I should have gone to jail…

I graduated university in 1971. In 1971-72 I took the required graduate courses leading to an MA. In 1972-73, while supposedly writing my master’s thesis, I taught a first year level course. By the summer of 1973 I was lost. A long-term relationship had ended and I had no idea where I was headed or what I wanted to do.  There was no way that I could concentrate on my thesis and I badly needed income. So, I applied for every job that a college grad was qualified for. One was at a small publishing company to work as an editor. I would have loved that kind of work, but the owner who interviewed me “regretted” that she could offer me only $100/week. That was roughly $100 more per week than I was currently earning and sounded like a god-send to me, but her attitude told me that she did not expect someone with my qualifications to accept.

I had been applying for teaching jobs. For one, I had a degree and had a year’s experience teaching (I actually gave a couple of guest seminars at McGill as well.) Secondly, schools could hire teachers who did not have their teaching certificate if they could not find anyone else qualified (which is how most “shops” teachers were hired). One day I took a bus from Montreal to Sherbrooke to be interviewed for a teaching job and then spent the night with a casual girlfriend who had just moved there to start teaching. The next morning I took a bus back to Montreal, then another bus to Ottawa, where I caught a local bus to the town of Buckingham, about 30 minutes downstream from Ottawa on the Quebec side. I had been wearing the same clothes for two days in incredible heat and was soaked in sweat.

Nevertheless, the principal of the elementary school seem delighted to meet me. He explained that though his was an elementary school, the students completed their first year of secondary school in the same building (which, in Quebec, was grade seven—13 and 14 year olds). He needed two teachers to cover the secondary program and had already hired a lovely local woman. He told me that he believed that there should be more men teaching in the elementary schools. His was a “confessional” school—which meant it was Roman Catholic. He asked if I had a problem with that. Nope. (It turned out he was Protestant as well.)

Then he ran through the subjects he expected me to teach. Was I comfortable with English composition and literature? No problem. Could I teach basic science? Sure. How about gym and fine arts? I figured I could wing my way through it. How did I feel about teaching religion? He did not expect me to teach the catechism, but thought I could take a page from the Quebec Protestant program: general ethics. “Just talk about abortion and subjects like that,” he told me. And then he asked, quelle université avez-vous assisté?  I got the gist of what he had asked and replied, in my best French accent (which I have been told is similar to Hungarian), université de Sir George Williams. Amazingly he said, “I like your accent” and shook my hand. He then gave me a copy of each of the textbooks I was to use and asked me to start the day after the Labour Day holiday.

I leafed through the books while I had a much-needed cold beer at the local hotel waiting for the bus to take me back to Montreal. A few days before the long weekend, I returned to Buckingham by bus and rented a room in the local hotel. I started to teach on the Tuesday after Labour Day. I had never stood before a group of 13 and 14 year olds before. Nervously, I talked non-stop until recess time. About what, I’m not sure. The cigarette break in the teachers’ lounge was heavenly.

The other teachers in the school, with the exception of my secondary school partner, were elderly women, stiff-necked and judgemental. They never did take to me, a city-boy with a cynical attitude. I eventually found a suitable apartment and tried to settle into the town. Other than a few weekend visits from girlfriends I kept to myself. Still, it didn’t take long for word to get around that I was always high on drugs. Not true. On the other hand, many of the elementary school teachers consumed several beer each lunch hour. They were Irish so I guess that was okay. They knew I was Protestant. In fact one of them went so far as to tell me that I should consider myself lucky not to be teaching in “that Protestant school” on the other side of town because “they didn’t have God over there.”  I spent a couple of nights with a young local woman home for the Christmas vacation. It was a small town. The attitude hardened towards me. In the spring I met a young Irish woman who was related to one of the other teachers. We dated (chastely) for a while until her father phoned to tell me to “stay the hell away from” his daughter. I met her several years later and we remained friends for a while before drifting apart; she had never married.

In any case, I struggled with teaching. I had had no training and no preparation for what I faced in the classroom every day. It didn’t take long for the students to figure out that I was a softy whose bark had no bite. Classes were unruly as I tried to keep order. I used my imagination to come up with what I hoped they would find interesting. When it came to grading the principal sometimes over-ruled me, raising grades for the children of local people with some influence. For one of their art projects I had the students create collages out of pictures they had cut from magazines. When their work was displayed in the gymnasium, the principal called me and my class to the gym. He said something about “we all know that boys and men have a third appendage.” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. It turned out that one of the students had added a third leg to a male figure. I hadn’t paid any attention to it, but apparently someone had complained that it was obscene. I was chastised for it along with the students.

Taking the principal at his word—that he expected me to discuss abortion and similar topics with the students—I brought the subject up in my “ethics” course. The children seemed to think the subject was hilarious and made so many ignorant remarks that I decided that before I could discuss a topic like abortion, they needed some background so that they would have a better understanding of what they were talking about. So, I taught them about puberty and the changes they were going through, bringing up topics like sexually transmitted disease and contraception. I took a matter of fact approach that I thought was suitable. Apparently not everyone agreed with me. The principal called me to his office and shouted at me, “Do you have an emotional problem?”  After he calmed down he told me that I had one class to sum up the subject and then drop it.  

I admit that I was not the best fit for the school and the age group I was dealing with. I had spent so many years in academia that I really had no understanding of the points of view of “civilians.” I was a foreigner in the town. My wardrobe clashed with the environment. The leather pants that I was so proud of were referred to as “plastic” by the students. I couldn’t fit my knee-high boots under my jeans so I wore them on the outside. I wore a heavy racoon coat in the winter. It kept me warm, but made the locals laugh about the “bear.” I had no friends in the town. People gossiped about the “strange” women that visited me some weekends. The loneliness seeped into me.

But, none of that was “criminal.” Taken in perspective, I was a single young man inexperienced in social settings outside of the life of a university student. If I had stayed, I probably would have matured and gradually melded into the community. But, I had one unforgivable failing: I could not speak a word of French. It was sheer luck that I had managed to understand what the principal had asked me during our interview and so was able to give an answer that made sense. Every single student in my class had a far superior grasp of French than I did. At that point I had had only two years of French in high school in Ontario—and failed the second year. I had no experience with the French-speaking population of Quebec. The only thing I could do—and that’s how I justified myself—was read the textbook faster than the students could. I taught French entirely in English, focused solely on grammar.

As the school year drew to a close the principal told me he was concerned about my French classes. He sat in on one, but, I was so nervous with him present that I could barely speak. He told me to tape a couple of classes. I did—and carefully reviewed the tapes following the example set by Richard Nixon—and recorded noise several times over any mistakes I noticed. I gave him the tapes and next day he told me that he would not renew my contract for the next year “for the good of the children.” I enrolled in the education program at McGill, graduating with a teaching certificate a year later and went off to teach (non-French) subjects in high school for the next several years.

But, many years later I noticed a small story in the Ottawa Citizen about a teacher in Buckingham who had been arrested for molesting students. He taught grade seven at the same school I had taught at. Given the dates mentioned in the story I realized that he was the guy who had replaced me the next year. I felt somewhat vindicated when I read that story because, no matter what I had failed at during my year there, I had never crossed the line—in fact, it had never occurred to me. To me, they were children, even the well-developed thirteen year old girls. I had enough problems with women my own age and just never saw the adolescents as possible “mates.” In fact, the very idea leaves me feeling somewhat ill.

I hope that guy did go to jail—and everyone like him. But, I can’t help but feel that my year posing as a French teacher should be against the law as well. I (and the principal who hired me) should have spent some time in jail. On other hand, I worked with — and my children were exposed to — teachers who were even more unqualified than I had been. When I think of all the damage that teachers pretending to be psychologists did to one of my sons, I feel a visceral anger. And, being a lousy French teacher doesn’t seem so bad after all.