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Every September teachers around the country gear up to head back to the classroom to face yet another cohort of eager learners (and perhaps some not so eager) who flood back to our schools every year after a long hot summer.
This year like every other, there are teachers who enter a classroom for the first time straight out of teachers college, and there are those like Nancy Doering, who hang up their chalk erasers and lesson books and call it a career.
Doering spent 27 years in the Toronto District School Board system, nearly all of it at a quaint elementary school named Mill Valley Elementary as a grade 1 and 2 teacher. Her first taste of student instruction involved a very different kind of curriculum:
After that many years in the system it gets into your blood if you truly enjoy it, she says. Nancy’s late mother was a life long teacher and she remembers that after retirement her mom would get a bit melancholy around the first week of September missing the kids and the whole life of being a teacher. Doering finds she feels quite the opposite:
She explains that the first few weeks of the year are a very anxious time for new students and teachers alike who are finding their footing that will take them through the school year. She also knows that you don’t just fully walk away after all those years without some reflection:
Nancy remembers the first day she walked into a classroom and she was surprised at how much she really needed to learn even after all those years in Teacher’s College. What advice does she have for all the new teachers out there?
Nancy is looking forward to being called back now and then in a supply teacher capacity where she can continue to ply the trade she has loved for so many years. Until then she says good luck to all the news teachers coming into the classroom and all the best to those like Nancy who have given it their all and now its time to reflect.
(Written By: Richard Evans)
