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‘You will never go back’
A reflection on the contribution of teachers who leave the classroom
I was waiting for a traffic light to change on Edmonton’s Jasper Avenue as I was walking back from the Devonian Building, where most of the offices of Alberta Education were housed, to Harley Court, where the Student Assessment Branch was located. With me was Frank Horvath, a senior official and the person who had hired me on secondment to the department. Frank turned to me as we stood on the street corner and said, entirely out of the blue, “You know that you will never go back again?” Seeing the confusion evident on my face, he went on “… to the classroom. You’ll never go back to the classroom.”
That conversation happened more than 20 years ago, and yet it remains riveted in my memory. To be truthful, I had always thought that my sojourn with Alberta Education would amount to a brief break in my career, and at the end of my secondment, I would return to classroom teaching at Tofield School. Yet Frank’s observation was prescient: I remained with Alberta Education in a variety of roles until 2001, when I was recruited by the Alberta Teachers’ Association to be a staff officer, eventually becoming executive secretary. I never did return to classroom teaching.
| Yet, when asked by a stranger what I do, or when called upon to fill in the “occupation” blank on a form, my answer is simple—I am a teacher. Being a teacher is woven into my identity, my values and my world view. The stories I tell, including some that I have shared with you in my writing for the ATA News and this magazine, are stories from my classroom. And I will never fail to sneak in a social studies lesson, be it to a university class, at a meeting of staff or members, or even to some poor, unsuspecting soul who has just dropped by my office seeking the answer to what they supposed to be a simple, straightforward question. |
As a result, they are grounded in the experience of teaching and bring those insights to the work they do here. |
It appears that you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but it is another thing entirely to take the classroom out of the teacher.
This is important because within the Association, my situation is in no way unique. All the executive staff officers working in the organization have been, earlier in their careers, classroom teachers. As a result, they are grounded in the experience of teaching and bring those insights to the work they do here. Whether they are representing a member in conflict with their employer, helping members to improve their teaching, bargaining for improvements in conditions of practice, telling the story of public education in the media or enforcing the profession’s Code of Professional Conduct, Association staff officers bring to their work insights learned from personal experience in the classroom.
Yet we are also conscious of the fact that the experience and realities of teaching are constantly in transition. That is why Association staff actively seek out opportunities to communicate and work directly with classroom teachers. This is essential to remaining informed, connected and relevant, but it is also work we love to do.
As an organization, the Association’s connection to the classroom is also reinforced by our governance structure and the leadership provided by the profession’s elected representatives. With the sole exception of the president, who is granted full-time release from his regular employment, every other member of Provincial Executive Council is expected to continue to teach on a half-time basis. This makes their work particularly challenging, but also ensures that teachers’ provincial representatives remain fully grounded in the daily experience of those who elected them. Maintaining this direct connection to the membership contributes greatly to the Association’s credibility and authority, something that is immediately evident when district representatives or table officers introduce themselves first as a teacher at their schools and then by the offices they concurrently hold in the Association. Working for these active teachers to advance the interests of the profession as a whole is a source of great pride for my colleagues and me.
I have to end this commentary with a contrasting expression of concern. Around the time that Frank Horvath and I had that curbside conversation, the deputy minister of education was Roger Palmer. Palmer had been with Alberta Education for 12 years, coming to the department with previous experience as a teacher at Eton and 10 years with Edmonton Public Schools. With the brief exception of Greg Bass, who was deputy minister of education from 2013 to 2015, the office has not been held by a certificated teacher since Palmer moved on in 1999.
Furthermore, senior positions in the department, which have typically been occupied by former teachers, are increasingly being filled by public servants who have not experienced a classroom from the perspective of a teacher, but who have acquired management experience elsewhere in government.
To be clear, these observations are not intended as a slight against those who hold these positions. They are highly capable and, for the most part, very sincere in their support of public education. But it does speak to the need for government officials to actively engage with the Association and to take our advice seriously. As the voice of the province’s teachers, the Association may tell truths that are inconvenient or uncomfortable to hear, but they are truths informed by teachers’ hard-earned experience. Was Frank Horvath right? Well, I never did go back, but, in an important sense, I never left the classroom. And neither have my colleagues at the Alberta Teachers’ Association, nor those teachers who continue today to work in school board offices and for government. We all belong to the same profession and continue serve alongside our colleagues, who do the essential work of teaching in Alberta’s public schools.
