Teacher Stories…Post 1 of 3: Looking For a Place To Happen

I am going to take a bit of a pause from my regular music posts in order to address a recent event from my Maritime homeland that seems to have stirred up a lot of emotions. The specific event I am referring to concerns a request made by an elementary school principal from a school near Halifax with a large immigrant population that any soldiers/veterans attending the school’s Remembrance Day ceremonies do so out of uniform. The reasoning behind the request was that seeing soldiers/veterans in uniform might cause emotional trauma for some students who had recently arrived in Canada from war torn countries. In these conservative times in which we find ourselves at present, there was a huge uproar against the school principal. The current premier of the province of Nova Scotia, where this incident took place, was widely quoted as stating that the request was insulting and disrespectful. News of the event has been largely limited to the facts as written above. Newspaper article after newspaper article, television news report after news report all basically have written the exact same story, with the Conservative premier’s comments front and center. As of the time of the writing of this post, the school principal has wisely refused public comment, with the exception of a public apology offered to the school community for any unintended hurt that may have resulted from her initial request. I will offer my own opinion on this story in the third post in this week’s trilogy. But for today, I wanted to offer my perspective on the impact of culture on the running of individual classrooms and on school, as a whole. I am doing this specifically in response to several posts made by childhood friends of mine from back home who have taken to posting/reposting anti-immigration memes and other rightwing talking points. The posting of these memes is out of character for them. Thus, it bothers me to see good people being swept up in anti-immigration mania that has, at its roots, very political implications. It is my hope that my own experiences can act in a way that adds a layer of context to help us all better understand why the principal made the request she did and why the backlash has been so strong.

Regular followers of my blog know that I am a big fan of Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. They were a group that made it their mission to write songs that told stories about Canada. One of the things that has earned the band enormous respect within the country is that they produced songs that tackled all aspects of our history. They weren’t simply cheerleaders. They were chroniclers of the good and the bad, the weird and the wonderful, too. Along the way they came to develop an affinity for the ongoing story of our Indigenous Peoples. There came to be entire albums dedicated to telling the story of the residential school system and the generational trauma that came to be as a result. But right from their earliest days as a band, they waded into the true history of Canada with songs such as “Looking For a Place To Happen” *(which you can read more about here). This song takes a look at First Contact between the Indigenous Peoples who lived on this land we call Canada for thousands of years and the European explorers who sailed across the ocean and initiated the process that has come to be known as colonization. French explorer Jacques Cartier, who I learned about in school as an important and revered historical figure, is name dropped in “Looking For a Place To Happen”. Even for those with only a passing interest and/or knowledge of history, we all know what happened next. Through force or by treaty, Europeans came to settle onto the land. They brought with them their religion, their customs and traditions and established settlements in all parts of this new world. In time, the French and the English newcomers had settled in to such an extent that the land was rechristened as Canada and has been known as such ever since.

My own ancestry is mainly Scottish. My wife’s ancestry is mainly British. My current neighbours who live on one side of us claim Welsh ancestry. Most of the people I grew up with or have come to know as friends can trace their own roots back to those original immigrants from across the pond who helped colonize the land now known as Canada. Like them, I grew up in a cultural climate that was overtly Christian and steeped in the historical mythology of white European culture. Thus, celebrating special days such as Christmas and Easter came naturally. It seemed like the way of the world to do so. Most importantly, to do so became part of what it felt like for me to actually be a Canadian. Growing up, I never thought of myself in terms of living in a white Christian nation but, especially for those of us from the east coast of this country where I hailed from, we grew up in a region where being white and being either Catholic or Protestant was who we were and was what was reflected in the world we lived in. It was just the way it was.

I have written in many posts about how transformative it was for me as a person to have left my home on Cape Breton Island in order to attend university in Canada’s largest city, Toronto at the age of eighteen. That it was so transformative is not a slight on my childhood spent back home. On the contrary, I had a wonderful upbringing. I still love Cape Breton and go back every year. Being there recharges my soul. But, being in Toronto exposed me to many new ways of understanding the world around me. There is simply so much diversity there. When I was initially exploring the city back in 1982, one of the first things I noticed about it were all of the cultural neighbourhoods or enclaves that existed. I wandered through Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Portugal, the Greek area of the Danforth and even the areas of the city like Church Street, which was the epi-centre of the burgeoning Gay lifestyle. One of the first big festivals I was exposed to as a Torontonian was the enormously joy filled Caribana Festival which celebrates all things Caribbean. The whole city buzzed with life and languages and songs and traditions that were not my own but yet, were inviting and enjoyable and which broadened my horizons as a human being. The thing about it all was that I felt that I became a better version of myself by being there but, having said that, I maintained my eurocentric roots. I didn’t suddenly celebrate Diwali or Passover or Ramadan, even though many around me did. I still possessed a worldview that was formed by the traditions of my youth. That being said, I didn’t raise a fuss about the celebrations going on around me, either. I was able to see that there seemed to be room for differing viewpoints in the city and that having a parade dedicated to Caribbean culture, for example, didn’t diminish who I was at all. Life went merrily along. 

Funny thing about that. After graduation from university in Toronto, I moved to London, Ontario. Back then, London was a very white bread, old money kind of town. Living there was not dissimilar to living back in the Maritimes. In those days in the 1980s, most people looked like I did. English was spoken most everywhere I went. I attended teacher’s college there at the University of Western Ontario. All of my professors were white. There was no diversity training given. I learned about how to teach ABCs and 1-2-3s. I did so in an environment that led me to believe that I would become a teacher in classrooms where most of the children would look like me and would share the same general cultural background and traditions that I did as well. All of my teaching placements (where I left the university and worked in actual classrooms in order to get some real world experience as a teacher) were conducted in classrooms led by white teachers charged with caring for mainly a white student population. While the experience of cultural diversity in Toronto was a pleasant memory on my own personal journey, it played little to no part in my training to be a classroom teacher.

Lo and behold! Wouldn’t you know it?! The first full time teaching contract I was ever offered came from the Toronto District School Board. I was hired by members of the school board’s human resources staff in what was known then as a pool hiring. At that time, they hired several hundred of us and placed our names on a great big list that was given to each school principal. Then, on hiring day, at exactly eight o’clock in the morning, principals called the people on the list that they might have a spot for at their school and that was how we were all placed. For me, I received six phone calls by 8:15. All of the principals played up the positive aspects of their schools, including the essential facts regarding how ethnically diverse their school populations were. For each principal, that diversity was a selling point. I accepted an offer from the principal at Regal Road Public School. Regal Road P.S. was located in the heart of Little Italy, not far from the intersection of major streets called Dufferin and St. Clair. 

As a brand new teacher with my very first classroom, I spent the summer making lessons for my grade 1-2 students that revolved around ABCs and 1-2-3s. On the first day of classes I was handed a class list. It was while I was standing there in a gymnasium filled to capacity with students and staff that I knew I was in over my head and grossly ill-prepared for what was about to happen. I began calling out the names of the students on my list. They were expected to come up and line up beside me so that we could all walk together to our shared classroom space.  The trouble was that I could not correctly pronounce most of the names on my list. There were no Smiths, MacDonalds or Johnsons for me to call out. As it turned out, 18 out of the 23 students in my class spoke some other language than English as their primary language. All of my carefully prepared lessons were predicated on my assumption that the children would be able to understand my words when spoken in the form of instructions or behavioural directions. How was I to explain where they were to put their coats and bags or where I wanted them to sit or what we were going to learn about first if I could barely even pronounce their names?! As overwhelming as it was for me, it was probably just as disorienting for my students, many of whom were recent immigrants and had only recently arrived in Canada from all corners of the world. 

One of the things that saved me was the support put in place for my students and for me, as well. I was assigned a professional mentor who helped me re-organize my lesson planning. This brave, patient, wonderful soul also helped me with understanding the cultural backgrounds of my students so I could better appreciate what they were experiencing in their homes and, as a result, come to anticipate and understand classroom behaviour and react/plan accordingly. The Toronto District School Board had as systemic policy the availability of translators who would attend report card interviews to facilitate communication when language proved to be a barrier. All classroom newsletters and report cards were submitted to a central office where they would be translated into whatever language was spoken first in the home. These accommodations helped take away some of the anxiety that comes from misunderstandings due to language and cultural differences. As the year went on, I came to know who in my class might be celebrating some sort of special holiday in their homes. If they were fasting for religious reasons then I would refrain from doing food-related activities out of respect for the student and their family. There would be plenty of time to talk about healthy eating and sample various nibblies after the fasting would be over. Conversely, if I knew a student was celebrating a cultural event that involved the eating of special foods, I could incorporate that into our classroom and we could all learn and grow.

In time I changed as a teacher and became better at my craft. I owe those students and their families no end of blessings for being patient with me and for helping me to better understand the world I found myself in so I could better help the students under my care. There are times over the course of my entire career where I can vividly remember certain lessons or moments that I had with my students and fellow staff members. But that first year at Regal Road is very much a blur. I could not tell you to save my soul what my dayplan was like or how I taught those kids to be better readers and writers of English. What I do remember is the warmth of the cultural embrace I received as time went on. In particular, what I remember most were the smiles on the faces of those students when I welcomed their cultural experiences into our classroom and made them part of what we were learning and doing. Giving validation to lives lived differently than mine was the gift that I gave to those students. It was a gift I received in kind from them and their families when I was welcomed into their world. I have always maintained that those parents I dealt with that first year of my career were the very best parents I ever had the pleasure to work with. They were so invested in helping me understand who their child was, so patient when I didn’t initially understand and so generous with their time and their own teachings as the year went on. In the end, I have never felt more respected as a teacher than I did that year.  And that was at a time in my career when the craft of being a teacher was still very much a work in progress for me. I could easily have been tarred and feathered during those early first-impression days but instead, I was supported and allowed to grow. The lessons of that experience were ones that I took with me to twenty-nine other classrooms and into my personal life as father and husband, colleague and friend. I can’t stress enough how wonderful it all was.

And so, when I see childhood friends posting mean-spirited memes about immigrants who they feel are trying to change our traditions and/or that they should all go back where they came from if they don’t like the way things are here, it bothers me. To me, it reflects a lack of understanding of the experiences that many new immigrants to our country face. Believe me when I say, it is scary and frustrating and damaging to your self-esteem when you find yourself in a situation that is culturally unfamiliar. It is doubly so when you lack the ability to communicate those fears and frustrations to someone who cares. I survived my first day of teaching and my students survived their first day in our classroom because others cared about us and wanted us to be safe and happy and to succeed. We were all helped by those who worked in the school and in the community around the school. We were all helped by policies put into practice by the Toronto District School Board specifically to smooth the transition process for students and their families who were newly arrived in Canada. Patience and empathy go a long way in this world. Being kind to people who are frightened and temporarily bewildered by what they are experiencing can change lives for the better. My students and I are living proof of that.

I will close by stating a simple fact for anyone who needs to hear it. For those reading this post who feel as though punching down on the children of new immigrants to this country from war torn countries is warranted because it helps to preserve our precious culture well, the Indigenous Peoples of this land would like to have a word with you. 

In the days to come, I will go into greater detail with regard to how teachers learn about the lives of their students and how that knowledge informs our practice as educators. It is my hope that by talking about all of this, it will help others to view situations such as the one near Halifax at Remembrance Day with cooler heads, more empathy and a better understanding of what seems like a fairly nuanced situation to me. At least, that is the hope. I will also state for those who need to hear it that this post in no way is meant to dishonour the legacy of what Remembrance Day is all about. You can honour the past while recognizing the needs of those living in the present. Life is not as black and white as some politicians would have you believe. It is actually much better and more beautiful than that if only we take the time to look.

Bye for now. See you all next time. I thank you all for reading my words. Your own thoughts and feelings are welcomed in the comment box below.

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