Substitute teaching in a variety of locations has a way of opening one’s eyes to realities we may overlook when we spend much of our professional life in the same building. Sometimes a trip across town is a greater leap than a voyage abroad. This reflection takes a hard look at issues of equality in Canadian schools.

I recently walked into a Grade 3 French immersion classroom in a rural community.  The students greeted me with rosy cheeks and cheery smiles as they walked in the doors and peeled off their abundant snowsuits.  They immediately went about the serious business of being obedient schoolchildren.  They hung on my every word (partly because I spent a good part of the morning impersonating Red Riding Hood in French, and partly because it was their natural habit of mind). 

The most challenging students in the room were two boys who were obsessed with measuring things and doing puzzles.  I had to confiscate their tape measure at one point because they were estimating and checking when they were supposed to be writing stories.  I commented that one of the mathematicians may want to consider being an engineer one day (at this point he was using the springing function of the tape measure to carefully propel objects across his desk).  “No,” he said.  “I want to be a farmer.  My dad wants to take over my grandpa’s farm, and then I’m going to be a farmer, too.  I really want to be a farmer.”

The picture of wholesomeness.

The next day I walked into a Grade 3 classroom in an English school in an urban neighbourhood on the literal “wrong side of the tracks.”  A little girl in a pink coat was curled up in fetal position on the carpet, and remained there, unmoving, until I left.  “Give me back my g**d**m slime!” exclaimed another girl, flopped on a bean bag, grinning feverishly.  Little boys ran around in their stocking feet, sugaring themselves with Christmas treats at 9am. 

“Is there anything I should know?” I asked the teacher.