People

The Joy Of Teaching

BANNO KAUR BAJAJ

I was just finishing my internship in 2004 at OISE-UT (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education – University of Toronto) when I was offered a job at Khalsa Community School, then in Malton (Ontario, Canada).

A good friend was a teacher there and had arranged for an interview with the school’s Principal, Sardar Ripsodhak Singh Grewal. Needless to say, I was apprehensive before meeting him.

I knew my ideas on education were ‘progressive’ … to put it mildly. I had completed my schooling in India. All through my school life I was the quintessential ‘misfit,’ the perennial ‘under achiever‘, one who always had a ‘definite potential‘ but wouldn’t actualize because of her “complacency,” or because she just wouldn’t pay attention in class. And “disorganized” … “untidy”.

I wasn’t aware how deeply these labels had affected me, and how much of my opinion of my own capabilities was derived from them.

The Indian educational system was too structured, too cumbersome, too regimental, and too opaque to lend itself to individual needs of students such as myself. There was no room for those who didn’t fit the prototype, those who couldn’t see the world in black and white and insisted on multitudes of grey, and those who insisted on musing at the various reasons, instead of just focusing on the result.

There was one kind of student who would succeed in that set up. I wasn’t that student.

Especially since there was absolutely no room for any fun.

Ironically, in many ways, I was shaped by the very system that I detested. In resisting and rebelling against it, I unwittingly let it shape me. I was a self-styled iconoclast, a rebel and a back-bencher, through university as well.

My behavior and attitude towards education had become such that my teachers’ comments seemed to become prophetic divinations. 

As I was driving for my interview I was enveloped by a dread that Khalsa Community School may be an extension of this very same education system. I didn’t want to become an enabler in the very system which had scarred my self-esteem so permanently; which had not only predicted my failure but caused it.

I entered the interview room with a bulging portfolio and a head buzzing with ‘left-wing’ ideas heavily influenced by Vygotsky (a direct result of my OISE education) and met the Principal, a slim, smart and distinguished looking older Sikh gentleman.

I don’t really remember much of the interview. I can only imagine it must have gone well, as I was offered a job teaching Grade Five that very day. What I do remember is how kind his eyes were and how I came out feeling that he listened; not just heard but really listened to all my ideas on teaching and on how a classroom should be run. He wasn’t dismissive, superior or condescending. He didn’t have the “teachers-are-a-dime-a-dozen” attitude I had detected in some conversations with principals during my time as an intern. 

I felt respected and valued.

As I left the room, ecstatic for having landed my first teaching job, he prepared me for the years to come: it is going to be quite a ride, he had said.

And he was right.

When I started teaching at Khalsa Community School, it was what I used to call a “small community school”. While the classes were then Kindergarten through Grade Eight, most of the student population was concentrated in the younger grades. Students thinned out after Grade Six.

Being a “Community” school it couldn’t afford a fraction of the resources that the public school boards or other elite private institutions had. “Mr. G” (as I now call him) had said his mandate was to make an affordable, quality, Canadian education rooted in the Sikh value system available to members of the community.

So he stubbornly refused to raise the tuition. 

You’ll have to be “creative,” Mr. G had said while hiring me. “Sure,” I remember having chimed out, eager to please, blissfully ignorant of what that would entail. 

As a first year teacher with 40 students, not too many resources, and a mandate to integrate Sikhi into a secular curriculum with very little hand holding, I needed a lot of creativity and the daily ardaas to get through my day.

I remember sitting hands-folded in the morning assembly on my first day at school as the children were doing kirtan. Moved to tears by the sound of young voices woven together in supplication and little hands playing the tabla, my heart welled up with inexplicable emotions. I was afraid I would start sobbing and be spotted by a student. That just won’t do, I remember telling myself.

I was understandably apprehensive to start my job but at the very same time I was so proud to be part of this gathering. As I looked around, I realized most of those who had gathered in that hall sitting hands-folded, heads bowed in the Gadara, were under 12 years of age, herded by a small group of teachers.

I experienced a deep sense of belonging.

That was eleven years ago …

Four years ago, Khalsa Community School moved out of the Malton Gurdwara to its current Maitland Street location in Brampton (Ontario, Canada). It had taken over the premises previously occupied by a Catholic middle school. The students cheered the move as the “new” building had more space, a computer room and a much coveted gymnasium.

And as a veteran teacher I can say with good authority that nothing is more important to students than a gymnasium except, of course, the soccer field.

Over the last ten years, I have seen this institution emerge out of its infancy and step into adolescence.

In fact for the past many years, the prestigious Fraser Institute has been ranking it amongst the most desirable schools in the Province of Ontario. I don’t mind taking a quick pat on the back on behalf of the school and its staff: Khalsa School has maintained excellent academic standards consistently achieving near perfect scores in the EQAO and Math competitions such as the Mathematica.

But again, and more importantly (especially to the students), the school has developed its sports offerings. Besides the soccer team, it now offers students (both girls and boys) many opportunities to participate in group and competitive sports such as basketball, field hockey, etc. Slowly but surely its teams led by young energetic and enthusiastic teachers are making a name for themselves in the SSAF (Small Schools Athletic Federation) in Ontario.

Khalsa Community School isn’t small anymore.

With a student population pushing upwards of 1200 students, many more are wait-listed. The only thing that stands between those waiting in line and admission is the fact that the building cannot physically accommodate any more bodies. As yet.

With plans to build a second level on the already existing building, more growth and expansion seems not only imminent but also inevitable.

However, like all adolescents, the school grows each day. Its growth isn’t neat or tidy, not easy to predict, and not without its fair share of growing pains. The growth however is organic. Not only is it guided by the vision of our Principal but also more importantly, the school’s growth is a response to the need of the community.

The parents, some of whom have three or four children in the school, are as

invested in its future as the many teachers (I am one among whom) who have spent many years of their life teaching here. Like any good organization, the whole is much larger than the sum of all its parts.

Like many, I have found a home in this institution. Just like the school, I too have grown, and again this growth hasn’t come without its fair share of growing pains. I have argued in staff meetings, testing authority, asking questions and insisting on more autonomy. Sometimes taken quixotic risks that employees who are less invested or opinionated will not take.

Much like the school, my personal journey as a teacher in KCS has been messy and real. I don’t fit the prototype of the teacher the same way I didn’t fit that of a student. In that aspect I haven’t changed.

But that’s the thing about learning: it’s a messy affair. More than anything, when asked why I go back to teach year after year, my response has remained the same: because it’s so much fun!


August 19, 2015
 

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