The gift they have is to not even have to worry about it, and they don’t.  Yet someone has to ‘stand on guard’ still, to make sure the rights are not allowed to just slip away and they too one day will stand on guard.

The anthem is sung  daily in  most elementary schools and many junior highs but rarely in the high school except at assemblies.   In classrooms the anthem is piped in over the public address system and in the aboriginal school it is not just sung in English but also in Blackfoot. It is touching.  All the elementary kids sing along till about grade 4 and then from about grade 5, 6, they may not.  That’s Canada. Our  nationalism is not showy. I am not sure if I should ‘make’ them sing or not.

On a normal school day there is a routine in each classroom. In the elementary stream, children are in the same ‘homeroom’ all day, and only for music, gym and computers do they leave this room. They have the same teacher for most subjects. A few schools vary this. Two classes may change rooms at noon, swapping teachers, especially in bilingual programs where for instance one half of the day is with the Spanish teacher, one half with the English teacher.

A few schools use team teaching for a few subjects and the three grade 4 classes might for instance from 10-11 AM go to assigned groupings of reading level, with the 3 different teachers.  It is a gradual move from the familiar of the same teacher for everything, to the secondary school routine of specialist teachers.

By grade 7 children move to a different classroom every period and some periods are only 30-45 minutes long.  Class changes are noisy, with music often piped over the PA to add to the ambiance.  The teachers of phys ed, science, math, art, language arts, humanities are specialists in that field.  The advantage of course is that kids get exposed to intense teaching subject by subject. The downside might be that they lose that stability of the familiar face, the person who knows them well.  For many students the transition from grade 6 to the greater responsibility of grade 7 is stressful for a few weeks.  It is a big shift.  In grade 7 kids have lockers, locker partners, and they get individual timetables. They may travel with some of their friends to a few classes but often are headed different directions for options.  The schools are usually bigger than they had in elementary and there is literally a risk of getting turned around and lost the first few days.  The senior highs are that experience, times five.  The senior highs are very big schools in most cases.  Luckily teachers and counsellors are aware of the stress of the changes and give dry-runs to see if students can find the rooms, and lots of encouragement to those who seem a bit turned around.

This does mean though that as kids ‘grow up’ their routines also shift in the school. The elementary classroom is meant to be very predictable and familiar each year.  The teacher takes attendance and sends the record of it to the office where a secretary will phone the parent or contact person to confirm the child is not at school. In elementary school the teacher just has to glance around the room and knows everybody there. In secondary though, it is harder to get to know all the students at first. 

Some grade 7 teachers for instance of computers, phys ed or music teach every child in the school at some point over 2-3 days.  Most teachers at that level have over 200 students filing through their room.  Taking attendance is routine at the start of each class.

This system of taking attendance has been done variously over the years by check marks on paper, blackened dots on a computer sheet or even now, online

Then there are announcements. The teacher tells of important events and may read some notices from the office either printed up or sent to the teacher’s laptop.  A  voice comes over the PA telling what clubs are meeting, what sports teams are competing and other vital news of the day.

In theory the students listen with rapt attention to these notices but there is wide variation. I’ve seen teachers comfortably read aloud to the kids like a mother telling her children the funny news and joking and laughing while they listen. And I’ve seen many times students just ignoring it all, talking right through the PA announcements  and often so many are chattering that the announcements are barely heard..  One time I even gave the students a quiz after to see what they had heard .   It seems like kids today, used to TV and radio and media, are not necessarily alerted to voices over PAs.

There is a feeling of power to the PA system, and in the office, the speaker is keenly aware of suddenly being heard by a few hundred, possibly a few thousand people. Students are sometimes enlisted to read special announcements and often sound nervous but excited. In the bilingual schools the announcements are often in a target language too, partly in Spanish, or French or Mandarin.  I like it. I like the international flavor of it. Subtly kids are learning another language even if not enrolled in the bilingual stream.

There is no flag in the room to salute. There is rarely a photo of the monarch.  There certainly is no indication of any religion, no prayer, no reading of any religious text in the public schools. Those are no longer official practice.  I assume in the denominational schools there is but this is the public school. There used to be prayer here officially, but no more.

Kids like routines. They want to know what’s planned for them and in the elementary schools teachers have a list of subjects on the whiteboard for students to see where they are through the day.

The school divisions have changed. It used  to be that elementary was to grade 8, then senior high started at 9.  Then we moved to a 3 part system – 1-6 as elementary, 7-9 as junior high, and 10-12 as senior high. Lately we are moving to a system more like Ontario with some schools kindergarten to grade 4, others 5-8, and others 9-12.  Whatever the level there seems to be a psychology to it.

The littlest ones at any level feel intimidated at first. The oldest ones are often very self-assured.  So moving from one level to the next up is a voyage from confidence to nervousness too, and a shock.   The other thing I’ve noticed is that the level one year before the ‘grad’ level of any school seems to be a level kids don’t work as hard at.  They seem to view it as a play year and grade 4, grade 8 and grade 11 are not the ones that seem big academic push, for many students. 

Because of the need for tight class changes, secondary school times are very structured, as are break and lunch times.The day starts with the first class and there is no time then to  collect registration papers, course changes or locker information. There has to be a special period of the day set aside for ‘homeroom’ for a brief interval for those tasks.

In the halls secondary students weave seamlessly through massive crowds. They generally keep to the right but may stop in knots with friends, some chatting near lockers, others winding in and out to get through faster. It is stunningly crowded. A stranger who walks into one of the big high schools during class change is usually shocked at the sudden motion of thousands of people. Wading through that feels like a skillset itself and I find that it is nearly miraculous how well kids do it.  There are over 2000 students at some high schools in Calgary and yet they nearly never trip, fall or even bump each other in any serious way. They are at the top of their reaction time, have great vision and hearing and multitask so well they can weave through this crowd and still chat with a friend the whole time.  They patiently wait their turn down the stairwells, hustle, bustle, laugh.  It is electric, the nation’s youth. They greet friends going the other way, and somehow it all works. It would be easy to feel small and I do know that the first year students at such big institutions, or newcomers to the country at any grade, are sometimes overwhelmed and searching for a friendly face. 

If there is a fire drill though, the jovial mood shifts. Throughout the system the rules suddenly change and silence is required, as is walking in straight lines to the nearest assigned exit.  Schools are required to conduct regular drills to get all people out of the building efficiently in limits like under 10 minutes. And they meet those goals.  Students usually evacuate to the field and line up in class rows to have attendance taken to see that they all got out safely. 

To change classes usually there is a buzzer though some of the high schools now use music piped over the intercom.  It can be pop music and in theory makes the students feel happy to be there.  Classes last from 25 minutes in some  junior highs to over  90 in some senior highs.     It was not always so.

If an activity has a time limit, for instance a test, teachers have several strategies.  Few ring a bell any more. Some just say “Time is up”. A few teachers indicate time by a buzzer or timer.  The hand held bell is a thing of the past.

Teachers do allow talking now, a lot of the time. Much of the work is group work, with partners, projects. Sometimes there is individual reading but there is often partner reading, ‘sharing’ ideas, presenting to each other what they have done, peer editing. This means the general noise level of a classroom can be quite high.

To get the children back to paying attention to new instructions, teachers have several strategies.  Some use a timer that displays  bright red but diminishing size interval on a clock. Phys ed teachers still often use whistles but many teachers just use their voice, saying ‘Quiet’, or ‘Heads up”. A few have more subtle ways to make you not talk. They may turn off  a bank of lights, clap their hands three times, or raise a hand in some understood class gesture. A common one lately is for one arm to be lifted in the air. When I first saw this gesture done by hundreds of kids at an assembly it looked like one big underarm deodorant commercial.. But it worked. One grade one teacher had an echo stick of native origin and when she upended it it made a very gentle sound of many rocks falling.

Some elementary schools after lunch have a quiet time, a meditation time, where the teacher dims the lights and kids put their heads on their desks and in theory rest for 15 minutes. It is one of many theories of education over the years, others being that each day must have in it some period of uninterrupted free reading where everything stops and everyone even the teacher must sit down but gets to read whatever they like.

The routines are many and yet kids understand them and adapt amazingly well.  They also remain kids. They have figured out ways to test the limits of any rule, to say sh to each other noisily as if to enforce quiet. They want to know if they can color during the meditation time, if they can read a comic during the reading time, if they can work in the hall not the classroom, if for any project they can work with a partner.  When schools put in hockey rinks for kids in Calgary to have sports over the lunch hour, so many kids pushed the enveloped and begged to have each game extended that the hockey rinks were removed.

Our routines have shifted from pioneer times, but basic classroom ‘management’ still has to be done.

_________________________________________________

In 1885 in Calgary the city itself had a rhythm. Residents woke to the sound of the bugle blowing from the barracks of the North West Mounted Police.  As riders came in the from the east you could hear their horses’ hooves crossing the bridges. The day had begun. Even before Alberta became a province, schools had to follow strict rules.

Children played outside before school started and the teacher stood on the porch ringing a large brass bell to let them in. Most schools required the students to file in one at a time. One new teacher at a rural school just called the students to come in and they told her she had to ring the bell.

Everyone had to sing the national anthem each morning. Some schools had students stand at attention and salute the flag  reciting “I salute the flag, the emblem of my country. To her I pledge my love and loyalty”.  A photo of Queen Victoria was usually prominently displayed at the front of the room. In 1906 it was common for the teacher to have children sing the anthem “The Maple Leaf Forever”.  The lyrics include “In days of yore from Britain’s shore, Wolfe the dauntless hero came and planted firm Britannia’s flag on Canada’s fair domain.  Here may it wave, our boast and pride and join in love together – the thistle, shamrock, rose entwined- the maple leaf forever.” The song was written by Alexander Muir for Confederation in 1867 but never became the official anthem, partly because it is so British and the French objected to it. The song was however played a long time.  Students in the 1950s in Calgary still sang the song routinely in school.  In 2008 a Scottish- Canadian punk band, The Real McKenzies adapted it to say “The Maple Trees Remember” 

There were variations on these routines over the years. In some schools by 1910  a student might be commissioned to ring the bell.  In 1910 some teachers, when encouraged to do a religious exercise would have the class regularly recite “Can a little child like me thank the Father fittingly? Yes oh yes be good and true, faithful, kind in all you do”

A 1921 lesson plan often called for a 15 minute morning recess and classes running from 9AM to 2:45 PM.  Teachers had to record for the school inspection not only minutes per day per subject per grade, but also over the course of the week what per cent of time had been spent for each student at arithmetic, geography and each other subject.  

A typical 1921 classroom with students at many grade levels started with an opening exercise for five minutes, did composition for ten minutes, phonics for ten minutes, reading in two ten minute intervals, had them recite a ‘memory gem’ twice a week for five minutes.  Students studied art 15 minutes a day, sang ten minutes a day, and every week did nature study, geography and hygiene lessons.  The noon hour for some schools was 11:30 to 1:30, permitting those who lived nearby to even go home for lunch. 

While the teacher taught one student or a  small group a new lesson, the others did exercises at their desks. The little ones might do clay modeling while the others did literature studies.  The older ones might do history while the younger ones did ‘number work’.  How to balance all this and jump around, reminiscent of a person juggling was often suggested in lesson plan printouts from government or even from education publishing houses. One publishing company from Toronto detailed a weekly arrangement for students from primary to a level four with the older students staying at school later, till 4PM.

In 1926 students also were required to say the Lord’s Prayer and younger children every day might be asked to sing “Good morning to you, Good morning to you.. We’re all in our places with sunshiny faces. Good morning to you. Good morning to you”.

In the 1930s when students went to other classrooms or the assembly hall they had to march in single file and in silence. If the classroom had two doors, one was often assigned as the entry door and the other the exit to reduce congestion.     If the lines seemed military that was intentional. The concept of early schools was to instil strict discipline.  In fact not standing in line, talking while in line were reasons for disciplinary action.

Class times varied. In bad weather in 1941 when many of the kids had to do farm chores on waking, it was just more logical to not start school till 9:30. The trend in the 1970s became for elementary and junior high students to use the same school buses, but off-shifting each other so one group would go to school early and then the bus would go back and get the later shift children. The younger ones often had school 9-12 and 1-3 and the older ones had school 7:30 to 11:30 and 12:30 to 2:30.  The irony was that little kids who tend to get up early, waited longest for school to begin and that secondary students often were very tired for their first class.  At least the littler ones did not have to walk in the dark.

The school year was flexible for pioneer schools.  Some in 1911 only operated 20 days of the year but others tried to put in a full 200. Eventually government legislated a required number.  There were adjustments though.  In 1933 schools closed June 16th to mid October partly to save money during the Depression.  During the war, in 1941, s many men had gone to war that older children were often needed to help with the harvest. The official school year was changed to not start till mid October to help those doing the harvest and it then extended to July 31st.

Working in silence was strongly encouraged and ‘talking’, or whispering’ were offences to be punished as was passing notes. Lessons at some schools were strictly timed, sometimes with a metronome to mark when a test was over.

The timetable of a one room school was flexible in theory but so much had to be done that teachers became organized. There had to be recess but it must not last too long.   Teachers would organize a day to have group time for some subjects, teaching time at others while a few did exercises. The teacher had to move from one group to another all day long and wrap it all up with group time too.

Kids like routines but they also like human adults who give exceptions, carefully negotiated, and earned as privilege.  It is the world of the child who is growing up.