Think of your own journey to work as you read this…
Getting there…
We all have our unique patterns, habits and routines associated with life and living and part of that is getting to work each day. For teachers that means getting to school. When I worked in Fort McMurray I once got a speeding ticket in a school zone. The officer issuing me that ticket could probably read the shame in my body language and assured me that I was not the first teacher so caught, that in fact, the officer confided, he catches a lot of teachers.
After a while I find that my journey to school can be completed on mental auto pilot. I can drive thinking of other things and then suddenly wonder how I got to my present location and curse myself for not paying attention. Sometimes I have this feeling of being teleported, maybe that’s how I got my ticket.
In Kuwait I had a twenty minute walk to school when it was cool enough in winter to actually walk, or a half hour drive to the same location with heavy traffic in the hot season. Walking was a life threatening process in a neighbourhood not designed for pedestrians or cars. On narrow dusty litter strewn streets with the cacophony of rush hour horns and diesel exhaust I circumnavigated garbage bins inhabited by feral cats living on garbage. Crossing Tunis Street to reach Fawzia Sultan School across from the Dar Al Shifa Hospital, with six lanes of traffic in a country where driving etiquette does not exist was always a life threatening adrenaline rush. But even there I could eventually negotiate the streets and avoid the construction sites, where fallen debris has killed pedestrians because there are no safety barriers, and reach my dusty wall enclosed school building.
In the Bahamas, while teaching at the St John’s Anglican College, I learned to negotiate traffic circles while driving on the “wrong side” of the road in this former British colony. Eventually, no matter where our journey to work takes us, we do learn to cope and the routine soon becomes just another part of the day.
This morning, with the wind chill factor thrown in, it was -48 C, the school buses were not running. I pulled on my several layers of clothing, over my long underwear and managed to get on my Sorel boots over thick woolen socks, to begin my walk to school in the dark. Everywhere one walks here in Fort Chipewyan stray dogs, usually friendly, will come and greet you as you walk. The sad cases are the ones tied by a short chain to an engine block living in perpetual cold. I pat the friendly ones. I can hear the crunch of snow underfoot, I glance up at a crescent moon in the pale morning sky, I hear dog barking and ravens cawing as I make my walk to school. It is cold, yet soothing journey.
I recall spring mornings in Ontario where and when three young boys, brothers I think walked up the hill past my house on their way to school often lingering to pick up branches from the forest floor to use as swords and walking sticks. Most mornings, getting ready for work slowly sipping my second cup of coffee in front of the fireplace I watched the boys on their way to school, into the woods, playing tag, follow-the-leader and any manner of child-like games.
I marveled that they ever reached a destination delayed each day as they were by innocence and curiosity. On one winter morning they passed by looking like miniature astronauts with giant life support “backpacks” walking stiffly and rigidly with little flexibility allowed by their bulky snowsuits. I watched as they tried to climb a snow bank at the end of my driveway and then as they meandered slowly and disappeared up the hill.
I didn’t think of them again until driving to my own school over the same route I no longer see wishing all the while that I was a child astronaut with a long wooden walking stick strolling the lunar landscape aimlessly.
Marty Rempel
Getting there…
We all have our unique patterns, habits and routines associated with life and living and part of that is getting to work each day. For teachers that means getting to school. When I worked in Fort McMurray I once got a speeding ticket in a school zone. The officer issuing me that ticket could probably read the shame in my body language and assured me that I was not the first teacher so caught, that in fact, the officer confided, he catches a lot of teachers.
After a while I find that my journey to school can be completed on mental auto pilot. I can drive thinking of other things and then suddenly wonder how I got to my present location and curse myself for not paying attention. Sometimes I have this feeling of being teleported, maybe that’s how I got my ticket.
In Kuwait I had a twenty minute walk to school when it was cool enough in winter to actually walk, or a half hour drive to the same location with heavy traffic in the hot season. Walking was a life threatening process in a neighbourhood not designed for pedestrians or cars. On narrow dusty litter strewn streets with the cacophony of rush hour horns and diesel exhaust I circumnavigated garbage bins inhabited by feral cats living on garbage. Crossing Tunis Street to reach Fawzia Sultan School across from the Dar Al Shifa Hospital, with six lanes of traffic in a country where driving etiquette does not exist was always a life threatening adrenaline rush. But even there I could eventually negotiate the streets and avoid the construction sites, where fallen debris has killed pedestrians because there are no safety barriers, and reach my dusty wall enclosed school building.
In the Bahamas, while teaching at the St John’s Anglican College, I learned to negotiate traffic circles while driving on the “wrong side” of the road in this former British colony. Eventually, no matter where our journey to work takes us, we do learn to cope and the routine soon becomes just another part of the day.
This morning, with the wind chill factor thrown in, it was -48 C, the school buses were not running. I pulled on my several layers of clothing, over my long underwear and managed to get on my Sorel boots over thick woolen socks, to begin my walk to school in the dark. Everywhere one walks here in Fort Chipewyan stray dogs, usually friendly, will come and greet you as you walk. The sad cases are the ones tied by a short chain to an engine block living in perpetual cold. I pat the friendly ones. I can hear the crunch of snow underfoot, I glance up at a crescent moon in the pale morning sky, I hear dog barking and ravens cawing as I make my walk to school. It is cold, yet soothing journey.
I recall spring mornings in Ontario where and when three young boys, brothers I think walked up the hill past my house on their way to school often lingering to pick up branches from the forest floor to use as swords and walking sticks. Most mornings, getting ready for work slowly sipping my second cup of coffee in front of the fireplace I watched the boys on their way to school, into the woods, playing tag, follow-the-leader and any manner of child-like games.
I marveled that they ever reached a destination delayed each day as they were by innocence and curiosity. On one winter morning they passed by looking like miniature astronauts with giant life support “backpacks” walking stiffly and rigidly with little flexibility allowed by their bulky snowsuits. I watched as they tried to climb a snow bank at the end of my driveway and then as they meandered slowly and disappeared up the hill.
I didn’t think of them again until driving to my own school over the same route I no longer see wishing all the while that I was a child astronaut with a long wooden walking stick strolling the lunar landscape aimlessly.
Marty Rempel
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