My Teaching Career Part 2 - St. Matthew

My Teaching Days at St. Matthew

1985-86 St. Matthew Staff
My first year at this great school

In the fall of 1985, I returned to Ottawa to teach at St. Matthew High School.  The transition from Eastwood Collegiate Institute (ECI) in Kitchener - a large, well-established grade 9-OAC high school - to St. Matt's was a difficult one.   At the time, St. Matt's was a relatively new middle school (grades 7 to 10) which was now adding grade 11 (due to the extension that year of full funding to Catholic schools in Ontario).  My teaching schedule dramatically changed from a straightforward schedule of grade 9, 10, and 11 English classes at ECI to a chaotic mixture of subjects and grades at St. Matt's: grade 7 Religion and English, grade 9 and 10 English, and grade 11 Ancient History.  That's right - I had 5 different courses for which to prep.   

My saving grace in that first year at St. Matt's was the tremendous support I received from the other teachers and the great feeling of camaraderie I sensed among the staff  The school was truly a Catholic-Christian community.  We not only taught together but as well we played and prayed together.

After my first year at St. Matt's, I knew I had found my permanent teaching home.  I immersed myself into the life of the school, coaching teams and helping out with the Student Activity Council. The students both challenged and intrigued me, and drove me constantly to want to provide for them the very best learning opportunities that I possibly could.  

Hamming it up with the talented teaches in the English Department

I formed a great network of close friends among the staff of St. Matthew.  On Wednesday nights, we played basketball; Friday after school it was staff hockey; and in the spring and summer, several of us played together on a softball team.  However, most pleasing of all was how all the staff worked together to build a great school community where all students felt they belonged and were able to grow.  In so many ways, we lived out the school's motto: 'People Together With Purpose'.

A few years after I started teaching at St. Matt's, I was appointed Department Head of English.  I loved the role.  I not only got to work with an incredibly talented group of language arts teachers at the school but as well collaborated frequently, through Subject Council, with the other English DHs in the Carleton Roman Catholic School Board.  I became good friends with many of my English DH colleagues - particularly with those who spent a magical summer with me at Oxford University (Keble College) completing an Honour Specialist in English.

The Oxford Incident - Summer 1989
I had the time of my life!

Having learned early in my teaching career in Kitchener-Waterloo that the sage on the stage approach to teaching was not effective, I embraced at St. Matt's a student-centred  guide on the side approach. When it came to literature study, I used methodologies such as incentive contracts in order to differentiate learning opportunities for students and allow them to be creative in their responses to their encounters with what they read.  I also relied heavily on collaborative approaches whereby each small group of students would attempt to persuade - in a manner that was both thought-provoking and entertaining - the rest of the class of the validity of a particular interpretation of a novel or play .  The videos, radio plays, dramatizations, and displays the students designed helped them develop both their critical thinking and communication skills.

I recall times when I would marvel at the level of student engagement and focus as they developed their presentations.  Years later, I discovered that a psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this state of hyper-focus learning flow.  For me, though, these moments when I could almost hear the students' minds humming and sense them gaining confidence and competence in their abilities to think deeply and communicate clearly were pure magic...  I would step outside myself for the moment and simply marvel at the human capacity for learning.  In the words of John Magee in his beautiful poem "High Flight", at those times, I felt as though:

                                I ...slipped the surly bonds of earth 

                               And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings:

                               ...Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.  

As much as I enjoyed teaching English and loved being a part of the St. Matt's community, the intensity of the classroom, the frequent late nights spent prepping lessons, and the far-too-many lost weekends of marking essays and assignments sometimes took their toll on me.  In the midst of one particularly long day of teaching and marking (and after too short a night of sleep), I recall a student teacher commenting on my Jekyll and Hyde performance.  As I collapsed at the end of the day on a sofa in the staff room, he noted, "You seem so different than a moment ago when you were so animated and energized in the classroom."  Oh yes, my dear young teacher-in-the-making, teaching is both engrossing and exhausting!

One of my favourite pictures of me at St. Matthew
- Thoroughly engrossed in assessment

One of the most memorable (and sad) days of my life was Friday, December 19, 1997, my last day of teaching at St. Matthew High School.  In the morning, I listened with great interest as an OAC student did a presentation on his independent study, which was on a relatively new and emerging medium of communication called the internet!  In the afternoon, in a portable, I taught my final English class - a challenging group of grade 9s.  

After the final bell sounded, the students left quickly.  I stood and stared for several minutes out a window at the students rushing happily along to get on school buses.  When the last bus pulled away from the school, I quietly exited the portable and walked down a mostly deserted hallway in the school, briefcase in hand.  I climbed a flight of stairs to the 2nd floor and paused briefly by the library to look at a display I had put up some time time ago.  It read:  English is to ... Read, Write, Listen, Speak, View, and Think.  Then I walked into the English Prep room, where I had spend countless hours collaborating with other teachers, designing lessons, and marking papers.  I took one last long look around, thanked God for blessing me with 12 plus years of membership in this wonderful school community, closed and locked the door, and bid adieu to my teaching career.

As I said at the final St. Matthew staff meeting I attended, "I can honestly say I enjoyed every single day that I taught at this marvellous school."

St. Matthew Staff - 1995-96