Retirement Address - May 27, 2010

by Deb Glynn

Each year at our Annual Awards & Retirement Gala, one of our members who is about to retire delivers a response on behalf of the retirees. This year, the response was given by Deb Glynn, who is retiring from Edmison Heights at the end of June.

It’s rather risky business to speak on behalf of a group - any group. It implies a commonality of experience that may not always exist. And for a group of teachers, this is especially true. We are individual professionals, each with our own unique stories, our own private struggles, our own specific memories that define, for us, what it is to be a teacher. But what we do have is a shared chronology and a shared political reality spanning the past 30-some years. And together they do offer some common ground for a few moments of reflection.

If the word “techie” had been coined in the 1970’s, I think it would have been reserved for those few teachers who had mastered the reel to reel projector. Showing a movie was always an adventure. Navigating the first few feet of film through the various traps and turns, catching the sprockets and finally arriving at the take-up reel was cause for celebration; but only if the film didn’t become a twisted, tangled mess when you turned it on. Mercifully, we progressed to VHS and DVD and now we can simply stream a movie instantly, efficiently - without the possibility of a 3 week wait or a quarter mile of celluloid on the classroom floor.

If you recall the words “mimeograph, heat copy and Gestetner”, then you knew how to duplicate seatwork that kids really loved - if only for that amazing chemical smell! Of course, we’ve moved on to the photocopier that does so much more and does it so much better....when it’s working. And remember when the first computers were installed - Commodore 64’s and Apple IIe’s? We were told that we would be the generation of teachers to herald the “paperless” classroom. Right. Well this year, in some schools, that’s actually pretty true! But not in the way we had anticipated. The paper is kept under lock and key and is doled out from the principal’s office, one precious package at a time.

Militancy and Teachers - two words seldom used in the same context until the one day strike of December 18, 1974. A few months later, with the passage of the School Boards and Teachers Collective Negotiations Act, better known as Bill 100, teachers won the right to strike. They also won the right to negotiate working conditions and benefits. They could grieve unfair practices and regard themselves as professionals, deserving to be compensated as such. And those teachers who began their careers in the late 70’s and the early 80’s certainly reaped the benefits of that early militancy, but it came at a price. The profession became a political football, a target for all three parties.

Recall the Premier of Ontario tearing up legally negotiated public service contracts and imposing the infamous Rae Days. And Mike Harris, who attacked public education so violently that Ontario teachers, 126,000 strong, left their classrooms for ten days, not for more money or benefits, but to draw attention to the assault. Whether that action was successful or not is still a matter of lively discussion. But when the Tories were ousted in 2003, it was widely acknowledged that Ontario’s teachers had played a significant role in their demise. And it was under Dalton McGuinty’s watch, the ‘education’ premier, that a demoralizing ‘divide and conquer’ scenario played itself out in the last round of collective bargaining. His recent trial balloon of proposed “Dalton Days” serves as a reminder that the need for militancy is still with us.

Throughout those turbulent years, the evolution of our Federation has been an important part of our progress as professionals. With the amalgamation of FW and OPS we finally came together as ETFO - the largest teachers’ union in Canada and a powerful, positive force in education. We have all become more aware of the workings of the Federation. And gone forever are the days when it was enough to simply show up for a ratification meeting to check out the salary grid. Our responsibility as union members now includes the vital role of protecting and upholding each hard-won collective agreement. And during these times of unprecedented, job-related stress, our strength as a union continues to lie in supporting each other - professionally, emotionally and sadly - and too often - financially.

Late last August I made my annual trek to the teachers’ store. I’m not sure why - there was really nothing I needed. In fact, I had already started purging my cupboards and shelves of things I knew I wouldn’t use during my last year of teaching. But I guess old habits die hard and I found myself walking out of the store with two posters. They’ve been on my classroom door all year.

One is a ridiculously enlarged photograph of a green tree frog. It’s bulbous eyes are all scrunched up and its face is stretched into an impossibly wide grin. The caption reads “A day without laughter is a day wasted”.

In the second poster is a little boy, suited up in a brand new baseball uniform, ball and glove in hand. He is standing in the infield of an empty stadium. The caption reads “An expert at anything was once a beginner”.

To those of you here tonight who will continue moving forward in your teaching career, I hope that you’ll remember the frog. Find every excuse you can to laugh with your colleagues. Grab every opportunity available to have fun with your students. And before you close your classroom door and go home to family and friends at night, take a minute to dig through the detritus of the day and pull out at least one moment that gave you joy. For those are the moments that will sustain you, whether you have only a few years to go, or many.

And for those of us here tonight whose careers are coming to a close, we would do well, I think, to remember the little boy in the stadium. We were all rookies once, but with enthusiasm and dedication we became experts at teaching. So as the proverbial “new chapter” of our lives opens and we, ironically, become beginners once again, let’s apply that same enthusiasm and dedication to once again becoming experts - but this time...at retirement.