I wish that I had known in 1987 as a student-teacher going to my first professional development day that that day I’d learn the most important lesson a teacher could have. It was the era when personal computers were just being introduced into schools, and there was a lot of hype around how they would change everything forever. Everyone wanted computers, and everyone thought they were the ticket to ensuring that every student would learn everything they needed all the time.
Against that backdrop, the assistant superintendent of the Antigonish District School Board, Larry Starzomski, offered an impassioned counterpoint: Teaching was not about the building, the technology, or the current trend in education; teaching, he argued, was about the relationship between people. Between student and teacher. Looking for some external panacea to “fix” education inevitably led to disappointment, he suggested.
Thirty-three years later, as I wrap up my career, I’ve been thinking about Larry’s address and reflecting on the incredible gift that this profession has given me. I figure that I’ve taught more than 3,000 individuals over the past 32 years. That’s the opportunity to have more than 3,000 relationships, and as it goes with relationships, they were a mixed bag.
Having the good fortune to have lived and worked in a small town for the past 30 years, though, I’ve been able to watch those students grow into adults. The first students I taught are pushing 50 now, and I have been teaching many of their children over the past five years or so.
Those “kids” who were in my classes are now the people who take my blood, fix my electrical problems and do my taxes. They help me with my banking, clean my teeth, serve me in local restaurants and stores, and sell me insurance. Many of them are my colleagues. Some of them are doctors — of medicine, philosophy and literature. Too many of them have died, from illness, from accidents, from overdose. They are the whole gamut of humanity, and I had both something and nothing to do with that.
Teachers are like the gatekeepers of our students’ journeys. We’re there sometimes to assist them and other times to create a challenge for them. If things go as they should, students will get beyond us and move on. That can be humbling for a teacher if you feel you played a pivotal role in some student’s life only to have him or her say to you years later, “Did you teach at Howe Sound? I don’t remember if I was in your class.” Ouch.
But there are those other moments like this: I went into the Howe Sound Inn to grab a bite to eat one evening. Sitting at the bar next to me were two ex-students. We were chatting about their lives, their families. They left, and shortly after I called the bartender over to settle my tab.
“It’s been covered,” he said. “Those two guys you were talking to picked it up.”
Paul Demers is retiring after spending a lengthy career teaching English and writing at Howe Sound Secondary School. The Chief thanks him for his many contributions.
