Have had a quiet morning and am going to head up to the Winter Club for a bit of a stationary bike ride and a steam.  The wind is chilly out there today so am thinking Nose Hill might not be in the cards for the puppies today!

I had several emails from people who seemed to enjoy my stories from yesterday and you know that those positive reinforcements just lead to more of the same so thought I'd share a few more humorous stories about my early teaching days.

Back to Junior High School.....I arrived on my first day in my brand new track suit feeling pretty proud that I had snagged this job.  I was traipsing around the school when a kid stopped me and asked if I was in Grade 7 or grade 8!  "Duhhh....I am the teacher!"  How humbling is that for a start!

I think I mentioned yesterday that Sir John A. MacDonald was a pretty high needs school in those days....probably still is is my guess.  We had lots of discipline issues and the kids were challenging to say the least.  I remember one day hauling a kid out of the gym.  I don't remember what he had done but I had had it with him.  I escorted him to the main office and sat him in the xerox room, told him to stay there until I came back, and shut the door and left.  Finished off my afternoon, did my prep for the next day and went home.  Around about 5:45 PM my home phone rang.  It was the assistant principal.  He had just discovered this kid in the xerox room and wanted to know if he could send him home. Oh boy....I should have been totally lynched on that one but somehow it totally flew under the radar.  I suspect the kid never mentioned to his parents what had happened.

At Sir John A. MacDonald most of us had to teach an option unrelated to our teaching assignment.  It could be pretty much anything you were interested in.  How I picked what I did I cannot recollect but it was a weird choice that's for sure.  I, who had never even shot a gun and had never been hunting in my life decided I would teach a Hunter Training Course.  This involved some book work where we studied various birds and wild life, learned how to use a compass and to do orienteering, and  learned some basic survival techniques.  I had quite a full class of both boys and girls and we threw ourselves into the theory part of the course looking forward to the culminating activity which was a winter survival camping trip to the Hunter Training site out near Caroline.  I had never learned to drive the school bus so the social studies teacher was going to come with me and be our driver.  When the time came to get organized to go to camp I had to have a parent information night.  Now remember, this was my first year teaching.  I think I was about 22 years old at the time.  A few parents attended the meeting to hear what we would be doing at camp.  One Dad expressed concern over the fact that we would be using firearms.  I remember looking at him in total amazement and saying "We aren't going to be shooting each other....we're doing target practice on clay pigeons!"  Honestly, if a parent had said that to me and was planning to take my kid to camp, I wouldn't have let him go!  So we drove to Caroline.  The kids built lean toos out of trees and sheets of plastic.  They cooked their meals over open fires.  Some of them had never cooked a thing in their entire lives.  We shot guns at clay pigeons and did target shooting and we did some orienteering.  The camp was a total blast.  The social studies teacher, my girlfriend Kathy and my dog all shared a lean to.  I'm sure the parents would have found that interesting that two different sexed teachers were sleeping together in the same shelter!  Thank goodness Kathy and the dog were there!  Many years later I ran into one of the students who had been on that camping adventure.  He was grown up and was a driver for Calgary transit.  He told me that of all the things he had ever done at school that was totally the best!!!  In those days we didn't have the same restrictions as we do now.  I would never get away with going to a camp and doing those things now a days nor would I even consider it, however, having said that the freedoms we had in the good ol' days often really allowed us the opportunity to really connect to kids on a different level.  I used to drive my students everywhere.  I often would take them out for an ice cream cone or lunch.  This is something teachers can no longer do as we are not supposed to drive students in our cars and there is always that huge liability cloud hanging over absolutely everything you do.  Heck...we're not even supposed to give them any treats that aren't on the CBE's Healthy Eating List!  How times have changed!

For years I used to organize the after school ski program.  I loved it.  It was a week where many kids who had never had an opportunity to ski or snow board got to do so.  I remember one year deciding that COP was a boring place to ski and maybe I'd join the kids in a snow boarding class.  I am a pretty decent skier but just because you can do one, does not mean you will pick up the other easily.  I attached myself to a group of snowboarding grade 5 and 6's.  They picked it up instantly and by day two almost all of them were negotiating the hill with turns and stops.  That is everyone in the group, except  for me.  I could turn left but not right.  I did not like the fact that my feet were attached to the board and would not release when I wiped out which made me tentative and pokey.  By day three the kids were chomping the bit to go all the way to the top.  Our instructor, a good looking 18 or 19 year old guy, looked pointedly at me and said "We cannot go to the top until EVERYONE can turn both directions and stop!"  Every head in the class swivelled in my direction with looks that said "Why do we have to have you in our group?"  So.... on day 4,  I purposefully stalled and arrived late, hoping the class would go out without me.  I felt bad holding them back and had decided I needed to just go practice off somewhere by myself.  No such luck.  The instructor had pulled my equipment for me and was waiting for my arrival as were the impatient kids.  So off I went but miraculously that evening it all came together and I finally learned to do what I needed to do so that the class received permission to go to the top.  I did learn to snowboard that year, although honestly I never took to it like I do to skiing and have not tried it since.

After a few years of teaching Junior High I made the decision to move down to the elementary level.  When you are a Junior High PE specialist you coach every team around.  You start in the early mornings with practices and there are many evenings when you are driving kids to other schools for games and then taking them home afterwards.  There were no concerns in those days about teachers transporting kids.  It wasn't uncommon to put in 12+ hours a day.  After a few years of this and after I got married I decided I would give elementary age kids a go.  I applied and got the job at Collingwood, however I was only half time PE and half time classroom.  I'll never forget the first day of school looking out at a class of grade 5 students sitting in their desks and thinking to myself what the heck am I going to do with them?  i had zero classroom experience.  Believe you me it was a steep learning curve.and to this day I have the upmost respect for the work a classroom teacher does!  It is not an easy job and those good at their jobs tend to make it look way more effortless than it is. After a couple of years at Collingwood I moved to Beddington Heights where I continued to have a small classroom assignment and much to my delight more time in the gym.  I remember getting a student in my class who was deemed to have some psychological issues.  I was still pretty young and a little naive and thought I could save every kid.   I took him under my wing determined that I would be the one to turn him around.  It was around this time that I was expecting Geoff.  It was a cold winter day near the end of my term.  I was big and uncomfortable and anxious to pop this baby out and get my old body back.  I was in the classroom and the kids were quietly working on an art project when this particular boy yelled that he smelled fire.  He then pulled open the desk drawer next to him and the papers flared up into a small bonfire.  I leapt up from my desk, grabbed the flaming desk drawer which was also spewing a toxic black material from the melting plastic drawer and ran outside with my whole class following behind to dump the drawer in the snow.  At first the kid was the hero until we figured out that it was in fact he who had lit the desk on fire!  There were many other incidents with this boy and he was eventually expelled from our school  For years I have expected to see his name in the paper attached to some crime.  He was such a disturbed kid!

Speaking of fire....it was 1988 when my own kids almost lit Cambrian Heights on fire.  I had gone in on a weekend to get some things prepared for a winter olympics sports event we were going to have to celebrate the winter olympics.  I took Kelli and Geoff with me.  I was in the teachers workroom and they were back and forth between there and my office.  Kelli was 3 at the time and Geoff was 5.  Kelli always had a bit of a speech problem.  We often had to have Geoff translate for us as he was the only one who could understand her chatter.  In any case....she kept running into the teachers workroom, excitedly telling me something but I didn't have a clue what she was saying.  I just kept nodding and smiling and she would race back to my office which was just around the corner.  After several of these little interchanges I thought I could smell smoke.  Just then Kelli came racing back in to the workroom and this time I really listened.  She said "Geoff lighted de fire and I blowed it out!"  I raced to my office just in time to see the contents of my garbage can flare up.  I had left a box of matches on my desk that we had used when we did the torch run between schools.  Kelli and Geoff had discovered them and were having a great time.  I must say I rarely spanked my kids when they were growing up but that is one day that they both got their butts paddled!  I think they both still remember this event to this day!

So tomorrow we head to Edmonton for my follow up appointment.  Have been trying to get a hold of the oncologist to see when he wants to start my "mop up chemo"  I am really hoping they will wait until I get back from Mexico but if not I'd like to get it in this week so I have a few days to bounce back before we leave!  As usual...having trouble getting anyone to return calls so will just have to wait and see.