Glen Thoughts

This past week has been the Chapel Week for my Residence of boys at school. Needless to say, it was a busy one (thus my lack of blogging), and our theme was courage. I was asked to deliver a short lesson on the topic, as one of the house faculty members. Like last time I spoke in chapel, I decided that it would be good to post my lesson here on the blog, in case anyone was interested in a little divine inspiration.

I’m reminded of a quote by Mark Twain, “Courage is not absence of fear”. Brave, courageous people all have their fears, everyone from soldiers, to sports icons, to people in this room, we are all afraid of something.

Even the bravest person, I can imagine, Superman, has things to be afraid of. We all have our kryptonite, ranging from heights, to spiders, to public speaking. In preparing for this, I asked a number of people what they are afraid of. They gave me a wide range of answers, and a number of guys in Colley told me that they were afraid of clowns and sock puppets, I don’t know what that means…, but there was one answer given that stood out above all of the others, and it also happens to be one of my biggest fears, loneliness.

After giving this a bit of reflection, I realized something; Franklin Delano Roosevelt lied to us many years ago. The only thing to fear is not fear itself, no it is something much scarier and much more tangible than that, the only thing to fear is being alone. With the love and support of your family and friends, you can look off that cliff, shoo away that spider, or even face that scary clown.

I myself have been inspired recently to take a courageous step. Next year, I will be leaving the comforts of Colley House, the City of Oakville, and even the entire Western Hemisphere, as I have accepted a teaching position in China. The thought of uprooting my life, and career, quite frankly, scares me to death. I am worried that I won’t fit in, that things will be too different, or worst of all, I am worried that once I get there, I will be alone.

But when I stop to think about it, I know that I am not at all alone, and I never will be. The world today is a much smaller place than it ever has been. Thanks to the wonders of technology, even though I will be on the complete other side of the planet, the people I love will only be a dial and a call, or a click and a wall post away. And that makes the challenges of moving so much easier to bear; I know that I can face my fears and trepidations.

To be able to truly face your fears, it is not just courage that you need, but company. If you take a second to look around the room, you’ll find all of the courage that you need. Whenever you are faced with any adversity, no matter how bad, you will always have each other.

I know that wherever life leads me, I will have the family that I have gained this year with me, maybe in person, maybe on my computer screen, or maybe just in spirit. I, like all of you here today, will never have to walk alone, and that gives me all of the courage that I need.

For our anthem, we chose “You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Gerry and the Pacemakers, demonstrated here.

Now the main reason they chose it though, was because it is the anthem of both the Glasgow Celtic and Liverpool FC, here is an amazing version with both clubs singing it. Maybe it’s the Scot in me, but I am a bigger fan of the Celtic version.

Until next time,

G

Now, followers of this blog probably know that I am a first year Math Teacher/Residence Don at a private school in the GTA. Now in teaching there are a lot of average days, and some very frustrating days, but there are some days, and moments that simply warm your heart and more than make up for any negative moment. On Thursday, I had one of these moments.

See I had to do late night duty on Wednesday night, which means that I had to ensure that the oldest students in boarding were all snug in their beds, when they lights out is at 11:30pm. Now the very next morning, I had a three and a half straight hours of teaching, starting at 8am. Normally this is a minor inconvenience and grumble of mine, but to top it all off, I was feeling exceptionally sick and tired. Nothing major, just a cold, where I needed some mint tea and a lot of bed rest, two things which I was just not going to get with that kind of schedule. Sure, I could have called it in, but I feel a certain sense of pride in showing up to work feeling bad, I like to feel tough after all.

Now the first two classes went alright, my second period students were being a bit of a chore, but they had in class assignments to work on, so I didn’t have to be too involved. But then along came my third period class, Grade 8 math. I had a lesson that I had to teach them on graphing, and there really was no easy way out of it for me.

I knew that I needed to suck up my illness and exhaustion, and just do it.

This is when the projector failed on me, and I was stuck teaching like it was the 20th Century, and I had to use chalk and a chalkboard. Now, for those of you who just know me by the blogosphere, won’t know, is that I have horrible, HORRIBLE writing. My students have gotten fairly use to reading it, but there was the added challenge that I needed to draw the graph, and make it accurate enough so that it would make sense to 12 year olds who knew nothing on the subject.

I started drawing a horrible, slanty graph, that I knew the kids just didn’t get. To top it all off, my exhaustion and illness were getting the better of me, as I was making frequent mistakes. I still had a good 40 minutes of class to get through, and I knew it was going to feel like an eternity.

Then, a hand raised and one of my students asked me “Are you feeling ok?”

“No, I’m feeling pretty sick and tired, I’m sorry that I’m making mistakes, but I’m trying my best” I decided to answer honestly.

It’s wroth mentioning that I just two students, who had just transfered into my class from the advanced stream that my school offers, and had therefore done this before. These two kids, raised their hands and said “Do you want us to teach this?” to which, I thought it was a GREAT idea, I passed them the chalk, and sad down.

These two students proceeded to do the next example, and I would occasionally interject and make sure that certain points were emphasized and what have you. But they ultimately did a fantastic job in covering the lesson.

Then one of the boys in my class looks over to me and says “You can tell that you’re an experience teacher. They’re not as easy to listen to as you are.”

With those simple words, I became energized, and my illness faded away. I was suddenly overcome with a great feeling of relief and clarity.

For all that people complain about “kids these days”, there really are some fantastic young people out there who are caring, supportive, and mature beyond their years. They could have very easily just let me screw up, make mistakes, and try to grind my gears to get a reaction. But no, not my students, they decided that they wanted to help me out, make me feel better, and learn something along the way.

While I hope that they learned something from the lesson, I am certain that they ended up teaching me instead.

Until next time,

G

So the past week at my school it was Faculty Chapel week. See, working at a private school, there are definite religious overtones, as the Chapel is a big part of the school schedule and community. While I was initially skeptical of this, the chapel services are multi-faithed, so they include reasons from not only Christian but Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and secular sources.

Anyway, as part of the Faculty Chapel week, they asked for faculty members to make short (3 minute) reflections on their vocation. So of course, I thought that I would take a chance to chyme in with my thoughts. In typical Glen fashion, I decided that I would relate the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Napoleon Dynamite to my career.

Here is a copy of my speech, enjoy…

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So I was asked to come up here and reflect on my vocation. Well I have only been teaching for a few months, as opposed to a few years or decades like some of my esteemed colleagues sitting to my right, I don’t quite have as much to reflect on. Instead, I will reflect on why I decided to become a teacher in the first place.

When I was a kid, I had four heroes who I held above everyone else. They were not Michael Jordan, or Wayne Gretzky like other boys my age, they weren’t my teachers, or even my parents. No, no, no my heroes were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Every Saturday morning, I would wake up early, grab a bowl of Count Chocula, sit down in front of the television, and I would watch my heroes save the world from the forces of evil, yet again. I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be just like them. But no matter how many times I asked my parents didn’t buy me a katana or send me to ninja school, they had other plans…public school.

When I was there, I was never able to sharpen my bo staff or numchuck skills, so I had to learn how to fight evil some other way. It was then that my teachers armed me with two very powerful weapons to fight against the forces of evil; they armed me with hope and compassion.
Over the course of my life, I realized just how powerful hope and compassion can be in overcoming evil at every turn, and I believe that there is nothing that they can’t overcome.
Hope will cure diseases and prevent environmental catastrophes.

Compassion will unite nations and bring about peace.

So while I am here teaching function or fractions, in true ninja style, that is just a cover. What I really want to teach are hope and compassion. And if I am able to get that through to even one student over the course of my career then maybe, just maybe one of you would be able to cure cancer, or end poverty. Then I will get just what I have always wanted, I’ll get to be just like me heroes, I’ll get to save the world. And I’ll be able to do it without a katana or turtle shell.

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Until next time,

G

Wednesday night I had the opportunity to participate in something very special here at school. I helped take a group of very wealthy private school kids into downtown Toronto to go on a night walk with the Salvation Army.

We took a bunch of supplies, ranging from toothbrushes to socks, with us and went on a tour of the “hot spots” of the homeless community to distribute them and talk with any of the homeless people around Toronto. We first walked through some pretty rough neighbourhoods and got yelled at and taunted by the locals. This frightened some of the students, who have lived, by and large, fairly sheltered lives.

There was this one girl, let’s call her Christine, who was especially afraid. She repeatedly asked for me to stay close to her and revealed to me that her number one fear was having someone pull her into a dark alley and shoot her up with heroin. Despite my many attempts at explaining the inherent infeasibility of her concerns, they did not subside.

When we walked through a park, Christine was incredibly afraid of any contact with any homeless people. As the night went on, I gradually snuck away from her, hoping that she would be slightly more comfortable in her environment. I was pretty amazed by the results.

As we approached Nathan-Phillips Square (City Hall for any of you not familiar with the centre of the Universe…) we saw more, and more homeless people. Many students went up and donated their gifts directly to the recipients but I noticed Christine staying with our group. As we rounded the corner, I continued to watch her.

After a while it was fairly apparent that Christine was one of the few remaining students to have not made direct contact with a homeless person. Sensing this, she bit down on her fear and slowly made her way over to a gentleman huddled in a bus stop. I listened as she introduced herself and offered an apple and toothbrush. I could sense her voice shake.

To my delight and her shock, he gratefully accepted and begin to have a real, normal, honest-to-goodness conversation with her. No screaming, no stabbing, no stealing, no injecting with drugs.

She could probably pay off my student loans with her allowance (and that’s saying something!), and I would see more money in a month than he would in a year. But in that moment, it did not matter. Right then and there the three of us were all equal. Three exceptionally different lives and social classes all juxtaposed in one surreal environment.

As our group left Nathan-Phillips Square I looked over at Christine, and said the five words that I feel every educator should say as much as possible, “I am proud of you”.

I certainly, was not lying on that one. I was proud of her for helping someone in need, I was proud of her conquering her own fears, but most of all I was proud of her for opening up a piece of the real world, not only to herself, but to me as well. Her, and all of the other students there with us, really helped remind me that deep down inside we aren’t all that different.

Looking back, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little bit afraid wandering through these slummy parts of Toronto, but after being inspired by the students and meeting some of these brave homeless people, I can say that much of my fear was alleviated.

While it is not at all easy, I really encourage any of you out there living near a disadvantaged area to go out and find a chance to interact with the people who are far less fortunate than you are. Who knows, it could give you a chance to be proud of that little bit of Christine that lives inside of you.

Until next time,

G

While I have only been an official big boy teacher for a short time, I believe that I have already found my kryptonite. While my weakness is not some mystical glowing rock, it is the simple fact that kids are funny. Almost every day I am blown away by the incredible wit of my students. They are constantly doing thing that I find completely hilarious, even when I’m supposed to be getting mad at them.

Today during my Grade 11 class, I was sitting in the back listening to another teacher (I am team teaching by the way, which is AWESOME), and three of my students are misbehaving. They are quietly talking to one another and not paying any attention. I get eye contact with them and they quiet down a bit. One girl goes to throw a water bottle to one of the guys after borrowing it. She throws it in a completely gentle manner, but the guy misses it and well, it hits him in an incredibly sensitive area. I instinctively bite my lip and turn away. I feel my face start to turn read as I hold back my bodily convulsions, because let’s face it, people getting hit in the groin is funny.

Instead of trying to do anything about it, seeing it was an accident, I don’t do much about it, since I clearly can’t even try to act stern at this point. Instead, the next time the group continues to talk, I stand over next to them and they quietly pay attention. Which is great and all, but it doesn’t compete with a water bottle in the groin.

So blogosphere, any thoughts on this one? Should I grow up and stop finding shots to the junk so funny, or did I do the right thing then and there? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated on this one…

Until next time.

G

In working with young people, we often have these periods in time where the opportunity to present an important life lesson presents itself. We always have a choice in this moment, do we ignore it or take the time, and effort to try and pass an important lesson on to someone else.

This weekend was homecoming for the school that I work at. As a result, there were a ton of activities to build school spirit and foster some community development (and to get some more donations). There was a new event this year that I volunteered for/got suckered into, the Car Rally. A group of parents came to the school Saturday morning and then drove around some of the back roads, made a few stops, showed off their cars and had some good bonding time.

Working at a private school, most of the kids come from affluent backgrounds, so as you could imagine the cars were pretty spectacular. There were a few Ferrarris, a couple of Lambhorghinis, a Corvette or two, a hand full of BMWs, a few custom made kit cars, and even a Rolls Royce. While I sat in awe of cars that I could never afford, I was given the task of driving one of the school’s vans with two students who were going to be photographers for the event.

So me in the mini-van go and join a convoy of muscle cars and we head up out of the city and into some great back country roads that I didn’t even know existed. The weather was great to have the windows down, crank the music up, and blast along the country roads.

I find myself lagging behind the main group, so I step on the gas a little bit harder. Apparently they didn’t design Caravans to keep pace with Ferraris, who knew? I approach this beautiful corner going down a gentle hill, it looks like it was designed for racing around.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this, as there is a police officer waiting for me at the bottom who flags me over. I curse under my breath, and my heart begins to race. As the officer walks towards me I have two conflicting thoughts run through my head.

Earlier in the year I was busted for speeding, and I was able to play the “poor student” card and I had my fine severely reduced. I wonder if I can play the “poor teacher” doing my job card, and get this fine knocked down as well.

The officer was getting closer and closer.

On the other hand though, there are two students in the van with me. I find that one of the biggest challenges when dealing with young people is getting them to take responsibility for their actions. So many people, of any age, are quick to blame others when they do something wrong. I realize that I am sitting on one of those Teachable Moments.

The officer was getting closer and closer.

Here I am faced with a crisis, do I take a more expensive fine and potential point deduction on my licence to do the right thing, and teach these two students a valuable life lesson.

I roll down my window and say “Hello officer”.

I listen to everything that the Police Officer says about going too fast, and I state that I didn’t know that it was a 50 km/h zone, which I honestly did not, and I take my ticket for $111….yuck.

As I sit and speak to the Police Officer, a number of other cars on the rally drive past me looking right at me. They sure were not going 50.

After we leave, the students make two observations 1) The guy was a complete ass and 2) Everyone else got by going about the same speed. Both points were pretty accurate to say the least.

I take this as a further teachable moment and say that it doesn’t matter what kind of guy he was or what anyone else was doing, it doesn’t change the fact that I was wrong and got caught. While I’m gritting my teeth and agreeing with them at the most superficial of levels, deep down inside I know that I was wrong and I got caught, so I had to do the responsible thing and accept the consequences of my actions.

I was also pretty worried that I would get in trouble for speeding with students. However, those fears were alleviated when I arrived at the first check point and one of the school’s Headmasters comes up to me, puts his arm around me and starts to laugh at me….I even take the opportunity to tell him that I turned it into a teachable moment. I’m officially in the clear.

In looking back, I remember a time when I was maybe 12 or 13 and my mother got busted for speeding with my sister and I in the car right around Christmas. She could have easily played the “Single Mother at Christmas” card and got away with a stern talking to, but she later told me that she decided to accept it full on in order to teach us a lesson about responsibility…apparently it worked.

I got to spend the morning and volunteer my time and teach an important lesson to some young people and it only cost me $111…ahh well, it’s cheaper than Teacher’s College.

Until next time,

G

I was just unpacking my life and I found a piece of paper of particular interest to me. You see last year in Teacher’s College we were asked to spontaneously write our thoughts on Education down, and well I decided to go full scale stream of conscious and see what came up. I thought it may be a good thing to share with any of my teacher friends out there, enjoy…

I am a firm believer that education is a powerful tool. If harnessed properly it is capable of saving the world, if not it has the power to destroy. I believe very seriously that education is, by and large, misused. Far too often it is used to fit people into round holes, despite the fact that they may be square pegs. I firmly believe that education should help nurture creativity and ingenuity and not quash it. It should teach people the value of questions and not merely answers. Education needs to find the balance between the practicality of the issue and the theory that goes into it. Education needs to be inclusive to everyone, regardless of race, gender, social standing, or ability level. Education needs to go beyond mere subject matter and teach holistically. With every subject there should be the goal of making each student a better person in some way. For example, one learns history in order to critically analyze a source, and not to memorize dates and figures. If a student is able to take these lessons and apply them to their lives, perhaps question an item seen on the news rather than accept it at face vale, then the teacher has succeeded. The most important aspect is that every student is a teacher and every teacher is most definitely a student. It is all our responsibility as teachers, students, and human beings to make the world a better place. Education is the only thing that can accomplish this.

Hmmm it’s not as long when I type it up now is it?

Anyway, to sum up my thoughts on education…stick it to THE MAN!!!

Until next time,

G