A local newspaper last month did a tribute to a teacher who had retired finally, at age 85. She had subbed for many years and the reporter said tributes to her poured in depiste ‘the bad rap subs get in the popular culture”

Let’s look at that bad rap.

It’s true.  Subs are aliens that fly in and leave and their motives, identity and competence are often suspect for kids.  They do things differently, they look different from the regular teacher and then, mercifully they go away. Who was that masked man?

When I was little though I didn’t really think teachers were human.  It never occurred to me that they used the washroom and I know when little kids talk to the teacher some assume the teacher if she does sleep, sleeps at the school.

I’ve talked to hundreds of teachers and for many, being remembered at all stands out for years. One high school teacher still gets postcards from a former student, years later and that is touching. But also if you think of it, if you have taught 250 kids a year for 20 years, being remembered by one is not a huge return rate.  And  yet you can’t count the way kids write thank yous or updates as being remembered.  Most of us remember a large number of our school teachers, and always will.  Like the first homes we had, the first friends we had, the first outings we had, those teachers are so closely woven into who we are that it is hard to know where their influence started and stopped. It became part of us.  You don’t thank someone for that because you can’t detach from it far enough. It’s like that in a much lesser way with parenting itself.

So point one for teachers is that we can expect to not be thanked or remembered in ways we’ll be aware of.

Second, the pay is not really high.  It used to be abysmal but has through professional association work been elevated to a liveable wage for classroom teachers. There are pensions, there is sick leave, there are medical benefits, and it is therefore possible to make a go of it as a teacher, to own a house eventually and a car and to have some modest holidays.  But subs, ah that’s a different story. In most provinces and in most countries sub pay is not as high as classroom teacher pay and subs generally do not get the sick leave, medical, dental or pension benefits. To sub is to enter a lower echelon on the scale and to pretty well stay there.  I don’t think it’s fair but that’s an observation that can’t be denied.  Many teachers who love subbing are forced to quit the profession because they just can’t afford to do it.

There is also the status thing I guess. I was in a high school library recently where there was a plaque to a former teacher. It was very touching and he had served in that library for about 20 years. And yet I suspect most people who walk by don’t know who he is. But at least there is that plaque.

I wonder idly if anything will ever be named after me. In our city schools are named after people, not numbered, but the people are prime ministers and early pioneers.  Had I been king of England, an explorer, the town fireman or the woman who put through human rights law I’d stand a chance but I did not. Had I been an Olympic runner, the director of the zoo or a prominent cowboy I’d have a chance but I was not.

And yet, ah, there are two schools named after teachers. One became premier.  I suspect the premier link is what did it.

Teachers are gone and forgotten in buildings at least. And subs, well,even more so.

I did a study of learning theory finding that the easiest to remember part of any list or series is the start or the finish. The middle is the hardest and just past the middle the memory tends to crash briefly. Those who do remember their school teachers from long ago tend to recall the early early ones or the late high school ones, not the ones from grades 4-9.  And subs, well we don’t even make that much ripple on the pond of the memory.

I cannot honestly remember any sub I ever had as a child and even when I was a young classroom teacher I barely noticed the subs. I was too busy, and looking back on it, blind.

Yet teachers do remember their students, years sometimes decades after.  I mean, not all of them of course. A principal I  had who was near retirement said he often had students walk up to him, now mature adults, and say “Remember me?” It was awkward for him because the database by that time was in the tens of thousands. He urged all of us to please give him a hint if we ran into him later.

But in talks with teachers I have heard of a few they recall.  Not favorites, for that is something quite different. Just students who stood out. A grade 12 teacher I sub for has on  her desk a binder marked “Treasures” and I must admit in an idle moment I opened it. It had a lot of photos of students, and even the death notice of a few she had taught long ago.  A teacher I was speaking with today who is 84 was telling me of a student he taught in the 1940s, when the boy was 10; The teacher remembered the boy’s name, the cleverness of his math question and he had from a distance kept track of the boy’s career. The boy went on to do brilliantly in national math exams and to become  a research scientist.

All of us teacher are proud to think we had some small role to play when kids succeed. Often it was only a tiny role and it was the whole package, the family, the community, the range of teachers and the other clubs and things the student benefited from which led to the success and not to be discounted would be the main factor, the kid’s innate clevernesse. But still we teachers get our self-praise where we can.  The one who became a famous singer, the one who went to Hollywood, the one who played piano for the queen, so OK we did not cause these things but we for a few moments knew the person.

And knowing a person when young, seeing brilliance in the bud is pretty touching.

In the movie “Goodbye Mr. Chips” at the end of his life the longtime schoolteacher is questioned for remaining single and never having had children. He corrects the interviewer. He says he did have children’ hundreds of them’.

I am sure that teachers feel like that.

I remember the boy who tried so hard to do an essay when the other teachers thought  he’d never get words on paper and sure enough it was not a brilliant production but hey, he was actually trying.  And I recall with heartbreak how he was kicked out of school a few months later for bringing a plank to class and someone thought it was a weapon.

SO this thing of being remembered or having good memories is an important issue in choosing teaching. And yet it is not the key one.

The key one I think, for most teachers is whether we feel we are doing something important, whether we’re remembered or not.  It’s a way of thinking of the role as service to education itself.  And it works the way parenting love works, you don’t get it back, you pass it forward. 

Most teachers had good teachers.  Most had at least one exemplary teacher who changed their lives enough to inspire them to teach. And a lot of teachers burst their buttons when they hear years later that someone they taught has now become a teacher, or even a university professor. Pass it on. 

Many mornings I get up in the dark, drive on slippery roads to  distant school by a route I’m not sure of, and accept an assignment I have no idea the  nature of and of course something in me would rather stay home.  I read somewhere though that nearly everyone at work in North  America ‘didn’t feel like going to work today’.  We are all motivated by something besides our personal convenience.  Many are motivated by money and teachers also have to live in the pay the bills world. But teachers have the luxury of also being motivated by a sense of mission.

I like that.