That is to say, that there was a lot of inner and outer turmoil in my world, as I stood before the thirty (plus) grade 8 students of St. Michael’s junior high in Brandon, MB1. I was 23 years old.
At this beginning of this teaching adventure, I had three hopes: 1) Students would learn to love themselves more deeply. 2) Students would learn to love each other more deeply, and 3) Students would learn to love learning.
Alongside such lofty ideals, I also fully believed that without classroom discipline, none of that could happen. So facing my energetic/volatile adolescent charges, who had one foot in childhood, and the other in adulthood, I became a cop. I had classroom discipline! With each passing year, I loosened up a bit. But the students that first year got my “full cop” persona. The fact that I had been a bit of a juvenile delinquent myself, equipped me to anticipate most (but not all) possible schemes. We had hard times together. We had fun times together. Then the students moved on, and so did I.
Fast forward fifty+ years to May 10, 2022. I was invited to a Brandon gathering of those students cobbled together by one of them. Those adolescents were now senior citizens. I had become older than I ever imagined I would be.
The fifteen of us present had a most glorious reunion. I recognized some former students very quickly, even wearing their “years” and Covid masks. Others took a bit more time, until they laughed or smiled, or spoke.
What did we talk about? We talked about ourselves, where we had been and what we had seen. We talked about who we were, and who we were becoming. We called to mind classmates who had died. We shared the last known addresses of others who would be invited to “the next one”, we laughed and told stories about “those days” and about “these days”.
We shared a lunch together that the organizers had arranged in the “party room” of another former student’s condo.
Not every teacher gets to meet her students again 50+ years after she saw them off from Junior High. It’s a privilege and a blessing, and in pondering it all, the words of Diane Ackerman, an American poet, essayist, and naturalist came to mind:
Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? …We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.2
Shape-shifters and magical reinventors we are! Connecting with these men and women as they are today was energizing, and joyous. It evoked myriad memories. It manifest how wonderfully each of us has changed and grown. Including me.
Furthermore, as I have reflected about this gathering, it has occurred to me that just maybe, in spite of me, my youthful teaching ideals were realized too. Realized in all of us, in mysterious ways, marvelous to behold.
1 St. Michael’s has since closed.
2 Diane Ackerman. Accessible at: https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/diane-ackerman-1226.php
Veronica Dunne is a Sister of our Lady of the Missions (RNDM), who has primarily worked as an educator and counsellor in institutional and community based settings in Canada. She has also served with the RNDMs outside of Canada in Senegal, Peru, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
A 2002 Doctor of Ministry graduate from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto, she subsequently served as director of the Doctor of Ministry program at St. Stephen’s College at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Her current research interests are in eco-theology and cosmology, and their intersections with indigenous cosmologies and spiritualties.
She presently serves on the RNDM leadership team in Canada.
I love this reflection. It reminds me of my grade eight year when I was 14 and our teacher, a Holy Name sister, was 24. I thought she was the greatest two-legged being I had ever met! She inspired me to learn guitar, and years later wrote to me while I was in the novitiate; I was feeling so far away from home in Regina. The joy of your reunion is so palpable, Veronica. I should write a letter to my grade eight teacher…
Your account Veronica brought up several similar happy memories for me of past pupil reunions. Just this last weekend I met up with a woman who turned 60 this year and that was our first meet up since she’d left school in 1977. I came away from that meeting so inspired with what she had done with her life in spite of it reading like a horror story for the first half her life. With the help of her partner she’s been able to turn all the messiness of her life into compassionate outreach to nearly every group of marginalized in our cities. She who left school at 15 and has been in a wheelchair for nearly 30 years finally went on to gain a PH D in Law and now spends a good portion of her time working as a Human Rights lawyer. “you can always choose how to respond ” she told me, having been helped to come to believe that after a couple of failed suicide attempts. So true, I thought. “I put before you life or death, choose life”. A resurrection encounter in Eastertide.
I read your reflection between classes for grades 7s and 8s yesterday, frustrated with the energy I was pouring into classroom discipline! It was soothing to take the “long view” with you, Veronica, and to share in the delight of your class reunion. Thank you.
I find what you have shared here such a hopeful insight into our continuing development as humans. You also inspire me to wonder what other “selves” are still to be revealed in me? Thank you for writing this, Veronica!