They were a long way from our consciousness in the dying days of spring. Nobody in our family had even thought of them back then. There was too much summer holiday ahead, too many barbeques, too many long weekends, for us to ever worry about them. But about two weeks ago – I think it was the Friday the CNE opened, the same day the advertisements began ganging up on us on TV and radio – suddenly, they were back in our faces: the three most important words of September.
“Back to school.”
This week, about 1.4 million children returned to about 4,000 public elementary schools in Ontario. At the same time, about 700,000 adolescents returned to more than 850 public high schools (About 600,000 youngsters attend Catholic separate schools in Ontario). Meanwhile, about a quarter million other students will enter the halls of higher learning at Canada’s universities and colleges. Accompanying some of those young people en route to class is a lot of anticipation, trepidation and stress; some might even call it fear. This year, my family gets a triple dose of all that emotional upheaval as Labour Day gives way to school days.
Our older daughter returns to her role as a public elementary school teacher. And while she appears to be full of enthusiasm for the task ahead, I saw something else in her face the other night. She was working on her lesson plans for numeracy in her Grade 2 class. As only she can, she worked to come up with some unique teaching tools to make the introduction of mathematics to her students as engaging as it is informative.
“How about a mathe-sphere?” she asked me. “I’d like the learning environment to be friendly, safe and positive.”
“I like it,” I said. “Has a bit of intrigue to it and it’s scientific.” Her concern for the welfare of her students made me wish she’d been my Grade 2 teacher. I might have learned mathematics better. Or, at least I wouldn’t have felt as intimidated by math as I have been ever since.
Meanwhile, her daughter – now nearly four years old – was abuzz this week about attending junior kindergarten. It will be her first ever school experience. Like her mother, our granddaughter is eager to get in there and soak up the atmosphere. She wants the new experience to begin ASAP. But she also expects it to be entirely on her terms.
“Will you miss me while I’m at school?” she asked her little brother.
The fact is he might when he’s looking for a play companion or a buddy at the meal table. Otherwise, with the dominant sister out of the house for a few hours, he’ll no doubt enjoy time when he is his mother’s full-time preoccupation.
As we asked our granddaughter about what she expected from her first contact with school, I asked myself how things were going to be at the college level where I am beginning my 12th year of lecturing, tutorials and leading labs in journalism and broadcast journalism. It feels as if I’ve been at this a long time, but all summer long I’ve run into friends and colleagues who’ve faced classrooms and lecture halls for 20 and 30 years; a fellow staff member at Centennial College, this year, received recognition for 35 years of teaching service and he’s just announced his retirement.
“I can’t imagine sticking with one job and one employer for that many years,” I told him. “I admire your loyalty and dedication.”
Particularly this semester, I admire his stick-to-it attitude. The Ontario college system, in addition to facing stiff competition from universities like never before, has an added complication. A college-wide support workers’ strike has slowed the administration, maintenance and service side of Ontario’s community colleges to a crawl. And that’s something we’ve never dealt with before.
The phrase “back to school” holds so much impact in our society. It gives first-time students (such as a granddaughter) that annual sense of anticipation. It demands that its diligent teachers (such as our daughter) be original in the classroom and come up with new ways to help students reach and exceed learning standards. And, in my case, it provides a new challenge to teach while colleagues and friends walk a picket line for improved conditions and wages.
But even added together – the impact, the demands, the challenge – are never a hardship. All one has to do is cast an eye to the quality of the education systems of our neighbours (or its absence) to realize that “back to school” is not like a death sentence in this province. It’s more an extraordinary privilege. Teachers and students can and should savour each moment – from the first days of school in September to the last ones in June.