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Is my Alberta school St. Matthew’s Elementary? That’s where, in 1966, in Glengarry, on the north side of Edmonton, I started grade school. It’s where four years later my teacher, Mr. Waters, who was on exchange from Australia, took advantage of the time designated for French to teach us instead the words to Waltzing Matilda and to Bridge over Troubled Water(s), which, he assured us, was really about him. It’s a testament to the plasticity of the developing brain that to this day I know all the words to the de facto Aussi anthem and can do a passable rendition of the Simon and Garfunkel hit. If only I could conjugate French verbs with similar proficiency.
Or is it St. Rose, the junior high school that I attended and where my friend Howard was sent to the principal’s office because of his inability to convince a substitute teacher that he had not switched instruments with somebody else in our band class—he really was that bad, even by the rather low standards of what we called the St. Rose Foulharmonic. Later, I returned to the school to complete my junior high practicum, and when I moved back to Edmonton I sent my own son there.
My high school was St. Francis Xavier, where I came into young adulthood with teachers such as Marilyn Short and Jim McGuckin imbuing in me a passion for social studies and a delight in debate and speech that provided me with knowledge and skills that I continue to draw on today—could FX be my Alberta school?
My first paid teaching gig was at Rosslyn Junior High School, where I subbed for a Grade 8 girls’ phys ed teacher, with predictably disastrous results, and so I suppose it is in the running. And so, too, would be Highlands School where, while substitute teaching in an elementary special ed class, I was led by an upset eight-year-old student to believe that the class hamster had escaped on my watch. After organizing a futile search for the animal, I spent some language arts time collecting adjectives describing the creature’s appearance. You see, I was toying with the idea of sneaking an identical replacement into the empty cage so that the regular classroom teacher, and by extension, the people who did the hiring at Edmonton Public Schools, would never learn about my dereliction of duty. I eventually thought better of it and instead appended to my report an apologetic note taking full responsibility for the mysterious disappearance and expressing the hope that the incident would not be construed as a lack of classroom management skills. I frankly think that the teacher whose absence I had been covering took far too much glee in advising me over the phone the next day that the hamster in question had died two weeks before and that the child who raised the alarm did not seem to have a good grasp of time. In retrospect, I should have bought a doppelganger and left her to try to explain the apparent rodent resurrection.
My Alberta school could be Onchaminahos School, where I first taught full-time. I left that position after three years with an abiding affection for the people of the Saddle Lake First Nation, who took me into their community and gave me a rare chance to share in their culture. Or it could be Tofield School, where I spent the remainder of my classroom years inflicting on my poor students my enthusiasm for art, history, geography and the affairs of the world.
All these and others too—St. Patrick, Jasper Place, H. E. Beriault and Our Lady of Victories—are my Alberta schools. They and those who worked in them have shaped the course of my life and the lives of my children. They have made me who I am.
Tell us about the school that has a special place in your life. Visit myalbertaschool.ca and enter the contest, however, unlike me you’ll have to settle on one!
I welcome your comments—contact me at dennis.theobald@ata.ab.ca.