When I was attending university, I couldn’t really decide what I wanted to do in life. My mother said, “Why not major in education, you can always get a job as a teacher.”
Since I couldn’t make up my mind about other majors, that is what I did. It worked out well for me because it did enable me to immigrate to Canada, where I found a teaching job available up in a lumber mill that no Canadian would take. I was happy to take the job teaching in the remote one room school. Above you can see a photo of me and my school.
While many people talk about starting at the bottom and working their way up. My teaching career took the opposite track. I started at the top and worked my way down. In that first teaching job, I was the whole school. I was the principal, the teacher, the maintenance man, the secretary, and even the “bus” driver (actually it was a pickup truck that I drove down to the shore of Takla Lake to pick up the kids from an Indian family that lived down there.)
After 3 years of teaching in the isolated camp, Joan and I needed to get out, and I took a teaching job in Avola, BC. There my position declined somewhat. I was no longer a principal, but was given the title “Head Teacher” in the two room school. As I mentioned yesterday, we hated living in Avola, despite having a highway where we could actually drive away to other places.
A year was enough time to spend in Avola, so after the school year was over I resigned and we moved to McBride, BC. I didn’t have a teaching job there, but we bought a home, and I hoped that a job would materialize. I put my name on the substitute teacher’s list, and did a lot of subbing, but a full time jog never materialized, but eventually I got a job making maps for the BC Forest Service.
Thus ended my teaching career, from principal to substitute teacher in just 5 years.
You can see my paintings at: www.davidmarchant.ca
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