L: Why are you a teacher? Did you always want to be a teacher?
T: When I was a teenager I stared working for the YMCA, and a lot of the kids we got there came from a pretty difficult place. I remember being with this one young man, and it was his birthday that day, and he was pretty upset. He struggled with his appearance and how people perceived him and that kind of stuff, and I found him alone and he was crying, so I asked him “what’s up?” and he said “My dad didn’t come home for my birthday again, and it’s not a big deal, he hasn’t been around for... pretty much every birthday…” And I guess that was a pretty big deal for him, so we started talking, we talked for about half an hour or so. And I kind of realized that I was able to make his day better, and I really enjoyed the feeling of helping someone who was hurting. It was kind of a revelation that I could help someone else, and I really enjoyed that so... I decided to teachers college so I could change the world (laughs). Yeah so for me, teaching isn’t about the marks, not about the academics at all, it’s about the people, and it has kind of always been that way.
L: So what did your path after teachers college look like? How did you end up here at Uxbridge?
T: So the path to Uxbridge! Well I did some practice teaching around Ontario and in the States, My first school was Rosebank public school and I taught intermediate, so kind of the grade 7&8 teacher, and I also taught as low as grade 4, and that was the best because I could bring my guitar in and I taught music to grade 4, 5, & 6 and we would just rock out every day! See teaching the middle grades, 4, 5, & 6, is like camp all the time. All they want to do is play and it is so much fun. And I would just have so much fun teaching them different rhythms and concepts, like one activity where I had them get in teams and create words that went with different rhythms and note values and we’d have rhythm offs. SO yes that was a lot of fun, I was there for 4 years. Leaving there was tough because I’d made a lot of good relationships there, a lot of bridges built. Some of the students there I’ll still get occasional emails from, and they’re old now! In their thirties! And that’s crazy for me because I still see them as 11 years old. So then I went to teach at Terry Fox in Ajax, that was a very different teaching experience. I’d assign homework and no one did it ever. The first day of school one of the kids told the administration to “F off” and get the “F out of our room”. So yes a very very different environment, a much rougher neighbourhood. So I was there for 2 years while working on my masters, and I had been doing some PD work for the board, running workshops for teachers and stuff, and I met a teacher who taught up the road from me at the high school, and he told me that I had to come work at the high school with him. And the principle of that school had done a few of my workshops and I guess she liked me, so he got me an interview with her. So I walked into her office, which was enormous! Biggest principles office I’ve ever seen! And she hands me a coffee and says to me “Ah I’m so glad you’re here! Listen, what’s it going to take to get you up here, what do you want to teach?” And I was stunned, I was expecting curriculum! A formal interview! But it wasn’t like that at all, and I said “um I don’t know, what did you have in mind?” and she said “Don’t you play guitar?” and I told her I did, so she said “Okay great do you want to teach guitar?” So I did, I taught guitar and I taught Com Tech, and then I taught English since English was one of my majors. So halfway through that year, my friend who got me the interview left to work for the board, and that left an opening for a department head. And the principle came to me and said “Do you want it?” and I said “I’ve only been here 4 months! Don’t choose a rookie, choose someone with some experience!” but she really wanted me so I took it. And I told her when I took it that I was waiting for a facilitator position to come up, because I really wanted to do staff PD, I really enjoyed that. And then two months later I became a facilitator, and that all was very quick! So then I worked for the board for 4 years, running workshops and PD for all kinds of stuff. I created all kinds of various initiatives, and that was really fun, working with people all over the province. So when I went to the board I expected that I would become a principle, well that was the plan. And I consider myself very blessed because when I got to the board I had thought that principles had certain opportunities, and when I got to the board it became very clear that they don’t have the opportunities that I thought they did. They are very shackled. It is very regimented, and often the people with the most freedom in the system is the teachers, because you can teach however you like. Much more freedom on influence, whereas the super intendants are told what to push, they push it on the principles, who then push it on the teachers. But at the end of the day the teacher can make a lot more independent decisions. Yeah, but the administration is a very hard place to be. As a VP you’re often in contact with the police, with child’s aid societies, you’re dealing with parents or kids or teachers who are unhappy with you. So nowhere in that mix is there a lot of positivity. So I decided that it maybe was not the best place for me, especially since I had a very young family, I didn’t want to put that on myself and on them, family first. So then when I left the board I basically had my pick of schools, so I choose Uxbridge. And it was the same deal when I came to Uxbridge; they allowed me to choose what I wanted to teach which was wonderful. So yeah and now I’ve been here for 9 years! I had some other interesting opportunities too, I taught some courses down at UOIT for a while, just a few night classes, so I was on the road to becoming a professor for a while! That one fell through due to money reasons actually, just bad timing. But that door is still very open, if I want it. Although going there would mean leaving this.
L: Yeah for sure, and I feel like teaching there would be a very different experience form here, since professor’s are more lecture based.
T: Yes exactly. Like I said before, I’ve actually lectured down there quite a couple of times, and it’s incredibly different. The students come in and they see you maybe once or twice a week. There isn’t that same relationship you can form in high school, just because the time isn’t there, you need time to create those bonds. There it’s all much more anonymous.
L: So back to the point you made about teachers having more freedom in the classroom. I’m curious, since they still have a curriculum they have to follow. In your experience, how have you found working with that?
T: When I first graduated it was required that you met every single expectation in the curriculum book. And now they have changed that, now you just have to hit the overall expectations. So to put this in perspective, there is like 4 overall expectations for a subject area, and there is hundreds of specific expectations. And you don’t need to meet those specifics anymore. Personally, although I love that teachers can have more freedom in the classroom, I think the whole point of having a standardized curriculum is so everyone is learning the same things. But when teachers just have to achieve the overall goals they can really change up the curriculum a lot. I don’t like that a student graduating from one high school is going to leave with having a very different understanding of a subject area than a student graduating from our school. That being said, the subjects that is most influenced by is the more academic subjects. The arts tend to have a very open curriculum regardless, and in those classes I think that teachers’ working off their strengths and their students’ strengths is really important.
L: Yes of course! In my music ed. class we’ve been talking a lot about how to teach music, and how some classes become very focused on the academics and learning about music, whereas others are much more creative and have students learning through playing and singing.
T: So the term for that is “Socratic”, the more lecture style you’re describing. That is the way I was taught to teach. And I have really found in the last while that students, I think, learn best when they’re “doing”. So if I’m lecturing or having them write down notes I find it rarely gets through to them. The idea that most teachers believe, the “writing something down helps you remember it” I think is only true for maybe 1% of the population. Most students have to go back and study those notes because they have no idea what they’re putting down. I can remember teaching here in my first year, in my grade 9 English class, and I was writing stuff on the board, and the rule was whatever I put on the board they write in their notes. And I was trying to do it not very lecture based, we would discuss and brainstorm about topics and the things they said that were concrete and made sense I would write on the board. And I had also been using the teacher program “Moodle” and I would post all the notes up on Moodle so any student who wasn’t in class would have access to them. And one day, one of my brightest students was sitting there and he wasn’t writing down anything. And I would notice this, then write something else down and look back to see if he’d picked up his pencil and nope, it was still lying next to him on his desk, and he’s just staring at me. It was almost starting to irritate me, because he’s a good kid! And he’s very quiet and doesn’t speak up much, and I had no idea what to do. So after class I approach him and say “Cale, there doesn’t seem to be anything written on your page?” and he looks at me and says, “if it’s all the same to you Mr. T, I’m just going to take a picture of the board on my phone when you’re done, is that okay?” And I thought hmm… Like it’s a good idea, but it kind of annihilates my whole concept, because I’ll have 30 students in the room doing nothing and it would just go to chaos. And that was kind of a revelation for me; that I needed to change something, because the times had changed. And I had kind of already been on the path to sort of creating a more application approached teaching style, and that really solidified it for me. And in my yearbook classroom, that’s really all it is right? Just do do do. And it’s incredibly independent too, since every student is working on their own thing. So the idea is to establish a base set of skills, establish a level of confidence in those skills, and that is critical. And then work alongside the other students to create. And it goes back and forth, they build confidence and they build technique. But who knows, maybe in 10 years ill look back after having more experience and think “oh boy was I wrong”, but that’s all the process of learning right. I just really love in this kind of classroom I can give the students wings and just let them go, because look what happens! There are some teachers who teach the same thing the same way and that is how they’ve done it for 30 years and I just think how do you live like that! I would go mental! And it’s that idea, when I graduated from teachers college, that there was a set curriculum, and it was cookie-cutter, and every classroom would match. But you just can’t do that, you need to teach it differently. Like for example, I say “apple” and immediately every student thinks of something completely different, and something personal and unique. That is a philosophy of teaching called “constructivism”, I’m not sure if you’ve talked about that in your education class but you should bring it up, because to me it makes so much sense. It is the idea that no one thinks of anything precisely the same way, and we construct meaning based on your experience. So because every single person has different life experiences, each word has different connotations in people’s heads. So the idea of constructivism is that we marry our past to our present when we’re trying to understand concepts. SO if you want to teach something to someone, you have to bear in mind that they are constructing meaning based on their own life experiences, so if you teach everyone the same way, you are assuming that everyone has a shared past, which makes no sense whatsoever. So yeah, I’ve really tried to teach that way, and getting to know students has really helped me to achieve a stronger more connected classroom. When I was a facilitator at the board, I would have to teach these workshops that the board would give me, literally power points from the administration, and you weren’t allowed to change anything, you had to teach it that way. And that completely flies in the face of my understanding of how people learn. Like I might agree with the content, but not the process, and for me the process is, in many ways, just as important as the content.
L: From what I have witnessed of your teaching, you have a very student centered approach to your teachers, whereas other teachers might have a more curriculum focused teaching. For example, you’re very good at empowering students to achieve their goals, and recognize when students are struggling with issues from outside of the classroom. T: Yeah for sure, and as a teacher that’s one of the things that you’re never really sure about, because you’re not a counselor, and you have to be careful that you don’t become that way. And that is a hard thing, actually. And I think having more of a ‘do’ based classroom can help with that too, because if someone is having a bad day, you can change your approach to accommodate that since everyone is working on their own stuff. So there is a lot of flexibility and freedom with that when someone is having a bad day. And you have no idea what baggage a student walks in with on a given day. I think what I really try to do is provide a safe space for people, and I try to provide a team focused family kind of environment so we can all care for each other, because students can care for one another in a way that I cannot, and they are probably also more knowledgeable and more capable of handling those more personal problems when they arise. And sometimes I may sit down next to them and say “I’ve been noticing you seem kind of down recently, and I just want you to know that I think the world of you, and if there is anything I can do to help you out, let me know”. And sometimes even just that is enough, right. The harder ones are where they’re quiet, and they don’t say anything to anybody. There are lots of things that can make it tricky, and all you can do is just try to help in the best way you can. I think humility is really important.