I taught in the Bahamas only after putting in two years of hard time teaching junior high, in Toronto, in what was once called the Borough of York. There I was tested by the rigors of teaching mainly downtown core Jamaican and Italian students. In one of my Toronto classes (circa 1975) I had to ask a grade seven boy to leave the classroom and take his beer with him. I was much stricter back then and did not allow either alcohol or drugs in my classroom.
Toronto was an enlightening and challenging place for a young and naïve teacher to begin a career. I had my tires slashed only once, but it was covered by warranty. I remembered being outraged by this situation. How, I thought at the time, can a student learn responsibility and accountability after slashing my tires only to have the tire company jump in with free replacement tires. I was learning that the educational process was a highly complex one. I think they were Firestone tires.
After being declared redundant to my school, my board and what felt like life in general, and having no immediate desire or aptitude for selling pencils, or worse, on Yonge Street, I proceeded to renege on my mortgage, paid off my gambling debts (those guys will follow you to the ends of the world) and started teaching under an assumed name in the Bahamas. I taught to the O and A level London Geography curriculum to large classes of eager students. I drove an old Ford Pinto, with the exploding gas tank option, that I brought over by freighter from Miami. It had Michelin Tires and the radio was stolen on the trip over to Nassau.
It truly was “Better in the Bahamas” as the tourist brochures let you know. I ate hottie patties, basked in the sun, owned a Doberman for protection (I was robbed three times) learned to scuba dive and could buy rum cheaper than coca-cola. Life was good.
At St John’s College, students generally entered their classroom before the teachers did after leaving the parade ground in the central quadrangle where the daily assemblies were held. Our headmaster had the annoying tendency, as he was also a bishop, to sternly preach at the students about the various misdeeds and sins they had committed since the last assembly. During these long tirades the students stood like little soldiers in long straight rows, wearing their grey and green freshly washed uniforms under the bright Bahamian morning sun. Generally, our headmaster spoke until the first of the form 1 (grade 9) students fainted and only then would he quickly make his concluding statements, bless us, “In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” High Anglicans, by the way, make most Catholics look like Mennonites. He would then dismiss us. Not to name names or point fingers, as my former headmaster has since past away, but Father Strachan was a real bastard.
Following the assembly from the quadrangle, and I must say at this point it reminded me of a Japanese prisoner of war camp, although I have never actually been a prisoner of war. Father Strachan spoke from a raised grey cement platform, to the array of military looking students surrounded by palm trees. The students, in straight lines, (did I use the adjective military yet?), silently walked toward their respective classrooms. There were no halls only sidewalks over which the roof line extended to afford shade. The students would next enter and sit quietly in the classes with their books out awaiting the “coming.” They sat silently, in anticipation of the lesson, with their books out! I know I was shocked too?
The “coming” refers to the arrival of the teachers after assembly. The students as you recall were sitting quietly in the class ready to work with their books out! When I entered my classroom the students as if on cue, ensemble, together, en masse, all together, as a group, at the same time rose and said my name. I know I was shocked too! “Good Morning Mr. Rennie.” Remember I said earlier I was teaching here under an assumed name.
I would reply with something as equally witty, “Good morning class.” I would then start teaching immediately without interruption as no one was fighting, talking or otherwise acting out in any lewd or inappropriate way. At first it was an eerie experience having come from the jungles of Toronto. I thought I might be in the Twilight Zone and Rod Serling was sitting in the third row two seats back, playing, on the steel drums, that crazy twilight zone theme song, that’s freaks everyone out. I know I was shocked too!
For the first week, I was still so amazed that students would actually stand up with respect as I entered the room, I practiced, what I called the “Messiah Protocol” a situation in which I would have a “second coming.” After I entered the class the first time, the students stood. I would then leave the classroom stand outside for a moment, tie my shoes or whatever and then walk in again to experience “the rising” one more time. It was exhilarating. It was like Easter every day!
I guess the point I’m trying to make, as I really should have one by now, has to do with my former life as a teacher. I would like to first qualify that statement by saying that like Clinton, I did not inhale nor did I have sex with that woman. My point is more about the differential styles of teaching over time and space. Again, as you know I do not like to name names, but some of you may have guessed where I now teach. I would like to tell you about an ESL student I have from the fictional country of Cameroon in West Africa.
In fact, in that same ESL class I have 15 students from 9 countries representing places as diverse and far-flung as Afghanistan and Columbia, two countries currently at war against drugs and oppression. These kids are generally glad to be in school in Canada and some have only been here for a few months and are still in culture and climatic shock.
The comments from my student from Cameroon were very revealing concerning the comparisons between the Old World and the new in terms of education. In the Cameroons, as with my own experience in the Bahamas we had few supplies. I had a blackboard, chalk, textbooks and a broken 35mm projector. They had less in Cameroon. Despite the lack of resources students in these so called underdeveloped areas tend to work hard because they see the real and immediate need for an education. They understand in real terms how it can elevate them from poverty and improve their quality and standard of life. Therefore, while in school they are willing to stand in the hot sun while a bishop babbles or sit in a classroom built of cinder blocks with a dirt floor.
My Cameroon girl quietly complained to me about the loud Canadian kids and how difficult it was for her to follow what was going on in class because of the many and constant distractions. She explained, as I have tried, to show what kids were like in less privileged schools. She thought my class was disorderly. I was thinking more like chaotic and this was one of my better classes. I felt like apologizing to this articulate African girl on behalf of my country and culture. I didn’t.
I did offer her my assistance and almost pleaded with her and later with many of my other ESL students not to become one of us or like us. Keep the respect and habits you have. Don’t be like some of these Canadian born kids who have no apparent value for their education. I thought I was sounding too much like Bishop Strachan; so I cooled my jets. Somehow I wanted to keep these kids pure and I knew that just wasn’t going to happen.
In my twilight years as a teacher I tend to get ever more reflective and make these wild comparisons between places and over time, Toronto, Bahamas, Cameroons and other generic places. I can only humbly conclude that somehow over time between point A and B things in education and/or with kids and teachers have radically changed. I don’t wish to go back to the days when I was taught how and was encouraged to strap kids in the era of corporal punishment. I don’t respect the ways of Father Strachan. I too received the strap, five times on each hand with a leather strap. My crime was throwing snowballs in a snowball free zone area. I didn’t even pack my snowballs with gravel like my friends did and I, not they, got the strap. In the vernacular of the day, “that’s not fair.”
We (you are now invited as a character into my story) are in a world in which many students have immense personal liberties in school and the wider society. I think we are entering a period of questionable credit fidelity with an over emphasis on the various credit recovery plans. Many students have less accountability for their actions as we tend (as a society) to make more excuses for their actions while many parents enable the same unacceptable behaviours.
As my own plans proceed, I hope to be teaching in Kuwait next year at the Fawzia Sultan International School in Kuwait City. Likely, I will have a set of Toyo tires on my leased Japanese car and the staff washrooms will have two ply toilet paper. Should I find a Teddy Bear in or near my classroom I will not call it Mohammad.
Marty Rempel
