My Mother the Teacher

My Mother was a teacher. She taught in schools for a relatively few years, and then she dedicated her life to teaching her own children. For Mother's Day I would like to tell some stories of her first teaching job in 1942 at Speedwell School in northwest Saskatchewan. She was asked to go out teaching after barely starting teacher's college because of the teacher shortage during WW2.

When my Mother was first at Speedwell she was told that the oldest boy in the school was a trouble maker, and would likely just end up in jail someday. On the first day of school my Mother talked to this boy and said "You are the oldest student here so I am going to need your help. Some people say you can not succeed but I do not believe that. I believe you will do well." And he did. My Mother always had a heart for people that others looked down upon, and believed in emphasizing the positive in people.

Speedwell was in a relatively poor area and the children felt inferior to the better nearby Jack Pine school. In the book "Of This Earth" Rudy Wiebe writes: " I remember grade two very well because of Miss Hingston: she very much wanted us Speedwellers with our weathered log-and-plaster school -- Jack Pine four miles away now had beautiful board siding painted creamy yellow with brown trim around the door and windows -- to be proud of ourselves. So she took individual pictures of every class and when we told her we had never won a softball game against Jack Pine she drilled us every noon and after school ... and we won both games first on our diamond and then on theirs."

Of course this is a story that I know well from my Mother, teaching her students to believe they could win the ball games even if they had never won before. This was her nature to cheer for the "underdogs" whether in sports or everyday life. She taught her students the basic subjects, but more than that she taught them to believe they will succeed.