School Daze

There are some lovely little towns in Eastern Ontario. Some of them have been placed along the banks of rivers of which there are many in that part of the Province. The Ottawa and the Mississippi rivers come readily to mind. Some of the towns have fascinating histories as mill towns, small manufacturing towns, some of them purely agrarian-related, largely serving the adjacent farming communities. Some of them, like colourful, quaint Merrickville, have historical locks and docks on the Rideau River. Others, like Pakenham, have distinguishing features that are quite remarkable, like the five-span bridge, quite an engineering feat of its time, standing over the Mississippi right at the ever-raging, powerful rapids cascading downriver.

Life in these small towns carries on at a somewhat different pace than, say in Ottawa, an hour or more distant by car. And many people who live rurally drive that hour or more from where they live in these small rural communities to their workplaces in Ottawa. Some drive to Renfrew, to Arnprior for work, and some people living in Renfrew or Arnprior or Cornwall will drive right into Ottawa, commuting that long drive back and forth, daily to their places of employment.

The children who live in those small towns attend school right where they live. Be it Almonte or Pakenham, Renfrew or Arnprior. The Upper Canada School Board has jurisdiction in part of that area, and like all school boards it is cognizant of the need of young Canadians to be educated, to be exposed, through good teaching, to all that they will require to know to go on to achieve a higher level of education and finally join the general workforce as educated adults, a credit to their society, to their country.

Many of these schools long established to ensure that Ontario children living in the eastern portion of the province, as elsewhere, do receive a good education. Some of them provide, in fact, an outstanding educational experience for their students, as we learn from an Ontario-based study outlining the successes or lack of, seen among public elementary and high schools throughout the province. Some schools, in some small towns distinguish themselves by the quality of the educational experience they offer to their charges.

And some just kind of plug along. Imagine your child attending a small school, meant to hold up to 250 students, but latterly school enrolment having gradually fallen well below the 200-student mark, classes become combined, so one teacher will provide the educational needs for split grades. It seems to work reasonably well. And there are many teachers who are innovative, patient and determined to discharge their professional obligations to their students in the best possible way.

Some of these teachers are truly leaders in their field, an inspiration to others, doing a difficult and needful job. Some teachers are truly professional in the seriousness of their regard for the students whom they teach. For others it’s just a job. They may have gone into the profession with a high-minded intent, but somehow, along the way, become dispirited and disinterested and disengaged. It does happen. It is, after all, a very high-stress profession. For which teachers in Canada unlike their counterparts in the United States, are generously compensated. Their remuneration is far higher, in recognition of what they are meant to achieve, and in recognition of the difficulties inherent in instilling a love for learning in children, and stimulating it. Or, at the very least, somehow managing not to stifle children’s natural affinity for learning.

Many succeed, some with a great deal of difficulty, and many do not. If a child is fortunate enough, he/she will experience the full range; exposure to well-intentioned but inadequate teaching methods taught by an indifferent teacher; exposure to a perennially-enthusiastic, determined and brilliant teacher who justifies her pride in her profession by discharging her obligations with flying colours. And, of course, everything in between those extremes.

For those children, in their formative years, being exposed to a teacher who is functionally incapable of managing a classroom of lively students without bullying them, without collapsing into a jelly of self-pity, without boring them with her/his personal problems, without failing to adequately ensure that children fully understand one lesson before moving on to the next, the school year can present as a total failure.

Under those circumstances, the school experience represents a tidemark of failure because the teacher has failed to guide the class toward the advances they are required to make throughout the school year. Particularly gifted children, those with a good memory, those with plenty of help from parents who have the time, the inclination, the understanding and the functional knowledge, can manage to retrieve something from the school year. But little thanks due to the teacher.

Parents have a tendency to overlook these unfortunate failures, simply because they recall their own experiences when they were young, coping with a teacher whose abilities and dedication to her task were insufficient to the job at hand. They sigh, recall that they managed to get over it and get on with their lives and trust that their children will, too. Adversity, after all, is no stranger to any of our lives. We must learn, even at a young, impressionable age, - perhaps particularly then to a degree - that life sometimes is a struggle, just as true in the learning environment of a dysfunctional classroom, as it is later on in life when we must balance social interactions and workplace problems to find our own authentic place.

It does, however, behoove us all to give some thought to the tender sensibilities of adolescents, those children on the cusp of young adulthood, still clinging to childhood, confused by the change-over, by their hormones busy transforming them physically and confusing them psychically. They are taught - by example, one trusts - to respect others, to view with a certain equanimity differences between people, and to give equal weight to one another’s right to be slightly different, whether that difference manifests itself by culture, traditions, heritage, ethnicity, ideology or skin colour. Above all, they are taught to be deferential to authority, beginning with their parents, transferring to their teachers, and perhaps culminating with those who have seen far more of life than they have.

Society does have a hierarchy of respect due. In the same token, respect for the individuality of young people, their aspirations and their dignity should be reciprocated. Children are sent to school by parents anxious to ensure their children have the benefit of a decent education. There are alternate options, including home schooling, but there is no opting out of parental responsibility to have children schooled. Correspondingly, parents have a social obligation to have taught their children basic respect for others. Their children have every right to expect that they themselves will be respected.

How respectful is it of the rights of children to be schooled in a functioning environment when a teacher descends to hysterics on an ongoing basis? Accusing her class of stupidity, of failing to obey her injunctions, and treating them in the process to days surfeit with screaming and ranting at them. Collectively and singly. Take, for example, a mixed grade 7 and 8, and you have a room full of pre-teens, balanced by teen-agers. That is a potent mix. But a teacher with a calm demeanour, one imbued with emotional balance and experience in the classroom should be quite capable of influencing her class to pay attention, to settle down, and to eschew verbal outbursts.

With their own teacher continually berating them, impugning the level of their intelligence, screaming loudly for what seems to the class for hours at a time in high dudgeon over what they have collectively, or some unfortunate student singly has done to irritate the teacher, they have her example. When the teacher engages in hysterical outbursts of uncontrolled anger and bullying, how is it a surprise that the class then finds it difficult to respect her?

Of course, if they don’t respect her, they forbear to listen to her injunctions and have a tendency to ‘act out’. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And an endless circuit of dysfunctionality.

And take, for example, a principal of the school who, observing these things occurring - particularly as this particular teacher has a pronounced tendency to send those pupils who have mightily displeased her ‘down to the office’, and occasionally to the attention of the principal, because she is incapable of dealing with them - tries to understand what is happening. Having spoken tentatively to the teacher, and having received the information that the class is impossible, comprised of halfwits and stubbornly-raucous misfits, she decides to take a different tack.

She sets aside time from her schedule to call a conference. While the teacher takes half of the class off to gym, the principal sits down with the other half, those representing the grade 8 students. And she asks them what is going on, and why. Some of the children are silent, reluctant to say anything. A few do speak up, and relate to the principal that while it is true that some of the students are hard to handle, it’s a very few students who are actually trouble-makers. And one of them is a boy who has an anger management problem. Which the principal well knows, having integrated him into the regular stream.

The other students also know this and are careful to stay out of this boy’s way, although occasionally he will swing out in anger, usually at another boy, but occasionally at a girl. That, however, is not the problem. The problem is, one says, that their teacher cannot control her anger, lashes out at them, and upsets everyone unnecessarily. Her behaviour, one girl claims, is far worse than the obstreperous behaviour of the younger boys who are admittedly sometimes ill behaved.

The principal turns her attention to this girl, and asks her if she will elaborate. And the girl does. She speaks her mind and tells the principal that she resents the fact that the classroom is not one conducive to a good learning environment. She is aggrieved that their teacher will not control her physical outbursts which, when they occur, upset everyone. And only serve to further enrage the teacher herself. If she starts out the day in a bad mood, that mood only seems to increase in feverish accusations and screaming the rest of the day.

The principal listens, quietly, thoughtfully. And when the girl is finished, the principal turns to the others sitting there and asks what they think of what they’ve just heard. They are in complete agreement. The principal ends the session, thanks all of the students, turns to the outspoken girl and asks if she is prepared to say what she just told the principal, directly to her teacher. The girl says she is prepared to do just that.

But it never happens. Although directly after this little conference the students who were in attendance spoke among themselves about whether they would see some changes take place, and some of them thought it would happen, some thought nothing would change. The outspoken girl said she thought it wasn’t likely anything was about to change.

And she was right. And, funny thing that, although the teacher continued abusing the class, bullying them, harassing them, claiming they were idiots all, and if a student approached her to ask for help with a particular subject her reward would be a snarl that if she’d been listening adequately in the first place she wouldn’t be asking for help afterward, nothing was said to the outspoken girl.

Fact is, that outspoken girl seemed to be a favourite target of the teacher. Who would speak to the girl disparagingly of her single mother, unable to come to night-time occasions at the school. And who seemed forever openly critical of everything the girl did. Oh, not always, occasionally there was a flicker of appreciation for something the girl had done. Her marks more or less reflected her impeccable slate of completed assignments, and her interest and engagement with those school subjects she found she could relate to readily.

She hated it when the teacher became personal, remarked on things she had no right to do. It wasn’t bad when she was cited approvingly for helping a shy boy find a place for himself in the class. But when the teacher castigated her for breaking off a long-standing friendship with one of the other students, taking the other student’s side in an issue that had nothing to do with the teacher and everything to do with familial abuse which the affected girl carried over into her personal relationships with others, she took offence.

And then, wasn’t it quite amazing when, several months after that principal-student conference, the outspoken girl was called to the office and given a ‘certificate of appreciation’ for having the courage to speak up and give her version of events as they had occurred, though nothing was done to ameliorate the situation.