About Us
I’d never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to do something important.
Dr Carolyn Mamchur
Everything You Want to Know
I’d never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to do something important. I wanted to make a difference in the world. I studied, I earned scholarships, I worked hard. I was going to go into the sciences, work with researchers, find a cure for cancer, the disease that had killed both of my maternal grandparents in their fifties. I had been with them during their slow and painful dying. I was determined.
My mother always supported me. A nurse who gave up her job to take care of her mother and then her father, she worked long hours as a housekeeper in a hotel belonging to my uncle. We all lived there. Money to go to school was not something we had enough of.
When I won a Governor’s General scholarship to go to university, this practical woman encouraged me to go to Teacher’s College. “You can always get a job as a teacher and work yourself through night school and summer school.”
Off I went to Saskatoon to take a one year course in how to be a teacher. Surely I could handle one year of it. Classes came and went each day. I wrote reports, read curriculum guides, I didn’t really register anything. I was buying time. Waiting for the time when I could do something worthwhile.
One requirement of Teacher’s College was to complete three weeks of practice teaching in a real classroom. The regular teacher would be there, telling you what to do, how to do it, and then give feedback to your supervisor. I couldn’t imagine anything worse.
The first day of my practicum, the classroom teacher phoned in sick. Very sick. Perhaps needed to go to the hospital. I would be alone with 36 twelve year-olds. I was told to follow her lesson plan book.
Her lesson plan book instructed me to teach long division at 9 am Monday morning, my first day of teaching. Long division! I never could figure out how to do it. In my head, I turned the numbers into divisions of ten and then, with a little adding or subtracting, I figured it out.
By the time we were half way through the lesson, I was so confused I couldn’t even find the answers at the back of the book. I’d ask the students how many had that answer and if the majority put up their hands I’d say that was correct. I had no idea.
A very attentive kid with red hair and no freckles put up his hand. His arms were long and the sweater he wore barely reached his wrist. “Yes?” I nodded more than spoke aloud.
He looked me square in the eye and asked, “You don’t know how to do long division, do you?”
Now what? How could I deny what was so obvious.
The class sat in silence, wide-eyed, watching, waiting for me to what? To lie? To yell? To tell the little red haired big mouth to sit down? To go to the principal’s office?
I did none of those things. Instead, I told the truth and invited him to help me. I have no idea where that idea came from; but I’ll be ever grateful it did. That decision influenced my teaching for the rest of my life.
“No, you’re right. I don’t. There was a silence in the room. That’s when instinct kicked in. “But I’ll bet you do.” I smiled.
He nodded, signifying that he did know how to long divide!
“Well, here’s the deal. You teach long division and I’ll teach you the things I know.”
It was the beginning of a relationship, a sharing, a commitment. I honored my students, valued what they knew. I shared the responsibility. We paid respectful attention to one another. I left that practicum knowing I had found the most exciting, challenging, rewarding profession in the world. I also felt it was the most important. Not teaching curriculum. Teaching people to feel good about themselves, to welcome challenge, to take responsibility.
I have spent every working day of my professional life hell bent on teaching. Teaching high school, teaching in a school for the mentally challenged, teaching in a school for wayward girls, teaching in a university, teaching in a board room, teaching in a hotel full of film makers. And now, teaching through a computer screen. I train, I learn, I teach, I am.
Oh, my credentials? I did the expected – BA, Bed, MA, MEd, EdD. I enjoy going to school. During my Bachelor degrees I majored in literature. My Masters in Teaching in Secondary English classrooms. My Doctor’s in Curriculum & Instruction.
- What do I feel are the sources of knowledge that serve me best?
- Earning all of my degrees as I taught, allowing me to field test ideas in the real world of a high school classroom;
- Studying Jungian theory with the founders of CAPT, Centre for Application of Psychological Type Theory and with Carl Jung’s disciples in Switzerland;
- Becoming a published author and screen writer and mentor in the film industry,
- Creating courses and programs as a Professor in the Faculty of Education ;
- Serving as director of the Writing Centre and ending my career as a Professor Emeritus in the position of Writer in Residence for Simon Fraser University.
The Team.
A couple of people trying to make the world of teaching and learning… BETTER, with you!
Dr Carolyn Mamchur
My purpose in creating “Hey, Teacher” – to share the knowledge and joy that 50 years of studying and teaching and developing curriculum have brought to my life, giving me clarity and purpose and satisfaction.
Dr Greg Gerber
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus ullamcorper.