Some Teaching Experience

I have written a lot of negative things about secondary school teachers. Those remarks are based on my observations of: 1) the teachers I had in secondary school; 2) the teachers I worked with while I was a teacher; 3) the teachers responsible for the education of my children; and 4) my fellow students in the education department at McGill University (and university students in general that I knew).

For the most part, university professors are not guilty of the sins of secondary school teachers—and, generally, elementary teachers are not a bad lot, mainly because  they are—or, rather, should be—preoccupied with teaching basic skills. It’s when you get into secondary school that you run into problems because that’s where you encounter a lot of “opinion” subjects that do not require much in the way of professional preparation. Many English teachers, for example (and, yes, there are many good and some exceptional English teachers), are there because they don’t know what else to do with their general arts BA. The attitude of many principals and administrators is that, if you graduated from university you must know something about English. Makes sense—maybe. Except, many university grads have taken only one introductory course in literature and, just what the heck is “English” as an academic subject anyway?

Though I was an “English teacher,” I really had two main subjects that I taught: English grammar and writing skills (composition); and English literature. My academic background for teaching English grammar: my secondary school grammar classes. I never heard of an English grammar class at the university level. The closest I came was a mandatory first year course (which no longer exists, as far as I know) on how to prepare and write research papers. In other words, I really didn't know any more than what I remembered from my own grade eight grammar classes taught by someone educated in a secondary school twenty or so years earlier, by a teacher with a similar background. I probably barely passed that subject myself and now I was the “expert.” You gotta be kidding me.

At least I had more credible qualifications when it came to teaching literature. I had taken several courses in English lit in university and I had an abiding interest in literature, especially Canadian literature. Not only did I take two separate courses in Canadian poetry, but I actively followed the careers of several Canadian poets, especially the Montreal school of Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, and F. R. Scott. (In fact, one of my professors was Michael Gnawroski, the foremost expert on Canadian poetry at the time.)

Because of resignations, in my second years teaching I was the effective head of the English department in our school and set about creating a curriculum that I thought best addressed the needs of young people soon to graduate from the formal education part of their lives. Class time was split fairly evenly between literature and composition. (I recall arguing passionately with a young teacher who thought that teaching writing skills was a waste of time; her argument was that most adults do not need to write formal expository essays; my argument was that most adults need to be able to think in an orderly manner. I recommended against keeping her on staff.) I divided the literature part into four divisions: poetry, short stories, a major novel, and a Shakespearean play; one term each.

Why each? Poetry represents a way of symbolic thinking and encourages analytical thinking on several simultaneous and apparently disparate levels. It can draw connections to the world that would otherwise be inexpressible in our daily language. Short stories can sum up life experiences in a few well-thought out and constructed pages. Studying novels was a way of exploring large structural forms and ideas that could be looked at from several angles, as well as exposing the student to different worlds and world-views.

Shakespeare? That should be self-explanatory. In my senior classes I taught George Orwell’s 1984 and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Each addresses the corruption and abuse of power and examines the nature of reality—both topics that any adult should at least think about and be cognisant of the fact that governments lie and manipulate, and that what might seem obvious to you is not quite so obvious to someone else. I also taught an extra course (for which I was not paid but students could get provincial credit for) on Canadian literature. We read lots of Canadian poetry as well as novels like Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman and Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel. One young woman who went on to become head of surgery of a major hospital was entranced by the images of strong women prevalent in so much Canadian writing and kept asking me for more recommendations of novels by Canadians.

I did enjoy teaching. Nothing quite like a day in early spring saying to a class of 17- and 18-year-olds, “So, it’s next year and you’re away at CEGEP when you get a letter saying your father just died and, by the way, your mother just married your uncle. How do you react?” “I’d kill the mother-f**ker” was a response I often got. That was probably pretty close to what Hamlet’s first reaction was—though his language would have been a little more Elizabethan. Some things never change.

But, I don’t get it. Why was studying English so boring for me, my kids, and many students in other English classes? English lit, especially, is about everything—and who can be bored by that?