Old School Reports Tell an Interesting Tale

As I write Fuck Pedagogy, I’ve had to go through my reports from middle and high school, which has had an odd effect on remembering who I was in their eyes.

In Grade 4, I was placed in “the superior range of ability.” In Grade 5, words such as “very good”, “first class” & “hard-working” were prevalent.

In Grades 6 & 7, words such as “disappointing”, “weak” & “carelessness” became the thing. I was sent to a boarding school for Grades 8 & 9, where the language improved again: “very good”, “excellent” & “extremely capable.”

That said, I hated boarding school and returned to Upper Canada, the initial place of my malaise and, while I didn’t start off terribly – “tried hard”, “applied himself” & “prepared & organized” – I quickly spiraled in my last three years to “allowing himself to drift”, “displayed no interest” & “a year of bumps”.

My overall final grade was barely 60% due to the fact that I was forced to take a class – Physics – which wasn’t required for graduation. I rarely attended the classes – opting to skate on the school rink instead – and ended up with a final of 26%.

There was a lot of talk about my attitude for this, but more than anything, it just made me realize how stupid adults really were..

Fuck Pedagogy: My Life in School

My autobiographical writing on teaching practices, Fuck Pedagogy, has been a challenge to because a clear through-line is needed for the reader to follow along. The point of the book is to emphasize teaching with knowledge of content and engagement with students. The following bits didn’t make the cut: I fell from the jungle gym and my Kindergarten teacher split her head open on the same bars when she came running to help me. She was young and beautiful and they took her away in an ambulance. She never came back. An old bitter woman took her place.

I found a stack of old Playboy magazines down the block from school and was crazily delighted by that. I couldn’t look inside, fearful of the nude women I might find, and instead shoved them all into a post box, thinking the postman would like that. Principal Fair told me what I had done was a crime and made me promise to never do it again.

I skipped Grade Three. I didn’t understand why, but they told me to get my things and move to the next room. And there I was, suddenly in Grade Four, taking a spelling quiz along with all of the other Grade Four students. It all seemed fine until I couldn’t spell the word “sheep”. I think I put an ‘a’ in there somewhere. Anyway, that was the end of that. I was solemnly walked back down the hall and returned to Grade Three. It’s an experience that has confused me to this day.

First Writing Contest: Owls in the Family

I entered my first writing competition in Grade 4, submitting “My Summer Holiday” story like everyone else. 20150812_110903I had implemented many of the key elements into my tale of hauling wood across the lake – a startled bat flying from the boat house foreshadowing doom, a boat overflowing with wood maintaining tension, my father hanging onto the motor as the boat sank for comic relief and my unbridled terror as I descended into the dark water for the voice – even if I had no idea what I was doing. still-blue-water I fell over backward in my chair when they announced my name as the winner in a school assembly and I was presented with an inscribed copy of Farley Mowat’s Owls in the Family. owlsinthefamilyIt remains the only contest I have won, except for a contest to describe the great taste of Hire Root Beer in which I used a nonsensical parade of ‘f’ words, including fizzy and fantastic. hiresrootbeerI earned an ‘Honorable Mention’ for that and a pair of radio headphones. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I might have peaked too soon.