A LITTLE CONFESSION

      I have been writing about some of the adventuresome things I've done in my life. I've had comments like "You lived and interesting life." In my last post I'm crawling, walking up Windy Point Ridge . At least that's what we called it.

     Young men usually have a short period in their life when they think they are invincible and do some crazy things. I had that invincible period in my life but it lasted longer than most.  Once I passed through the invincible stage of my life I still had some fun like backpacking and crawling around the Rocky Mountains. 

    However, I was involved in may other activities even though they were much calmer. 

   I was very active in many aspects of teaching. I went to every professional development activity I could. So I attended many conferences and  workshops. I was also on the executive of the English Language Arts conference. This meant some travelling during the year. I was involved with Alberta Teachers Association. 

    Now all these activities may have been very interesting to me but I can't make interesting blog posts from them. 

   In my 40's life could have been become much more adventurous as one on the ATA presidents did not like flying into the north. I was asked to consider taking her place for the northern activities she would be involved in. I turned it down. It meant being away from home and an extra workload preparing for substitute teachers. I've often regretted not taking that position.

    So as hard as I may try, I don't think I could make a conference interesting. 

   The biggest conference I attended was the  conference in Washington D.C. in 1992. It was in the hotel where Reagan was shot. The venue was huge so this little prairie boy's eyes were wide open. I was also given a couple of extra days to be a tourist. When I got home I had to give a report to all my  colleagues and share all the goodies I had picked up.

    So that's all you're going to get on my professional development activities. 

MORE REFLECTION ON EDUCATION

      A few things have to be made clearer from my last post. 

      First, some of you have the mistaken idea that I was a wonderful teacher. Well, I was a so so middle of the road teacher. I had good days and bad days. I had good years and bad years. 

      Another comment that catches my eye is that it was something wonderful to be teaching before my 19th birthday. During the war and after the war to the 1960's teachers were in short supply in the western Canadian provinces. They hired many people who did not have any training whatsoever and some had not finished high school. For my second part of grade one I had a guy who had just finished high school. So to be a 19 year old teacher, while  not a good idea ,  was better than some one without training. 

     I did like what I did and would do it over again in a heartbeat.

    At times educators have been too quick and narrow minded to challenge kids to become good citizens. The system concentrated on "learning" information which was soon forgotten and rarely ever used. I know that it was a good thing for kids to learn skills of evaluation of information and relationships. 

     I have asked the Micro Manager who is a bright woman, to divide fractions. She doesn't know how to divide fractions which was a basic operation. She never had to use it in life . I'm not sure if it was valuable as a skill for any deduction. I've asked about nouns and verbs? No answer. I think most people would be the same.

    What I do think is that more emphasis should be put on young people replacing us. Yes, high school students will be directed to some further education and training. But replacing us in society should be worked on. It's not automatic that people get together and make a successful community. We need people to grow up and have a sense of community and citizenship. 

EMIL KLINE

       My Dad, Emil Kline, was born on the homestead in 1912. They'd been on the homestead for seven years but he often said he missed it. He wished he had been old enough to be a pioneer like his Dad or grandparents.

      However my Dad always said he had a good childhood. He had two older  brothers who worked on the farm so Dad had more time to play with younger siblings. He also helped his mother in the yard. He carried water by pail to her garden. He looked after chickens, weeded the garden and brought wood into the house.

      The one room country school was on their farm and only about 400 m from their house. Dad liked school and considered himself a good speller. For some years he was paid 15 cents a day to light the fire and have the school warm by the time kids got there. His sister was paid 10 cents a day to sweep the floor. 

    The economy was good in the 1920's and many of the pioneer's children pursued higher education and left the farm. Dad was in gr.10 in 1928-29. He boarded with a farm family who lived right beside the town. He did farm chores in exchange for his board and room. Apparently most of his gr 10 consisted of playing pool. As a result he did not do well in Gr. 10. We all know that the depression began in 1929 so that was the end of his education. 

     He worked on a farm for the summer and fall of 1929. He didn't want to go home and stay on the farm with his parents so he took a train to Grand Prairie Alberta and lived with an uncle and his cousins. His uncle had a small sawmill so they sawed lumber and brought in more trees to saw up. In the spring of 1930 Dad knew he had to move on as his uncle had enough kids to look after. . He asked his uncle for money and the uncle pointed to a pile of lumber and said that's your pay. The uncle couldn't sell lumber so how would a 17 year old kid sell lumber so Dad moved on. 

    Sometime during this time he decided to change the spelling of his name. More on the spelling later. 

    His next move was to the Okanagan in British Columbia. He had two sisters in the area and an uncle. He picked up work where ever he could. He worked on a dairy farm, picked apples, cut timber, and worked in a saw mill. When He didn't have work he had to be creative to find a place to live. For a while he lived in a wooden granary on someone's farm yard. 

     Dad said he was happy through this period of his life as he said none of them had money so they were all the same.

THE EDUCATION OF A PRAIRIE BOY PART II

     When I did my first prairie boy post I thought I had said everything. When I contemplated the post and looked at your comments I knew I had something else to say. 

     There was more education before starting my education in an institution. 

     In my preschool years I had contact with grandparents. Yes, all of you grandparents know how much you influence and teach your grandkids. My paternal grandparents lived about 8 or nine miles from us. We visited then about 6 or 7 times a year. 8 or 9 miles in the early 40's was a long trip for us. With horses we could not make the trip both ways. Okay, my paternal grandparents were German immigrants who came from Russia. Apparently they spoke very little English but that didn't matter to a little boy who didn't speak German. We chattered to each other all day to the extent that I had to be told later in life that they didn't talk English. Grandma was a great story teller and told stories of wolves and foxes that chased people. The people always got away in her stories. So we were exposed to a different culture. I remember staying with Grandma a few times. The food was different. They were independent for almost everything. They produced most of their own food and it was different. They received support from the Mennonites in Manitoba , Canada when they first came here.   

     My maternal grandparents were English and came here for the same reason as the paternal grandparent...economics. The maternal grandparent could not make a living in England. My grandfather was a butcher and went to farms when they wanted something butchered. My maternal grandparents lived about 500 miles away so we saw them only once a year. I remember visiting them twice. They lived in a town of 10000 and I thought it as a city. This was a huge place with all kinds of shops. These grandparents were supported by the church for a few years until they became established. So my Grandparents were like most grandparents and taught their grandkids about a different way of life. They also urged us to practice good behavior. 

      Children learn from other children. We had children living close to our farm so played with other kids all the time. Kids have to play with others to learn how to get along. Sometimes kids have a very effective way of getting their point across...they sometimes use hitting. 

     Many of the things you learn as a preschooler pop up later in your life to add meaning to what is going on. The stories my parents and grandparents told made things have more sense as life went on. I was my grandparents first grandson so there was a special photo . My paternal grandparents in front of their retirement home. My maternal grandparents are on the left. I'm on the far right .
  

MY EDUCATION II

     So on a fine September day in 1945 I marched off to the school house to begin my education. There was no crying and hanging on to Mommy. I'd been to the school all my life and knew where I was going. We lived a mile from the school and off I went...walking...by myself. Well it wasn't that bad. There was another farm about 400 m from our farm. There were 4 children going to the school from that farm so I had older kids to go with. In another 500 m we picked up two more kids. So in walking to school I had lots of company. Only about half the land was developed for farming so there were lots of trees and brush to explore. Now a big tree to us was something about 5 -6 meters high.

    In the last post I described how gr. one passed by.

    For gr. two my brother started school. We had a new teacher. She was a very quiet introverted woman. I don't remember much about gr. two so I don't think much happened. This lady stayed connected with the community even though she moved away to teach. She was quite often a guest in our home when she was back for the summer.

    From grades 3 to 5 I had the same teacher. I didn't get along with her as well. However, when I put my teacher evaluation hat on she was an excellent teacher and a way ahead of the time. She made effective use of field trips even if it was through the bush close to the school. We would go out all day and look for plants bugs and birds. We would have a picnic lunch. It was a fun day. She would also take us to other schools for an afternoon to play ball. She was talented in the area of fine arts. So we had lots of music and art projects. Many of the art projects involved producing something to take home. The traditional Christmas concert was a great production with her. There was great variety and good quality. We had good experiences preparing for the Christmas concert.

    My sister started school when I went into gr 3.

    There was a girl who was in my grade so that made a class of two. She moved away at the end of gr. 3 so from gr 4 to 9 I was the only one in the class. These were years when I learned to be independent. I would do my work quickly and quietly so that I could read.

     For gr 6 and 7 I had the same teacher but her talent was limited. She had music ability but didn't make things fun. I don't remember her teaching any lessons. I think her instruction involved telling us to read part of a text and then answer questions. We were comfortable with this strategy but I don't think we learned much. One of the all time memorable stories happened when this lady taught us. One of the boys occasionally came to school with a team of horses. One day as he was preparing to go home , he found that the harness on one horse had slipped over the horse's head . The horse had tramped on the harness all day so things were a big mess. It was very difficult to sort out the harness so that it could be put back on the horse. The teacher noticed that we were in the barn a long time so came to check on us. She stood quietly in the barn door and the rest of us became quiet. The boy didn't know the teacher had arrived and that's when He came out with, " old Frieda should come out. She thinks she knows everything. ." Just after he made his remark, he noticed the teacher. It was too late. She didn't say anything. We wondered when the explosion would take place. The boy immediately said, I apologize and the situation was over.

    For gr. 8 and 9 we had another teacher change. One of the local farmer's wives became the teacher. She had taught in the school and had a record of being very tough. When she took the job she said she had mellowed. We knew this woman well and she was good friends with my parents. This woman knew how to get around things in a one room country school. I remember her as always being in the middle of us. She was a multi tasker. She didn't just send you away to work but was constantly in touch with you as well as other students.

    I took my gr 9 by correspondence. This meant that lessons were sent out to me in the mail. I did the lessons and sent them in to the correspondence school to be evaluated. My Dad was a great help in this as he kept me organized and helped with the lessons. He always went over the corrected lessons so that I could understand why something was wrong.

    So that took care of me for nine years of education.
   

   

THE SCHOOL

      Now it took quite a while until I was involved in what I came for. But finally I did get to the school, classroom and most importantly the students.

     Inuvik was a new town. They started building it in the early 50's and it was opened in 1957. So the school was a very new building. It was a large building and at the time we had about 1000 students. Now this wasn't a large brick structure but built completely with wood. The building was on pilings put into the permafrost. There would be lots of shifting with the building so it had to be flexible. The building was two story , had a large gym, shop , home ec. and typing for high school options. There was not a music or drama program. It was a divided into an A wing and B wing. The B wing was used for the separate or Catholic students. The A wing was for the public school. there was a a small high school of about 4o students. This was a first for housing the two school systems in the same building. It worked well and we thought of each other as being on the same staff.



    Of the 1000 students a third were Eskimo, another third Indian and then other. 600 of the kids came from outside the town and lived in the hostels or dormitories. 400 kids were town residents.

     I have mentioned the hostels before. The hostels were run by the churches as a development from the time when the churches were the only ones running a school. The Catholic hostel had 250 kids and the Anglican hostel had 350 kids.

    So most of the students were in the gr 1 -8 category with a higher number in the primary grades.

    Aboriginals in this area had a pretty good handle on the English language. They'd been exposed to traders, churches and there was some education. The Dew line was built in the early 50's and many of the men worked on construction so there was more exposure to English. I never heard any native language spoken when I was a there. Native languages were spoken but it was when they were together.

    As a result most of the kids entering school had some English.

    Now in 1963 the philosophy was still make the aboriginals into white guys. So in schools and hostels the aboriginal language was discouraged. We taught very much as we would in a southern school. As I look back on it we were more than naive. These kids did not have the background to process the material we presented. Dick and Jane didn't go over very well with kids who were nomadic and had different clothes and  food. Similar things happened in the whole school program.

    We had little kids in the hostel who were 1000 miles from home. Imagine letting go of your six year old for 10 months of the year. It was criminal. The kids went back to their parents and found it hard to live in tents and eat country food.(fish, caribou, seal). We now know what harm has been done to the aboriginal people. We should have known at that time that it was not a good plan.

     We had a staff of about 50 teachers. They came from every province in Canada. There were also British , Australian and Americans. I was exposed to many different systems of teacher education. The learning curve was steep. I feel fortunate to have taught in a school with such a variation of teachers. I learned much from them.

    For me there was all kinds of overload. I lived in a completely different environment. I was exposed to a different culture. There were always new things to learn.

   The situation was challenging but I learned so much and I always say that it changed my life forever.

Truth and Reconciliation Commision

      The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) gave its report to the Canadian government last week.

       What's the Truth and Reconciliation Commission you say? Well, it is a commission that was to discover the facts about the sad education system our government ran for aboriginal people

in Canada.

      More than 100 years ago an education system was established for first nations people. The government gave a pittance for funding and farmed the work out to churches. The system took aboriginal kids away from their families and put them  in residences. The goal of this system was to take their language and culture away from the kids so that they would become good little white kids! They took much more than that away from the first nations people. Kids did not grow up in a family and as a result did not get the family experience and became ostracised from their relatives. There were many very cruel teachers and residential supervisors who destroyed these kids forever. Physical and sexual abuse was common.

     So the TRC was set up to find out as much information as possible and then hopefully set about trying to right the wrongs of the system. Thousands of people told their stories. 

     I was a teacher who spent five years teaching  Inuit and first nation's children. For three years a very large residential facility was  with the school. The churches ran the residences and the government ran the school.

    I went north as a young teacher looking for adventure and bigger money. I was given in service about what I was supposed to do. Yes , we  were to teach English. Yes, we were to discourage kids from speaking their own language. Yes , we were to encourage kids to join another culture and leave theirs behind. I did what I was told and didn't question the administration. 

    It wasn't until years later when I was talking to a pilot who picked the kids up in their settlements and brought them into the residence that I realized the horrors that took place. He told about kids being taken from their parents and how awful it was for both. 

     Now the teaching experience was excellent and my contact with aboriginal people changed my life forever. 

    One year I taught in a temporary classroom between the school and residence. Many days when I left the classroom the little boys were playing around my portable. I received cheerful greetings that  I will never forget. They always called me Mr McKline. I observed their play. They would play dog team. I'm sure I had as much fun watching them as they had playing. Sometimes I went to the residence. Several times I went in the dormitories after the kids were in bed. I'll never forget the sight 40 little boys in one room on cots. There was some light left on for the supervisors. Most kids were asleep but there was always somebody who was awake. There was much moaning and groaning.

     I've thought many times of how these six year old boys were a thousand miles away from home and how horrible it was for them, their parents and their community.

    Now back to the TRC. Our government almost completely ignored the report. The next step is to right the wrong. It won't happen unless the government participates. 

    I'm one of the pessimistic people on this topic. I think the government will throw some beads and trinkets at the situation and leave it to continue causing damage and heartache to the aboriginal people of Canada.

The Rookie

      I've been including odd photos at the end of my posts or else blogger sees fit to pick photos and I don't want them. So if I put my own photos in and blogger leaves me alone.

     Okay, the last photo happened to be me in my first year of teaching. You see it's the only school photo I have that's scanned! Because of comments on the last post, a post topic came into my head. The photo was a very poor scan of a picture.
  

     So I was reminded of my start in teaching. It was as many of the things that happen to me. I bumbled into teaching without any clear goals.

     I surprised myself by finishing high school in 1957. I never had a goal of finishing high school. I bumbled along from year to year and finally it was over. Many boys at that time dropped out of school in gr. 8 and stayed on the farm.

     When high school was done I had to think fast. I really didn't want to stay on the farm with my Dad. What could I do after high school. I decided to try teaching and if I liked it, that was it. If I didn't like teaching, I hadn't lost much.

     At that time you could take a one year program and then teach. I entered the program at age 17. The year was fun and very different for me. My high school class had eight students. There were 400 students at Teachers' College. The program included some basic methods classes. We had a very good class on teaching primary reading. There were some academic classes and a few fine arts classes. At  the end of the year we were given an interim standard teaching certificate. We could teach for three years and then we had to take more classes. 

     I found myself finished Teachers' college and looking for a job. As I'd gone to a one room country school this is a job I applied for. At 18 I was a teacher in a  one room country school house . Pretty scary! EH?Most country schools were being closed at that time.The school I taught at was on its way out. As some of you  noticed there were only 10 students. A school with just ten students was not economical to keep open. There were 3 grade ones, 2 grade two's and one each in grades three, four, five, seven and nine. I really liked teaching the grade ones.

     I had a very enjoyable year so much so that I decided right then that I would stay in teaching. The Superintendent was most supportive. Harry would quietly show up and stand in the doorway until I saw him. He'd give me the nod and I would go out on the steps and talk to him. He was checking that I was not having problems and give me a few pointers and a pat on the back. Sometimes he'd come and dismiss the kids for an hour and talk to me.

   My first year teaching is one that stands out over all the others. I often wonder how an 18 year old was able to give instructions for a year. The community were most supportive and good to me. They wanted me to stay another year but I had decided to enter university.

     Nine years earlier when I was in grade three in a country School. That country school just happened to be named Hiawatha!

Reflections on my Career

   I originally posted this piece in 2009. I'll use the usual excuse when I repost something. "Nobody was reading me in 2009."


     I was a teacher for 37 years from 1958 to 1997. I taught in three provinces and one territory. I look back on my time with the feeling that I would do it all over again, but change some things which experience drilled into me.



    Now for starters, I have to be careful what I say because one of my previous administrators reads this blog. He's a wonderful human being but can be a bit critical at times. I might have to defend myself strenuously if I go too far out in left field.



     I took the compulsory administration's class in education. It was a survey course and explained and justified why the system was organized the way it was. The grade system was dealt with thoroughly.



     Looking back, some students jumped through the hoops (grades) willingly and paid their debt to society and got an education. However, not all students learned at the same rate or had the same learning style. So some kids had difficulties as they were not prepared or ready to learn the concepts being presented at a certain grade level. Some of these kids went on and never did pick up the concept and as a result were challenged later or met with failure. A simple example would be some student who did not learn to read in the primary grades. Some of the obvious behavior problems were a result of students not being ready for a concept and acting up because of the difficulties experienced.



     Now I'm not the only one to make these observations. Various attempts have been made to accommodate the variation in student readiness. "Continuous progress" - remember that one? Open classroom concept? Portfolios? These were attempts to solve the problem of different learning stages of the student population. They were good ideas and would have worked, but they didn't. A teacher was left with the same number of students and found the strategy too challenging so gradually backed into what they were doing previously .



     My favorite teaching assignment was to be given 12 to 15 students who were labeled as having problems. I was able to go away with these students and modify a program to where they were able to succeed. At the end of the year I would come back with my charges. Would they have achieved grade level? No! But they would have met with some success and avoided the hassles they would have met in the regular program.



     So it bugs me to some extent that I saw students experience problems because of a system which was set up to accommodate administration rather than a system set up to meet the needs of the individual student .