Sandra Craven is responsible for the " Chalk Dust Memory" segment at the MHADRTA general meetings.

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        This is one of her memories

                                                      The Substitute

                                                 Sandra Craven,

                                              Last week as my husband and I were driving past Herald                                                School, I saw a class of elementary students walking two                                                by two, with skates slung over their shoulders, on their                                                     way to the Moose Rec Centre. However, it was not so                                                   much the students that caught my attention, but the                                                         individual leading this happy  troop. Turning to my                                                         husband  I commented, “She couldn’t be the teacher                                                      could she? No way, she’s too young.”

At which point, we both burst out laughing, as we realized how often we have been saying this of late, whether it be about a dentist, doctor, or parents with young children.

And now for my very personal,

“No way she’s too young,” chalk dust memory.

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In 1969, I accepted a position at Parkside School in Redcliff, Alberta. As many of you may remember, this was at a time when teaching jobs were scarce and I had what I considered to be a dream job, teaching mainly Grades 4, 5, and 6 Language Arts. It was late Fall, a day not unlike today, and as the lunch hour was about to end, I headed to my classroom, when the Principal stopped to chat with me. Noting my anxiety, he reassured me, that I wasn’t in any trouble, quite the contrary he explained. However, by the time our conversation ended, students and teachers alike were in their rooms and classes underway.

Rushing towards my room, I could only imagine, what chaos was occurring in a teacher-less room with 36, Grade Four students, of which half were boys. As I stood in the doorway, silence, deafening silence greeted me. Every fibre of my being went into high alert, as I imagined the worst. Glancing about, I noted all were seated; no broken desks, windows, or limbs. No blood, no crying, and most terrifying, no sound.  

As I opened my mouth to speak, a stern male voice from the back of the room broke the silence. Bent over my desk, located in the back corner by the windows, was an older man, wearing a beige coloured tweed suit which blended into his beige coloured hair and his beige tinged skin. At this point, 36 pairs of young eyes were firmly focused on me and my gaping mouth as he repeated, “ Take your seat.”

Stunned by this comment, I managed to blurt out, “Uh, uh, you’re in it. I’m the teacher.”

And as if on cue, all 36 heads swung about, narrowing their gaze on the intruder.  Equally flabbergasted, he responded, 

“The teacher?! You don’t look much older than the rest of these children!”

With that he put down my register, straightened up, smoothed his suit jacket, and walked passed me with exaggerated dignity, mumbling something about being a substitute, in the wrong room, and what sounded like an apology.

As one can imagine, this encounter with the substitute teacher provided much amusement for students and staff alike, as well as dealing a severe blow to my ego. 

 

Another Memory 

Note: I received this story on November 18, 2002.
What follows is one teacher’s response to remarks delivered in a speech by

J.R. Vollmer, a successful businessman and CEO of an ice cream company.

The Blueberry Story: The Teacher Gives the Businessman a Lesson
                                        By Jamie Robert Vollmer
“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!” I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife. I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980’s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.” I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! Total quality management! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced –equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant – she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload. She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”
I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, ma’am.”
“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”
“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.
“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.
“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.
“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?” 

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie. “I send them back.”

“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer is why it’s not a business. It’s school!”

In an explosion, all 290 teacher, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their material; they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach, to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.

For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.