Teaching: An Intergenerational Conversation
"A professor once referred to education as an intergenerational conversation," says David Hildebrand of Garden Valley Collegiate in Winkler, Manitoba. "That phrase really struck me at the time and has stayed with me through the years."
To call education an intergenerational conversation is true on many levels, he comments. Teachers are more experienced and older than their students, but rather than placing themselves on the other side of a generational divide, teachers act as bridges between the knowledge they are imparting and the students who receive it.
It is a conversation because it can move both ways, adds Betty MacLure of Wainwright Elementary School in Wainwright, Alberta. Recently, she had the delight and privilege of team teaching with a very special student-teacher, her own daughter. "My daughter says that she learned a great deal from our time together in the classroom, but so did I!" MacLure had more knowledge and experience than did her daughter, but the young woman had fresh insights, approaches and attitudes to teaching. Both benefited from the exchange.
But as attitudes and assumptions develop and change from one generation to the next, how much translation is needed for the generations to have a meaningful conversation?
"I'm not sure that translation is needed," muses Pascale Baillargeon, one of two high school teachers at Qaqqalik School in Kimmirut, Nunavut. Rather than education intervening to interpret or translate one generation to the other, "I think what's needed is the opportunity to communicate and develop an understanding of each other's experience and point of view."
Northern communities are rapidly changing on many fronts, she explains. Learning is shifting from an oral, cultural base to a written one. With the closing of residential schools, many communities are raising their teens for the first time. As well, southern media is introducing new attitudes and perspectives at a dizzying rate.
Baillargeon sees education as the catalyst that allows generations to communicate and explain their assumptions and attitudes to each other. "It creates links between the generations. As teachers, we can use the oral, anecdotal tradition to propose projects that have our students seeking out common understanding and developing conversations with the rest of the community."
Intergenerational Inspiration
Many of this year's Prime Minister's Award recipients were inspired to go into teaching after a positive encounter with a teacher.
Peter Gallant
"I was actually going into music performance. When I was studying music at university, one of my professors caught my attention. The way he taught his class and presented music as an affective domain, I found fascinating. When I toured some classes taught by some of his former students, I was blown away by the impact on the students and made the decision that I wanted to do this, too."
Kim Lewis
"It was unexpected. I didn't intend to be a teacher. I was studying English at university and also joined a drama club. One of my professors was just on fire for her subject - she really loved teaching - and I thought 'I'd love to do that, too!' There's nowhere else I could be that's as effective in young people's lives."
Blake Seward
"Watching my teachers in high school, I remember thinking, 'Wouldn't it be great to be the one the students remembered?'"
Kevin Harrison
"Teachers were an important part of my development. Growing up in a single-parent family in the heart of Toronto's Cabbagetown, my teachers taught me that education equals opportunity. They provided me with a stable base, my sanctuary. When I finished school, I got a job working as an electrical apprentice but the men I was working with convinced me that I could do more with my life. I went to B.C. on vacation and fell in love with the place, toured UBC and really took the time to ask myself what I wanted to do with my life. And the answer was 'Be a teacher.'"
Jack Trovato
"My drama teacher in high school was wonderful. I knew that I wanted to do what he did someday. It's such a marvellous profession and a noble calling, to be able to pass things on to future generations. Teaching is not a job; it's a vocation."
This approach can work in the South as well. "When I need a part of Canadian history explained or brought to life, I go talk to my Nana," says Blake Seward, who teaches history at Smiths Falls District Collegiate Institute in Smiths Falls, Ontario. (His Nana was 101 in July 2003.) "She's a fascinating woman and can not only tell me what happened, but what it meant at the time, what she felt at the time." Seward's conversations give him a greater insight into and appreciation of Canada's history and an understanding of how today's society developed from those roots.
Seward arranges for his students to gain the same understanding by sending them out to interview veterans' families in the community for his Lest We Forget project. "They gain a real understanding of what happened - that war isn't a movie or the date of a battle; it's a real soldier's real experience." The students come to understand that concepts such as patriotism and nationalism are viewed differently today, he adds.
But more than that, the students develop a firm relationship with the seniors and often continue to visit them long after their history project is finished.
These students' experiences highlight an important point to remember about education as an intergenerational conversation, remarks Peter Gallant, who teaches instrumental music and social studies at Summerside Intermediate School in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. "While it's a conversation, it's not - and can't be - a completely equal dialogue."
Teachers are older and know more than students do. On many fronts, students have more to learn from teachers than teachers need to learn from students. Teachers are entitled to respect. This is something students need to learn and be reminded of, Gallant insists. "Sometimes part of the conversation has to be, 'You haven't lived long enough to talk to me like that.'"
Patti Sebestyen, who runs the Opening Doors Program, an alternative school in Saskatoon, agrees that respect for those older and wiser is an important lesson for young people to learn. Yet, sometimes finding someone who is willing to take on a conversation with a student to build the kind of relationship that Seward and Gallant are talking about is difficult. "Many of my kids don't have any adults in their life, let alone an adult that's going to say anything useful to them," Sebestyen says.
For this reason, she invites older members of the community - including her own mother, who is a regular visitor - into the school. "I believe strongly in developing that connection between the generations. It gives both an opportunity for insight and teaches the kids respect and correct behaviour."
Sebestyen tells of an occasion when an older woman visited the school uninvited. A few days before, the woman had slipped and fallen in a mall. Three of Sebestyen's students, who were loitering there with the rest of their gang (!), helped the woman to her feet. The woman tracked them down to the Opening Doors Program and came to tell Sebestyen what had happened and to thank the boys again. Though sheepishly silent while she was there, the boys were intrigued and impressed that someone would take the time to recognize their actions. "For my students, an intergenerational conversation makes a huge difference."