Apples and Oranges

On the first day of grade two, I entered Mrs. Teeple's class full of excitement and fear. 
I had my brand new dress. 
I had my new scribblers and pencils and crayons.  

There were 42 of us in that class- some from farms, some residents of a new neighbourhood full of new houses for oil and gas workers in our burgeoning, hopeful town.

I found my desk and neatly stacked my school supplies inside. I was very proud of how it looked. I was ready!  No sooner had I done that when Mrs. Teeple barked out that we were NOT to put our things in our desks. She had a seating plan and everything had to be moved.  I was mortified.  I tried to surreptitiously remove everything from the desk before she caught me. 

How well I remember the shame.
I didn't want attention. 
But mostly, I didn't want to be wrong.

I think back to that day on Orange Shirt Day, a day to recognize the children who attended residential schools. 

The movement was founded by Phyllis Webstad, who was a student at St. Joseph's Residential School in Williams Lake in the 1970s. She was told she was not allowed to wear the bright orange shirt her mom gave her to wear on the first day of school.  I picture this little child, full of hopes and happy anticipation, proud of her new outfit. 
A girl just like me. 
A girl whose mom took pains to help her child come to school ready to learn and grow and belong. 
A girl ready to start the school year. 
How she must have felt. 
How ashamed she must have been. 
Ashamed for herself. 
But even worse, ashamed for her mom because it was the blouse her mom bought, with all the best intentions, that caused her humiliation. 
Being ashamed of yourself is one thing, but being told you should be ashamed of your mom is much much worse.

Phyllis says:

“The colour orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.”

And while I think about how alike Phyllis and I must have been on our first day of school, my story and the story of Phyllis Webstad are as alike as apples and oranges. While my momentary childhood trauma was forgotten and I (and later, my indigenous brother) were supported in finding our own way under Mrs. Teeple's iron fist and warm heart, Phyllis and thousands like her learned that not only were their clothes wrong, their language was wrong, the way they were raised was wrong, their parents were wrong and they did not belong. They learned their own identity was something to be ashamed of. 

Today, I am a teacher. 
I hope I don't ever tell a child his or her way of living is wrong and that they should be ashamed of being who they are. (Except for you guys cheating off Course Hero, my EYES ARE ON YOU.) 

I hope I truly show that I believe every child matters.
If I do ever make my students think they do not matter, even in subtle ways I am not even aware of, for that I am truly ashamed.

Government Work

This is a throwback Thursday piece about a job I had once. 

Every morning, when you get up, go into the bathroom and smack yourself roundly about the head.  Don’t hold back.  There should be a significant amount of pain, otherwise you are missing the point of the exercise, which is to prepare yourself for the day ahead.  Additionally, ask members of your immediate family and close friends to randomly strike you at unexpected intervals.  Request in particular that they attack you when you are doing something they requested or something you have done for their benefit.  This will also prepare you for your work day.

The purpose of your work is supposedly to complete a number of tasks for which you were hired based on your expertise in the area.  However, any time you try to use your expertise in the completion of your task, you will be criticized and questioned, generally by those who do not have the expertise for which you were hired. Primarily, this will happen any time you question anything and any time you want to move off a prescribed path, no matter who prescribed it, but especially if it was prescribed by someone who does not have your expertise.  So, in reality, your work is to defend the areas of your expertise to those who don’t have your expertise.  This will take up the better portion of your work day.

Do not expect to be autonomous in anything that you do.  Do not expect to accomplish your tasks, but fear the results if you do not.  Most importantly, do not dream.  Do not imagine.  Do not get creative. Do not have a vision. Especially, do not use your expertise.  When you use your expertise, you are establishing yourself as an authority over others who want to be the authority, despite the fact that they do not have your expertise.  If you really want to get ahead, try to get into an area where you have no expertise.  Then question and criticize those who do.  This will ensure that you remain in a position of power.

The purpose of the self inflicted beatings is to remind yourself you actually chose this path over your previous path where you actually used your expertise with positive results. Beatings inflicted by others will help you stay alert and remind you that you never know from whence the next attack will come.  The beatings also serve to anesthetize you to the beatings inflicted by those for whom you work.

Those who have gone before you will tell you that soon you will just not care anymore.  You look forward to the numbness.

Prodigal Child

Yesterday I marked an exam.

Today I triggered the process that will see that kid's report card generated and his marks sent to the Ministry of Education.

I gave a silent little cheer.

One more.

One more kid who finished his course.  

And it occurred to me that I think of each one of these kids as a prodigal son. That might not be exactly accurate, as the Bibical prodigal son is one who left home, lived lavishly and squandered his inheritance and returned to the loving arms of his father.  My students have not all lived carelessly and squandered their education. They do not all feel that they are unworthy. But somehow that idea about celebrating the return of one who was lost and is now found keeps coming into my mind. I think I probably rejoice more over that one kid who just finished Social 20-1 than a classroom teacher celebrates at getting an entire class through their course.

One by one.

The hockey players. The swimmers. The young moms. The Syrian refugees and the children of foreign workers and the ones who dropped out because of substance abuse or a bad home life. And the accelerated students and the ones who want to finish early. The kids who failed and are now trying again. The kids who need to upgrade a mark to get into college. The adults laid off from their jobs in the oil patch or the middle aged people who just want to prove to themselves they can learn.

Every one, working at their own pace. Many fall by the wayside, but for every one who succeeds, I do a silent dance of celebration.

I Speak for All Canadians

Of all the things former PM Bryan Mulroney used to say, his statement "I speak for all Canadians when I say...blah blah blah" used to irritate me the most.

We heard the same from Stephen Harper and now from Justin Trudeau.

"I speak for all Canadians when I say we are ready to work with you in the cause of stability, security, and humanity."

"I speak for all Canadians, Canadians across this land, when I say that all Canadians reciprocate your friendship and today we accept your challenge..."

"Today, I speak for all Canadians when I say that our hearts go out to the families affected by this terrible fire."

”I know I speak for all Canadians when I tell you we will not abandon you."

"I know I speak for all Canadians in expressing unequivocal support and heartfelt gratitude to all our troops and their families. We are holding the torch high."

"I speak for all Canadians when I say Thank you for the music."

Yes, I get it, you're the Prime Minister so you get to represent "all Canadians" when you are performing your official duties.

But you are an elected official. ALL Canadians didn't vote for you. You don't speak for ALL Canadians.

So, yeah, it's annoying. But I get it.

What I don't get is when anyone else tells you that they know what all Canadians think or how all Albertans feel or what anyone's motives are for how they votes or act.

Things like "Alberta is a conservative province."

No one speaks for all Canadians. OR all Albertans. Or all women. Just because you are one, that doesn't mean you know what the rest of them think. No one knows what all Canadians think or want or feel. And you have to be some kind of idiot if you think we all think the same way.  If we did there would be no need for the democratic process.

I will only speak for one Canadian. Only one Canadian knows what she thinks or feels or believes and that is she herself alone- and sometimes she doesn't even know.

Weekly Life Spreadsheet

At work this year we have a new thing, a weekly report on Google Docs where I enter three bits of data about my week. It replaces an older spreadsheet where I entered 28 bits of data in 6 categories every day which replaced the MS word weekly worklog that included a list of what I did every day which replaced a weekly time sheet. One year I was on secondment to the government and had to use Microsoft's Project Manager to track my every move. That was a bad year. 

I know a lot of people have to complete timesheets and worklogs and spreadsheets and google docs or forms to detail the minutiae of their work lives. Sometimes as a way of tracking that they are actually working during the day or meeting their work goals or deciding who gets billed for what or just showing their bosses what they are spending their time on or helping them establish or focus on priorities. 

So I thought to myself, maybe I should create a life spreadsheet to track how I spend my nonwork time. Would it show me how much of my life is trickling away on things that don't really match up with my life goals? (which I don't have by the way)

 Take a look.

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun	TOTAL
Work	8	8.5	8	8.5	8.5	25 min	25 min	42 hrs
Volunteering	1 hour	1 hour	4 hours (Meeting)	1 hour	1 hour	3 hours	2 hours	13 hours
Dogwalking	1 hour Beach	1 hour Beach	20 min	1 hour Beach	1 hour Town	75 min	75 min	7.5 hrs
Shopping	-	-	-	-	-	35 min	35 min (online)	70 min
Personal writing	-	-	-	-	-	1 hour	1 hour	2 hrs
Housework/meals	30 min	30 min	10 min	30 min	30 min	3 hours (Apples) Dinner guests	2 hours (more damn apples)	7 hrs
Socializing						5 hours		5 hrs
Family phone					20 min	10 min	3 hours	3.5 hrs
TV/Multitasking	90 min	90 min	30 min	90 min	90 min	90 min	2 hrs	9 hrs
Sleep	8 hrs	8 hrs	8 hrs	8 hrs	8 hrs	8 hrs	8 hrs	56 hrs

Proudly We Hail Your Name

School Song

Proudly we hail your name
We'll fight to win you you fame
South Peace we'll be yours forever
Yours for South Peace High rah rah rah

Black, warning to our foes
Red badge of courage shows
White is right
And so we'll fight
To win for South Peace High

January 28th, 1966  Suppertime. A phone call. We drove to the school. Students and teachers stood in groups, watching hopelessly. The building fully engulfed in flames, its varnished floors and wood paneled walls, its wooden desks, its shop and gymn and library and its staff room with the mosaic table featuring the school mascot, a penguin- a room that smelled of coffee grounds and stale cigarette smoke- all ablaze. An electrical short, someone said. Fire ran down the ceiling of the main hall, said the one person who had been inside when the it started.

We returned the next day. Nothing but rubble. Firemen still working on the smoldering remains. The ground covered in thick yellow ice. The ceiling had fallen on my Dad's desk. Its contents were the only things that survived. A once conical marble paperweight, now blackened with soot. A pocket watch. Folders and files that reeked of smoke. They found those later.

The weekend was chaotic. Phone calls and meetings and searching for space. All the while my mother's sewing machine, whirring endlessly. We knew to be quiet, to stay out of the way. Something terrible had happened. The grownups needed to fix it. 

School opened almost immediately with makeshift classrooms in other schools, the public library, army barracks, the curling rink, whatever public building had space. "Let it be a challenge to you," became the new school motto. On the first morning students and staff congregated in the gymnasium of the junior high down the road. They were met by a new school mascot, Palmer the Penguin, sewed by my mom. 

My brother and I , junior cheerleaders

The new school built following the fire was a gorgeous new modern structure with wide hallways and glassed in study areas, skylights, and a student lounge with purple carpets and funky furniture. An innovative "modular" timetable, a school with its own farm and other unique programmes. We visited many times during construction and after, running down the halls on weekends the way only the kids of school teachers are allowed to do. Basketball tournaments and concerts and graduations and school carnivals and drama productions and talent shows and boat races. It was a home to us almost as much as our own house. My dad became principal and the blackened paperweight sat on his desk. My mom taught ESL and law and math and sewing. My siblings and I graduated. My dad moved on and his staff gave him a framed watercolour of the school surrounded by the photos of every teacher who had taught under his tenure.

My family moved away. 
Yet South Peace was still in our hearts. 
The school where my parents met. 
The school they returned to years later. 

The lawn of South Peace Senior Secondary, 1976

It was not a fire that ended the life of South Peace. That was done by the stroke of pen decades later. 

South Peace Senior Secondary School. 

Proudly, I hail your name.