My 30-year teaching career as a senior high English teacher almost did not happen.
That fall, I was student-teaching in round 1 at a jr. high school, Spruce Avenue Junior High in the north part of Edmonton. The first batch of writing assignments I took in were horrific: a ridiculous no. of spelling and grammatical errors. ‘Twas very discouraging. Plus some run-ins with kids who were more like animals than human beings.
I vowed I would quit and one evening during the round I was at the Ed Bldg. and happened to run into my ED CI prof Glenn Martin and he talked to me, in an attempt to convince to stick with the round. He said it was worth waiting for the 2nd (sr. high) round in the spring and I trusted him so I hung in.
He was right. In the sr. high round, I had an encouraging, humorous teacher from Aus, Bill Corcoran (who later studied with Martin, then returning to Aus where he later taught u there). And the kids were better, smarter, had fewer errors in their work, and were more civil. I taught 30s Death of a Salesman and 33s– I Never Sang for My Father, and that level of work was clearly more of what I had envisioned when I went into that year of Education after my B.A.
Glenn’s letter (below) opened the door for my first interviews in town and easily got me my first teaching job in the Grand Centre-Cold Lake area in Sept. 1972. We remained close friends and I was, as he told me, the only contact who sent him an Xmas card every year right into the 2000s. (I always remember him at this time of year.) He would often phone me, when least expected, to discuss Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost, and he helped to mentor me into classical music as I drove and accompanied him to ESO Saturday night shows (on his dime), preceded by dinners on him at a popular local Italian restaurant where he was well-known. I am grateful to Glenn for all he did for me and I gave the eulogy at his funeral later.
