My Favourite Teachers

With a looming teachers strike in BC, I’ve been noticing a lot of activity on my timeline with regards to support for or against our children’s teachers. I was going to write a political rant, but figured I’d probably just end up pissing off half my friends and followers. So instead, I decided to write this…

Kindergarten & Grade 1 — Mrs. Hansen

Mrs. Hanson was the snack preparer in our class. Every day she had special helpers who helped her prepare our daily treats. I could not wait for my turn. Even today I love to cook.

Grade 2 & 3 — Mrs. Venn

She brought in an incubator and some farm eggs. I remember every day, we’d pull an egg out of the incubator and place it in front of a bright light and then make a drawing of the thing we saw growing inside the egg. Of course the chicks hatched one morning during class. It was amazing. It was the beginning of my passion for the sciences.

Grade 4 — Mrs. Bibby

She was strict. And even more strict about grammar. I credit her with me knowing the differences between “they” “their” “they’re” and “to” “too” “two”. She taught me how to write stories. My Aunt Ines used to read my stories and tell me that one day I was going to be an author. Hopefully if you’re still reading this, Mrs. Bibby did a great job.

Grade 5 — Mrs. Thoms and Mr. Naimeth

They were great science teachers. How times have changed though — she taught science to the girls and he taught science to the boys. I can still to this day look at an internal combustion engine and point out all the parts and give you a basic description of how they work. They also introduced me to our physical world — a topic that I still enjoy reading about today.

Grade 5 — Mr. McKimm

He was my music teacher. He organized the school choir. That year Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau came to our town. Our school choir was picked to sing for him. What a thrill and honour — to have sung for the greatest PM our country has ever had!

Grade 6 — Mrs. Clemson

I remember her Social Studies classes and learning about the cultures of countries all around the world. At the end of each culture, she would organize a potluck lunch where all the kids made a dish from that country (with their parents) and bring it to class to share. What a way to teach social studies!

Grade 7 — Mr. Burke

He taught me leadership. He allowed me to read books other than those that I was supposed to be reading. I read Roots that year. I wanted to have a science fair — so he let me organize one (which I won). There was a federal election that year, and I convinced him to let us have a mock election. It was a tough race against two of my classmates — but I prevailed. He used the election to teach us valuable civic lessons. Had you asked him at the beginning of the year if he thought he’d be teaching us that, I’m sure he would have said no.

Grade 8 — Mr Greenhaulsh

He was my PE teacher and I despised him for making play sport that I had no interest in playing. He was a jerk and I spent at least one day a week in the office thanks to him.

Grade 8 — Mr Kretai

He was my math teacher. He was german, had a thick accent, was short and had a moustache. The kids were very mean to him. He often left the classroom in tears. He was a terrific math teacher and at the end of the year he recommended that in grade nine I move up to honours math. This recognition of my math skill was the beginning of the rest of my life. Today I wish I would have had the guts to stand up to my classmates who were so mean to him.

Grade 9 — Mr. Attiana

One day in 1980 I arrived in my grade nine algebra class to find that a new desk had arrived. It was at the back of the class and had a locked cover on it. We were all extremely curious to find out what was under it. Mr. Attiana was my algebra teacher at the time, and even though he knew what awaited us in the box, I’m sure he had no idea what effect it was going to have on some of our lives.

As the class started he gathered us all around this new box, opened it, and revealed the first personal computer any of us had ever seen. It was a brand new TRS-80! I think most of the class was somewhat underwhelmed, but for me and a couple of other classmates, it was amazing!

Mr. Attiana spent the next few weeks trying to teach most of us BASIC programming, but it was pretty clear that most either weren’t catching on, or simply were not interested. So instead of continuing with teaching computer programming, he went back to teaching algebra.

This in itself is not all too remarkable. But what I’ll never forget about Mr. Attiana is that for the rest of my time in Junior High, he kept his math classroom open for two hours after school every day for kids like us — those who “got it” — to continue to learn how to program.

After a while it was pretty clear to him that his students quickly knew more about these “boxes” than he did. He accepted that, and instead of teaching us new things, he empowered us to try new ideas by asking us questions like “do you think your program could do this?” or “how would you make that sprite move diagonally”.

Had Mr. Attiana not opened his classroom to us, I’m not sure I’d be enjoying the fantastic career that I have now. Thank-you Mr. Attiana, for everything you did.

Grade 10 — Mr. Ferguson

Sometimes there is nothing wrong with being creative. He was my first exposure to Shakespear. One day we had to recite an act from Julius Caesar. My best friend and I decided that instead of doing it the traditional way, we were going to recite the act in the language of “Bob and Doug MacKenzie”. So we did. The class was hysterical, and even Mr. Ferguson smiled. That night there was a parent/teacher conference and I was convinced that my mom and dad were going to be furious. Instead, Mr. Ferguson told them what an amazing recital it was and that we were both getting A+’s for being so creative.

Grade 10 — Mr. Greenhaulsh

Yup the same guy. But this time I had him as a drafting and socials teacher. His socials class was amazing — it was on the history of Port Alberni. He had great materials and we were allowed ot work at our own pace. I was so intrigued by the stories that I finished the whole class in a couple of weeks — getting A’s all along the way. One day he comes up to me and says — “You’re a really smart kid” to which I say “thanks”. He then proceeded to ask me why “I walked around with such a chip on my shoulders in PE” to which I replied “because I hate PE”. He then said something to the tune of “when you act like that, you only hurt yourself”. That was a pretty valuable lesson. For those that know me professionally, I sometimes still have that chip — but I usually end up remembering Mr. Greenhaulsh’s advice and correct my behaviour. In Grade 10 he was my favourite teacher. I wish I could have had way more classes with him.

Grade 11 — Mr. Seredick

English teacher. Funny that his last name has the word “dick” in it. Because pretty much the whole year, he was a dick to me. It may have been the first time that I was unable to get an “A” in an academic class. No matter what I did, I could do no better than a “C”. At the end of each year, if you did not have a C+ average, you had to write a special exam in order to move on to English 12. I knew my grades were not good enough and on the last day of the year, he read names off a list, and if your name was called you got to leave the room and not write the final exam. So he read off his list and I was still sitting. He started to explain how the final exam was going to look and announced “Rutherford! What are you still doing here?”. I said “You did not call my name!”. Then he say “Get the hell out of here!”. When I got my final report, I had an “A”. It took me a couple of years to realize that he was being tough on me because he knew I could do “better”.

Grade 11 — Madame St. Claire

She was my french teacher. Prior to Grade 11 my french teachers had never spoken in French to us. Me and two of my classmates were shocked when, in her class, all she did was speak french to us. We could not understand her! Knowing that unless we did something about it, we were going to fail her class. So we went to her after class one day and explained what was happening, and she offered to stay late after school for two days a week to help us out. We all ended up passing thanks to her efforts.

Grade 12 — Mr. Jansen

What a great physics teacher. He was super smart and apparently had a doctorate in Physics. He had a great way of teaching and inspiring. He was also very nerdy and clumsy — so often many of his demonstrations ended in catastrophe. Like the time he demonstrated how a body in motion stays in motion by jumping on a skateboard and falling on his ass! He certainly succeded in showing us how that law of physics worked!

So before you start taking the sides of the teachers or the government, please take the time to think about your teachers and how they impacted your lives. I hope it gives you some nice memories and puts this whole dispute into perspective.