How one woman almost single-handedly save my grade 7 class
Adventures in Gratefulness: MISS GRAHAM: Grade 8 teacher in early 70s
Imagine being a successful school counsellor after being a stellar teacher and your school admin career path is on track. But then a group of kids come along who, though no fault of their own, have their entire grade seven experience turn into an academic disaster.
When I left grade 6 (elementary school in a Toronto suburb) me and many of my friends were ecstatic to be heading to grade 7 (the senior elementary school next door) with the coolest teacher from our elementary school as our homeroom teacher. [This was back in the days when your report card told you who your teacher was going to be the next year]. However, two weeks into our grade 7 heaven we were brought down to earth when the teacher just disappeared.
My experience from being both a student and working in a few different school districts around the globe has shown me that some ‘subs’ (substitute teachers) are great while others should have probably found another profession. Imagine being one of the latter being asked to permanently sub for a bunch of pissed off grade 7 students, in a box? This poor teacher had no idea what she was in for and we were determined to drive her crazy. A perfect no-win storm was brewing.
Highbrook Senior Elementary was a fairly new school, but pulled from many elementary schools and was quickly beyond capacity. Please allow me to digress a bit to explain what an early 1970s portable classroom is like for those of you never fortunate to experience such an environment. (He says with dripping sarcasm).
These picture somewhat resembles the basic structure — it is basically a big self contained box of a classroom. As ours was fairly close to the main building distance was not a big deal. Grade 7 was spent half day on core subjects with your homeroom teacher (who we all felt had abandoned us) and then into the main building for gym, science lab, and some electives. Being in the Toronto area, our box of a classroom had an old gas heater in the back corner which was way too easy for us to mess with once late fall and winter arrived. They could have turned our box into a science experiment to describe the different smells that emanate from a gas heater based on a number of diverse erasers.
Needless to say we succeeded in being a miserable class to teach and in Spring another sub arrived. He was a nice enough older British guy who taught us how to play cricket and we all just wanted to get to June and get out of there — so it was a bit of a truce. Needless to say our academic progress was a lost cause. Which was pretty serious as in those days grade 8 was when you had to start making choices about high school (academic or vocational) which in turn put you on specific career paths.
I am sure Miss Graham had no intention of going back into the classroom, but I thank her and the school admin of the time for this decision. Most of my class was promoted to grade 8 with Miss Graham as our core teacher. She was a poster child for how to engage students. Her ability and sheer will to see us succeed literally ‘saved’ most of us from what could easily have been a life with bleak opportunities.
She was able to get up back on track academically. Help up mellow out a bit socially. Encouraged many of us to get involved in school sports like basketball, volleyball and track activities. She brought an appreciation of arts and drama into the classroom along with a truckload of humour! She rarely had to raise her voice to get control. It was a tacit understanding among all students that you did not mess with the counsellor.
I have no idea of our stats between grade 7 and 8, but as this is such a pivotal year for us (and our parents), and knowing what I now know about how school systems work, she got most of us back on track and restored our faith in teachers! On behalf of that grade 8 class, and myself especially, Thank you Miss Graham!!!
Please feel free to share your stories about pre-high school teachers you are thankful for.
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ABOUT DECONSTRUCTING JEFF: Adventures in Gratefulness
As I approach 60 and am finally synthesizing the research of my own life via Deconstructing Jeff, here are a few outtakes from a section titled Adventures in Gratefulness.
Some Context
From time to time throughout our lives, we come across souls who we eventually realize have had a monumental impact on our lives. I am not talking about the idea that ‘we should be thankful for the good, bad and ugly people in our lives’. I mean those few beings who we are profoundly grateful that for a short time our two paths were able to cross.
