Is it me, or did the summer break blast by like Usain Bolt? It seems just like yesterday the kids were whining about school and grouching about too much work.
Hey, it was yesterday and the “kids” were my kids, as they anticipated getting back into school routine. (Sorry, Maurice, that didn't actually happen—just my desperate attempt to be witty.)
For many parents, they can't get the kids back to school soon enough, usually starting the second week of July. Some parents adjust their schedules and outlooks, and have a great time for the break. Still others don't have quite the same type of break; they are known as homeschoolers. Their change is only in routine and relationships: The books are dropped for a few weeks, and their “students” become family again.
But today I write as a teacher, albeit a part-time one. For me, while I enjoy the break, I still enjoy the routine of going in to school a couple days a week. One thing about the summer holidays, though: They allow me to be something different, other than the authority in the classroom or the watchdog on the playground. For two months, I am the boss of the barn and the police of the pasture.
“Different” down here in the Back Thirty means cleaning hoppers, butchering chickens, pounding posts and stringing barbed wire, painting rooms, and all sorts of physically-demanding, summer-only tasks that can't get done when inside the classroom. For me, the summer break is at the end of the summer, when I head back to school.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be in a classroom, on a full-time or part-time basis, for over twenty years. My initial goal with post-secondary options was (surprise, surprise) to become a writer. My plan was to start at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and end up in Western Washington College--then get a job with TIME magazine, or become this world-famous writer like Dave Barry.
However, due to circumstances beyond my control—somewhere between Dad and Divinity—I ended up with a teaching degree (B. Ed.). When I graduated from UBC in 1977, the very last thing I wanted to do, besides clean outhouses and sell Flames tickets, was teach kids. I was interviewed for a few positions in northern BC, but I had no clue as to educational philosophy, classroom management, or other heady stuff that usually comes after a few years of teaching.
For me, they came after a few years of life experience.
Thus, when I entered the teaching workforce as, ahem, a mature teacher, I was better equipped to come up with some sort of educational philosophy, better able to handle a classroom of wild kids, though I have rarely encountered that since coming to Alberta ten years ago. Wild parents, maybe...
Teachers with years of experience both in the life of a classroom and the classroom of life are very valuable to school districts. But sometimes their value translates into others costs, like higher wages on the salary grid. They become too expensive for boards, who are trying to run a tight ship, budget-wise. And that's a sad trade-off, namely, new teachers come with unbridled enthusiasm and fresh ideas, but mature teachers have the necessary life skills. Unfortunately, in a day of cost-cutting demands, the green often stays and the grey usually goes.
The above is perhaps an over-simplification, but it does contain some hard truth.
So today is the first day of classroom education for this new term. Sure beats starting in August, as in former years, even for this newbie rancher-farmer type. And in my case, I don't mind exchanging a paint brush for a chalk brush.
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