When my sons were little, I joined the board of their daycare centre. My boys are now 21 and 22 years of age and I haven't looked back. Over the years, I've had the privilege of working with wonderful parents from so many backgrounds, all of us sharing the love we have for our children. And I have met some absolutely marvelous, caring and thoughtful teachers too.
Here's a shout out for the incredible teachers of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the PD day event for our elementary teachers organized by their union, OCETF. Teachers were not paid to attend this day of workshops and yet they filled a large conference centre. It looked like two thousand teachers attended, maybe more. The Chair of our board, Jennifer McKenzie, was very warmly welcomed as was I. I can't tell you how much your kind words meant to me.
We parents sometimes look at teachers through the eyes of a child; through ourselves as children, and often we place teachers on pedestals. It's not fair. They're simply human after all and being human, some of them are bound to fall down. That's the way it is with us humans -- no one is perfect especially over a lifetime.
Let me tell you a story about M. Brisebois (not his real name). M. Brisebois was my son's grade 4 teacher. On the first day of school, my son came home with a note from M. Brisebois that said your child will not have any homework this year. This was a rather gutsy move given that the school was located in a middle-class neighbourhood and, I thought, let's see how this plays out.
True enough, my son did not have any assigned homework. For the first week of school, he spent his time fashioning a papier-mâché creature. I asked him, "What's this?" He replied, "It's my Nee-a-muh." (French translation of human spelled backwards).
M. Niamuh turned out to be a cool red extraterrestrial who sat on my son's desk at school. It was my son's job to teach M. Niamuh about the earth, much like an extended year-long version of Jane Wagner's play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. While my son did not have assigned homework that year, he certainly did do school work at home. Every night he was busy with research or some project so that M. Niamuh could learn about the world we live in. Every night there was work done, hours of work done, all without my prompting or help, which was good given that my own French hadn't progressed much beyond rolling my R's incorrectly. Well, I thought to myself, how is this for no homework?!
You see, M. Brisebois understood something 12 years ago that we are only really talking about today; that the way to a child's heart is through creativity. My son worked so hard that year and loved every minute of it. He has had other amazing teachers over the years too but M. Brisebois was the one who was there at the right time to turn my son's academic life around.
The next year, a friend came to me and told me her child was in M. Brisebois' class and hadn't I said that he was a great teacher? Well he wasn't that great as far as she was concerned. Let me explain that during the intervening summer, M. Brisebois had had some truly sad family circumstances befall him. I had heard about the situation and thought it amazing that this dear man was at school at all.
Teachers are human and they go through life's trials and tribulations. Sometimes they're at the top of their game; sometimes not. But I want the best teachers for our children and recognize that within most teachers, there is a gift for great teaching if it's given an opportunity to flourish. As your trustee, I can't affect the lives of teachers outside the classroom but I can try to ensure that their lives in the classroom are conducive to allow them to become the best teachers they can be.
The first summer I was a trustee, I plodded through a book entitled something like 10,000 Meta-studies in Education. I can't find it on my bookshelf any longer but let me save you the trouble of reading it. 10,000 Meta-studies looked at how children learn and most of the studies cited reached the same conclusion -- children learn because of a caring teacher.
Our children are not little widgets on an assembly line nor are they empty vessels to be filled with meaningless facts. Rather they are human beings, yes little humans, but still human beings. They respond to others as we all do. Somebody likes us: we like them in return. Somebody smiles and we smile back. Somebody believes in us and we begin to act like we believe in ourselves too. We work harder to ensure the belief is well-founded.
Most of the studies cited in 10,000 came to the radical conclusion that it was the teacher who made the difference in learning. If a teacher truly believes more homework is better, the students in her class will do better with more homework. If a teacher believes less homework is better, then the students do better with less homework. And if the teacher believes she can do math, then by-golly those kids can learn math too. It's about the human relationship.
While I can't do anything about the outside-the-classroom part of our teachers' lives, I most certainly can do something about the part in the classroom. I want our teachers to be treated with understanding because then they will give understanding to the little ones under their care allowing them to flourish. I want teachers to be given autonomy to teach to their strengths and creativity because then they will see the creativity and strengths in our children and bring out the best in them. And I want our teachers to be treated with respect because then they will treat their students with respect and our children will grow into assured and able adults.
I want the best for our children and believe they need our teachers to become the best teachers they can be. How respectful are we as a society to our teachers when we take away their basic rights under the law? And now that it's been done, how do we restore their rights to fairly negotiate a real agreement?
Many years ago, my high school physics teacher gave me some encouragement. I wasn't his star pupil. The physics didn't stick rather what did were two things he said. He said that someday I would do something. In retrospect, I realize this could be said with some certainty given that eventually most of us do something. Still coming from my teacher, the words were high praise to me.
The other thing was that I was a smart and should go on to university. I was a girl without family connections or means and was the first in my family to go onto university. It wasn't easy and over the years, I held onto his words for strength.
Eight years ago, I looked up my physics teacher. It took awhile as he too had moved over the years but as luck would have it, he had moved to Ottawa. His words had stayed with me all those years and my life was utterly changed for the better because of those simple words of encouragement. I was thankful to be able to thank him. Then some time later when I was running for school trustee, a donation arrived from my teacher. He had given me a boost at a time in my life when I was young and very much needed the support. And then here he was again giving me encouragement after all these years.
The views expressed in this blog are my personal views only. Tomorrow ... what is community.
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