Please Just Tell Us To Go

May 2011 Slave Lake, Alberta

Thousands of northern Albertans wait for the news

Are we safe?

Should we go?

They listen to the radio.
The TV.
Social Media.

No one tells them to go.

The flames lick the edges of their town and immediately they’re in their cars and trucks frantic to get out of town.
Trapped, every road a wall of flame.
They wait in parking lots till the road clears, escaping with nothing but their lives.
They have nothing.
They would have packed their treasures.
If only someone had told them to go.
Terrified their neighbours have not been so lucky.

Days later.
Volunteers search the charred remains
Will they find  bodies?
They are sure they will.
But they don’t.
A miracle.

November 2018

Next time.
And there will be a next time.

Please

Please just tell us to go.

Because we would rather wait a million years in a parking lot surrounded
By flames
Than search ashen basements for bodies
Bodies of friends and families who waited
Waited too long to be told

Just go.

Find Your Tribe

Somewhere during our student teaching, we decided we should form an organization. Someone had the bright idea it should be a sub-local of the ATA. That’s how SELAC was born. A group of starry-eyed U of A students who dreamed of becoming high school English teachers. Shortly after founding SELAC, Liz recalls that it was at a subject-specific competition between departments where we got our street cred. This (mostly northern) bunch of English majors roundly trounced the would-be Shop teachers in the nail hammering competition.  

Just fresh from student teaching, we had one year of university left before we would have students of our own. We were enthusiastic. We were energetic. We were eager to inspire. We couldn't wait to "make a difference." 

We met regularly, planned social events for students and professors, discussed job openings and shared hopes, motivations and dreams. After graduation, we attended the ATA English Language Arts Specialist Council conference at the Banff Springs Hotel where we met our senior colleagues and made believe we knew what "being a teacher" was all about. Shortly after that we spent a long weekend rodeo-ing and camping. And then we went our separate ways. SELAC disbanded but its members went on. We became English teachers. 

We taught in remote northern villages and urban centres, online and face to face, in public schools and private ones. We coached sports and sponsored clubs and took kids on trips and volunteered. Some branched off into Drama, World Religions, Social Studies, Math and administration. Some furthered their education. Some took time off to raise their kids. And through the decades, we persevered.

Although we mostly lived far apart, we stayed in touch. Sometimes we shared teaching ideas, discipline strategies, funny stories from the trenches, unit plans and resources. Occasionally we held reunions. More than that – we shared in each other’s lives. Marriages, births, new jobs, moves, graduations, new homes, travels, grandchildren. Retirement. We suffered together with family issues, aging parents and mourned deaths, including the loss of our beloved Donna who died much too soon.

This summer, thirty-eight years later, at the edge of a sleepy northern lake, we met again to share good food, reminisce and talk about travel and books and curriculum change. We shared what we were doing in retirement, from supporting a family of Syrian refuges to volunteering with the local Legion. We talked about kids and parents. Thought provoking conversations and new memories. 

All teachers need a tribe of colleagues who mentor and support them through their journey. SELAC was my first such tribe, although it was not my last.

Was teaching what we dreamed it would be? Did we make the connections with students we hoped for? Did we inspire? Did we "make a difference"?  That is not for me to say. But as I looked at the faces of these lovely women as they sat laughing around the table, I am glad I found them. I am glad I found my tribe. They made a difference in my life.

And I bet most of them can still hammer a nail faster than any shop teacher. 

Well, Liz can anyway.

At the Banff Springs Hotel

Desert Oasis

It seemed like such a great idea at the time.

A friendly park that people would love to visit. A place where you could fulfill the needs of your visitors. You imagined families and retired couples with travel trailers and motor homes en route to the state park or people visiting your city from another state. You thought about how happy they would be with all the services you would provide. You bought land just off the new freeway. You planted trees and installed electricity and water; bought picnic tables, built a pool and a neat concrete office and tidy restrooms with toilets and sinks and showers.

You smiled at the oasis you built there in the middle of the desert. Where there was once just sand and rocks, you made a place for people to call home. And then you waited.

And you waited.

People came now and then. But it was nothing like you imagined. The happy families didn’t come. The desert was deserted.

Then someone asked if he could rent by the week. The weeks turned into months and the months turned into years and suddenly you found yourself babysitting a community of decrepit Winnebagos and moulding trailers that had’t seen a road in decades. Under the trees you planted, now grown tall and luxuriant with foliage, you overlook the flat tires and tinfoiled windows and patch jobs of plywood and duct tape that are the possessions of your tenants- the elderly, the unemployed, the single parents, the people working minimum wage just to scrape together the meagre rent they pay you without fail every month. People who stop by your office every day to chat. People who help show the newcomers the ropes. You fill in the pool and start locking the bathrooms and make sure the pit bulls are chained up. You call the sheriff when you have to, which is becoming more and more frequent these days. Every now and then a hapless tourist shows up and you do your best to accommodate them. But your heart's not in it any more.

And you wonder... how did you get to this?

Utah

Bonsaied junipers twisted by the wind

Black skeleton pinyons

Silhouetted against intense blue

Striated canyon walls

Carved by millennia

The river’s entrenched meandering

Rising up from the paradoxical sea

To which they will one day fall,

Eyeless guardians on watchtowers

Overlook crumbling ochre castles

Pyramids and parthenons

Eroded crenellations and turrets

Ruined skyscrapers

Built layer by sandstone layer

Entrada

Keyanta

Wingate

Navaho

Geology both architect and destroyer

Northerner Rants About What North Means

I quite like Culinaire magazine.

It's free and glossy and has good recipes and supports the food industry in Alberta.

However, it appears that magazine's writers and editors know a bit more about food than they do about geography.  In the July issue, there was a delightful piece about road trips in Alberta, recommending a number of roadside food stops in southern and northern Alberta.

Yeah.

Except their idea of "northern" Alberta apparently means "north of Calgary" and "south of Edmonton".

Last time I checked, the geographic centre of Alberta was somewhere around Fort Assiniboine- there is even a roadside marker to note the location.

So the listed restaurants in the magazine are nowhere near "northern".

• Lacombe
• Wainwright
• Hinton
• Rocky Mountain House
• Fort Saskatchewan
• Ponoka
• Beaumont (weirdly anglicized to "Bowmont")

Yellow stars are "northern Alberta" restaurants according to this magazine.
Green flag is the geographical centre of Alberta.

Like many northern Canadians, I'm a bit touchy when it comes to "north". 

Look, all of Canada is NORTH. But these restaurants are in CENTRAL Alberta. Not NORTHERN Alberta. Calgary is NOT the middle of Alberta. Everything north of Calgary is not the wild hinterland.

I have lived in the north all my life. I am proud of it. The north has lots to offer. People who grow food. People who harvest food. People who forage for food. People who hunt food. People who cook food. Wild food. Organic food. Good food. Craft beer. Great little coffee shops and even restaurants.  

Take a road trip, Culinaire. You want to represent Alberta?  Go see it. Go taste it. And look at a map for heaven's sake. 

Go north.

The texture of silence

I knew it was snowing by the texture of the silence. 

Lying in my bed, curtains closed, I knew it.

There was a kind of quiet-a softness- that absorbed every sound. I wondered where the little noises of my old house had gone. The snow had soaked them up, like a blanket over my head. 

In late August we went north. On a night in Watson Lake Provincial Park, far from anything, it was so still, so dark, the silence woke me. I listened intently for something. Anything. I waited. But there was nothing. It was the absence of everything.

Silence is rare.

Sometimes I forget we need it.

An absence of the little sounds that call us. The minutiae of life that pulls us away so we forget to listen. For it's in the stillness we can truly hear.

So I await winter. The stillness of the snow. The forgiving blanket that absorbs the noise. 

Doorways of Puebla

Through the doorways of Puebla
you see
stately courtyards
tinkling fountains
newspapers waiting to be delivered
factories and workshops and shops
children playing
a grandmother on her way to the market
a line of laundry
a man buying a hat
a blushing bride

a band rehearsing
a couple deep in conversation
a family enjoying a meal

kids practicing for a parade

the dress you waited your whole life to wear

a man changing a tire
worship

light

Through the doorways of Puebla

You see 

life

You see life.

The time I got up early to say goodbye

As you head into retirement, it's hard not to think about your career. So many memories.

The time I started as a marker. My first memory was of how poorly paid I was. I drove all the way to Barrhead at my own expense to complain about the lack of money I was getting. The irony is not lost on me. I then applied for a teaching job writing course materials for English under Chris's leadership. After writing English 13 and 33, someone phoned and said he had been told to tell me to apply to teach Social. 

The time I co-wrote an English course with a marvelous seasoned teacher, Marvin. Marvin and I convinced our bosses we should create both online and print courses, moving away from the old model where DLRB- a government branch, at times far distanced from recent classroom instruction-wrote the course materials. It was a pioneering move to create print and online courses that mirrored one another and it was great fun to work side by side with this wise and innovative teacher. I went on to English 20-1 online, creating course content and marking student work for a hand-selected bunch of kids. To this day, I think that was the best course I ever wrote as I was so aware of the impact of each lesson. 

The time my family went to Vietnam for summer vacation and Pat insisted you take a whole ton of ADLC materials, paper, pencils and more to give to the kids over there.

The time Michelle and Danielle and I started some kind of crazy club called "OLE". We held dress up days - my favourite being "Pyjama Day" where kids were supposed to email us pictures of themselves in their PJs. An in-joke based on the misconception that all telecommuters spend the whole day in their pyjamas. I also started a book club with kids aged 12-18.  Kids voted for a book, we all read it and then we met on Fridays via Centra Symposium to discuss. We had a Christmas party where I posted lyrics to Christmas songs on the whiteboard and everyone sang their hearts out in the privacy of their own homes. Cameron (now an astrophysicist with a PhD from the Netherlands) was taking German and asked if he could sing "Silent Night" which he performed impressively in a deep man-voice. This same group of kids, a year or so later, decided they wanted to do a real time campout. By now, most of them were in grade 11 and their parents were going with them, but they needed someone to pay the campground deposit which I volunteered to do. I was re-reimbursed and they all had a wonderful time but I did get a slap down from Pat for getting involved in an unsanctioned event at which no teacher was present. 

The time I sent an email to All Staff saying there were fresh cookies at my desk and a new teacher ran all around the office looking for them until someone told her I worked from my home office in Slave Lake.

The time Danielle and Lise and I did a presentation for Online Symposium and then again at teachers' convention. We called it "Traditional Schmaditional- Come See the New Face of Online Learning." We found ourselves all too amusing as we created Powerpoint slides with images of Barbies in many educational poses.  I can honestly say I had more laughs creating that presentation than anyone has a right to on a work day. If I am not mistaken, we might have even worn our PJs when we made that presentation, much to Ralph Helder's embarrassment. However, I also heard him say "when teachers like these come up with ideas-all you can do is stand back and get out of their way."

The time I became a member of the  Provincial Advisory Committee on the new Social curriculum. I knew what was coming and our department convinced the powers that be that we should create our own courses, without a textbook, in time for the official implementation of the new curriculum. We did just that as I searched high and low for great images, videos, maps and other source materials and Diane tried to find someone to sign off on their use. The other teachers in my department graciously took over my class list to allow me the time to write. I was so enthused about this work that I emailed my assessments to teachers across the province, and even now I occasionally find a Social 10-1 assignment on some other school's website, thanks to Course Hero. A year after the course rolled out, we set up meetings with markers and partner teachers in outreach schools. We met as a collaborative group of about 15 teachers and went through the assessments one by one, taking suggestions for improvement.

The time a "formal" tea party was hosted for a retiring boss and one of my colleagues got told he wasn't dressed fancy enough so he made a tie out of construction paper and sat at his desk all afternoon instead of attending the party.

The time I took a secondment with Alberta Ed to help them create provincial materials for Social. This was around 2008. Alberta Ed had never created an online course, apparently believing that online learning was a flashy gimmick that wouldn't catch on. It was not until ADLC and other online schools had been delivering online instruction for nearly a decade that they got on board. Course development meetings had 17 people involved. I drove to Barrhead 34 times that year. Seconded teachers wrote content in MS Word that was converted to PDF, sent to the editor who literally wrote on it with a blue pencil, sent it back to the teacher, who added notes to the PDF- then to a whole other department who converted the document into Front Page. For teachers who worked out of the office, these pages were physically printed off and carried from desk to desk in a metal tray. The fact I could write content myself in Front Page-eliminating three steps in the process- was poo-pooed by the head of development. 

The time I begged to come back to ADLC. Soon I was writing Social 30-1. We had learned a lot about instructional design. By then, many ADLC courses were being created in print and online formats in-house. Our department came up with a brainwave part way through the development- why not make the print and online identical so kids could just move back and forth? This meant that our outstanding DDU person Kelly had to go back and revise the first half of the course, which she did cheerfully and without complaint. We also started using our exceptionally experienced markers to support the course creation. Bob wrote items, Larry wrote automated question feedback, Wayne wrote keys. It was truly a group effort.

The time Randy as department head promoted the idea of blueprinting all our exams and revising them to mirror diplomas. He had to fight for funding for this process, as Jason told him "You guys have had your hand in my pocket long enough!" But Jason caved and the blueprinting took place.

The times I conducted staff polls about provincial and federal election and Olympic projections,almost always won by Bryan.

The time Larry as department head came up with a new idea- one marker per online course. The benefits to students and teachers were substantial. He played with numbers till he got something workable. Lo and behold if that idea did not bear fruit, with completions increasing something like 11 to 18 % depending on the course.

The time I sat on the KSAs of an Online Teacher Committee where Pat, Pat, Patti, Alanna, Barb and others had so many deep conversations as we tried to translate the document which was devised for classroom teachers into distance ed language.

Most recently, the Social department piloted the "no marker" model. Many lessons were learned in this experiment. And now ADLC finds itself moving headlong into a school-wide implementation of this model, the implications of which have not been fully explored. 

As I look back at what was supposed to be a summary of my time at ADLC, the one thing that comes through is that none of these things could have happened without a team of people pulling together. Teachers, support staff, tech support, partners, markers and administrators, all working together in the best interests of our students. ADLC, from the very first day I began work, has been a team and I feel privileged that I have been a part of it. As Lise said last week, "We have had an amazing run."

Truly, the best of times.

***

On my very first day at work nearly 20 years ago, there was a luncheon for a retiring teacher who had spent his life in distance education and had brought in many innovations.

I felt weird going to his luncheon since I didn't know him. 

But as he talked about ADLC, he very graciously mentioned ME as the most recently hired person. Someone who would carry the torch forward. I always thought that when I retired, I would mention the people who had just been hired. I was excited to pass the torch to Jennifer, Wayne, Nicole and Corvin, our most recent Social Studies hires. I knew they would move ADLC forward with their own brand of creativity, compassion, innovation and professionalism.  

That was not to be.

I can only hope that as ADLC moves on, teachers and support staff will be allowed to innovate and create and experiment. That they will wake up every morning excited to start work. That they will move forward, knowing they are part of something that matters in this province.

This is how it ends

First they came for the contractors and I did not speak out
Because I was not a contractor

Then they came for the regional offices and I did not speak out
Because I didn’t work in a regional office

Then they came for the support staff and I did not speak out
Because I was not support staff

Then they came for the administrators and I did not speak out
Because I was not an administrator

Then they came for the secondees and the probationary and the temp contracts- and I tried to speak out
Just a little
But not really
because I don't have a probationary contract

Then they came for my entire programme
All the work I have ever done
All the work I believe matters
Everything I and my colleagues fought for
All the years of service and passion and innovation
And I said I would speak out
I wanted to speak out

But

Then they came for the old people
And I am an old person
And then there was no one else left to speak about anything at all

And then I found out how much my ideals are worth

$46,000

That is how much it takes to buy my silence.