A Teacher Who Lived For His Job, His Students

DAVE BROWN WAS AN OUTDOOR EDUCATION TEACHER TO THE END - DESPITE GOVERNMENT CUT-BACKS THAT DESTROYED HIS PROGRAMS

HAMILTON TEACHER WAS BORN THIS WAY

     THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT'S FISCAL BATTERING, IN THE LATE 1990'S, DESTROYED THE HAPPY ENDING OF DAVE BROWN'S TEACHING CAREER. SO WHO CARES? WE CAN'T ALL RETIRE AFTER WINNING THE GREY CUP, OR ACHIEVING SOME SPECTACULAR EXIT AWARD AT THE PLACE WE WORK. BUT AS THE PRESENT PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT FEELS COMPELLED TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM THE AIR AMBULANCE OVER-SPENDING DEBACLE, BY TRYING A TORY MOVE TO BEAT-UP TEACHERS AND THEIR RIGHT TO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, BY GOLLY, I HAVE A STORY TO SHARE. JUST FOR THE RECORD, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT MY WIFE IS A TEACHER, BECAUSE FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS NOW, I HAVE DISTANCED MYSELF FROM COMMENT, WHENEVER THERE HAS BEEN UNION / MANAGEMENT STRIFE. IN FACT, AS FORMER EDITOR OF THE HERALD-GAZETTE, IN BRACEBRIDGE, DURING THE MAJOR TEACHER STRIKE IN MUSKOKA (1980'S), I STEPPED AWAY FROM EDITORIAL WRITING SO AS NOT TO GENERATE CALLS ABOUT CONFLICT OF INTEREST. OUR PAPER'S POLICY JUMPED BACK AND FORTH DEPENDING ON THE DEVELOPMENTS EACH WEEK, AND SOMETIMES IT SUPPORTED THE TEACHERS, AND OTHER TIMES, THE BOARD. WHILE I WON'T DENY OUR HOUSEHOLD HAS TO AVOID POLITICAL-TALK AROUND THE DINNER TABLE, WE SUPPORT SUZANNE AS A TEACHER……AND THAT IS UNCONDITIONAL. SHE HAS ALWAYS SUPPORTED ME IN MY PROFESSIONAL PURSUITS, AS SHE DOES WITH THE BOYS IN MUSIC, SO IT SHOULDN'T BE ANY SURPRISE THAT WE WILL ARGUE VEHEMENTLY AGAINST ANYONE, GROUP OF GOVERNMENT…..THAT TAKES A CHEAP-SHOT AT HER PROFESSION. THIS IS WHEN I GET MOST FRUSTRATED ABOUT WHAT'S HAPPENING IN OUR PROVINCE, BECAUSE IT HAPPENED BEFORE……AND IT HAD A DEVASTATING IMPACT ON A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE……DESTROYING AN OUTDOOR EDUCATION PROGRAM HE HAD SCULPTED FROM NEXT TO NOTHING ,TO ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING RESOURCE CENTRES IN THE PROVINCE. AND IT WAS ONLY A CLASSROOM BUT WOW WHAT A CLASSROOM.

HERE'S WHAT PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEACHERS AND THEIR WORK DAYS

     Dave Brown lived and breathed outdoor education. Even now, well more than a decade after his death, I still run into people a dozen times each year, who knew him, or were taught by him, in the Hamilton school system. I've never heard any one, who knew Dave Brown, describe him as run-of-the-mill or just another teacher amongst thousands. A long time outdoor instructor with summer camps such as Camp Comak, near Dorset, and an associate with Camp Kandalore, a short distance away, Dave was highly skilled in the art of teaching natural history, and outdoor survival, to the young people of our province. He was an expert canoeist, and as far as a role model in the outdoors, Dave was an enchanter. Even as a young man, Dave wanted to be a teacher. There was only one time he had doubts, and after being upset by some Board policies he didn't care for, Dave took this short span of time in his life to run as a trustee, which was successful, and served faithfully as a Board of Education member. He hated it. He wasn't cut out to be an administrator, like his father had been, in executive management of the Hamilton General Hospital. Dave was a ground floor person, who just wanted to be allowed to excel and improve on an old model of education.

     One thing about it, he knew how to saddle up to board members and senior administrators, to push some of his projects and models to fruition. He was very persuasive. I know this personally, because he used to spend a lot of weekends at our house, before and after major outdoor junkets with his trademark yellow canoe, lashed to his old red Ford pickup. Without knowing it at the time, Dave was willingly giving me his biographical information, because he knew early in our relationship, that I would be the writer he was going to recruit to pen an outdoor education text. Dave died shortly after we began work on the project. I had a lot of information gathered, so that wasn't the problem. The main challenge for me, was "not" being angry about what had happened to this incredibly generous teacher, who never, ever got paid for his huge amount of over-time, working to improve his outdoor education centre, near the Botanical Gardens.

     Dave liked getting a pay cheque. He didn't get his pay, and then donate it to a charity. He was frugal, and put a lot of money into his obsession for non-fiction books. But what most people knew, who worked side by side the man for years, was that he enjoyed being a teacher……and would have shown up for work every day whether there was a pay day…..or not. Let me explain. When Dave shut down the outdoor education centre, at the end of the school day, he never stopped thinking about new displays for the room, more exciting upcoming field trips, and of course his pride and joy, the display cases at the Hamilton Board of Education head offices. I can remember him telling me about logging antiques he was gathering, with samples of stamped pine he had pulled from Muskoka and Algonquin area swamps, (on his days off), that would make-up the very next exhibit. I still have his rough diagrams, for these and other displays he was planning. He'd sit at a campfire, on some remote lake, and make these copious notes about the supplies he needed, the artifacts he could offer on loan, and reminders about the friends he would hit up for artifacts from their private collections. He'd beg stuff off me, and I'd loan him anything he wanted…..because it was going to help educate the young people he was so proud of, at the Hamilton Board.

     Dave and I talked often about retirement, and he had a plan for the future. He wouldn't set a date or make any commitment that it would be sometime in the next decade……just "when I retire." When the Provincial Conservatives waged their own stupid war with the teachers, and leveled cutbacks on school boards, administrators and trustees, who he thought were onside and his close friends, betrayed him in his mind, by looking at his outdoor education program as an easy and obvious expense to reduce. They didn't care that they were quite literally, destroying a man's professional life, who had always been the keenest, most faithful staffer, and greatly loved teacher. It didn't matter a hoot. The government of the day was too set on their agenda, to have ever looked at the collateral damage they were causing, and the impact on students who lost a hugely important program, staffed by an incredibly talented teacher. There was much more carnage than this, and a lot of programs met the same fate. I just happened to be close to this human disaster.

     When Dave phoned to tell me that he was being sent back to a traditional classroom, and that his outdoor education program had been cut from the curriculum, for the entire board, I knew it was the beginning of the end for my friend. No, I can't blame his death on government cutbacks. I would like to, because in many ways, I know it was the reason for his depression, and resignation that his usefulness to society had run its course. When he phoned a short while later to complain, that he was miserable in his new environment, and the students were even stealing the bones off his medical skeleton, brought from the resource centre, there was no mistaking that Dave wasn't going to last much longer at his post. It was only a few weeks later that he had asked for a medical leave, as his health was deteriorating. It wasn't because of rowdy students……because he knew how to deal with that kind of behavior, and it wasn't the result of losing his outdoor centre, because we know it was a serious disorder of the blood. It didn't help though, that his career had been uprooted, by government bean counters and assorted other toadies, who had never stepped foot in this fine man's enchanted outdoor education classroom. If the minister of education, had taken a small road trip, and a few minutes of time, to visit Dave's well appointed classroom, occupied by every kind of wild creature, alive and conserved, they would have known, two feet inside the door, that the teacher responsible for this collection, needed to be rewarded and recognized……for going above and beyond the call of duty. Of course, that would have required a minister who thought about such intricacies while making broad stroke slashes to funding. The Board should have stood up for Dave Brown, and found a way to keep him where he was……just a matter of re-payment of loyalty, so he could have retired content, his life had been well invested. This is what hurt him so profoundly that it brought him to personal agony. He was tossed on the heap of retired teachers, and he hated it. As long as he had the strength to conduct a walk in a forest or pasture, with kids in tow, he wanted to stay employed…..feel useful, and help youngsters related to the great outdoors.

     Dave Brown was as good teacher. I travelled on some of his outdoor walks with him, and students hung off his every word;…..and his tales of life in pioneer times, held them spellbound, as he described the hardships they endured in their drafty, ramshackle shanties on barren farmsteads. I'm not easy to hook. I hated school, and never achieved even close to what my boys and Suzanne did as students. So when this teacher, Mr. Brown, wanted me to work on his biography, I most definitely hesitated…….because I didn't think I could be fair, as I had only a few teachers in my school years, that I actually looked up to as role models. With Dave, my reluctance was short-lived. What I discovered about this consummate professional, was that he not only loved his profession, but couldn't see himself as anything else in life. Even though he was a highly successful collector of rare books, and could have made lots of money as a tree-remover, or building wrecker (he helped demolition industrial buildings for several Hamilton companies), he realized in his late teens, that he was meant to be an instructor. He worked beyond what he had to, in order to get a teaching certificate, and it can be said of Mr. Brown, that he never stopped the learning process, just because he had made it to the classroom. His was a life of learning, and what he knew, he passed on generously to his students.

     One day, Dave Brown showed up at our house, covered in mud. Head to toe. When I asked him what he had gotten up to, in order to get this mud-colored, he told me about an old white pine log, he had found a year earlier in a local swamp. He had marked it then, and planned to return to harvest it, for his Board of Education display case. It had a logging company stamp impressed on the end, which made it valuable to him…..and I suppose any one else who collects logging artifacts. He had some of the iron stamps used to make these marks, so he knew all about the significance of this particular stamp and company. He never stopped researching things like this. So he arrived back at the site, found the mark he had made on shore, and pulled his canoe up to the sunken log……which was huge. Dave worked at that log for hours and hours and yes, he was covered in leeches. He wrestled the length, which wasn't long but it was heavy, into the canoe, and then waded while pushing the canoe toward the shore. This was a school project. He had this idea for a display, and he was just grabbing up what he needed, one piece at a time, from wherever he could. He wasn't on the clock, and to my knowledge he never submitted a gas receipt, or asked the Board to pay for the chunk of preserved pine. He did the same kind of thing time and again for his resource centre. Like the time, one Christmas holiday, when a friend called him at home, to ask him if he wanted a boa constrictor that had died in the engine of an associate's car. The snake, you see, had escaped from its warm owner's apartment, and once outside, slithered into the first warm environs it found. When the engine cooled the cold blooded snake quickly froze to death. Dave had to work for hours, getting the frozen snake out of the engine compartment. It was to be used at his resource centre, to educate the students who were set to visit in the spring of the year. You want to talk about being spellbound. I've talked to lots of former students, who were bedazzled by that crazy environmentally responsive classroom. It would have pleased Dave, to know so many adults were still talking about their experiences in Outdoor Education……decades after their last farewell to Mr. Brown. He was a legend. But he only ever thought of himself as a teacher.

     There are thousands of teachers just as committed as Dave Brown. Teachers who use their own money, and volunteer hundreds of unpaid hours, to make their programs better and more dynamic for students. They don't do it for recognition. They do it because it's part of the job. Now some will think this is shameful, on my part, to play up Dave Brown, who for personal reasons, wished to work longer than what he was being paid for……and spend his own money on resources the school couldn't or wouldn't afford. The reality is, regardless, that many teachers in similar positions, have to do the same thing because of their own professional commitment, and passion for the job.

     The last few times I talked to Dave Brown, he told me about still going to the resource centre, and taking a few tours each week, for a stipend.  He was sick and discouraged, but to my knowledge, he never let those teachers or students down, who wanted Mr. Brown to run the tours. When we got word he had passed away, admittedly I was mad and in some ways it never diminished, because I believed with all my heart, he had died, in part, of a broken heart. He certainly had lost his will to fight the illness. I very much despise the fact, he had such a horrible end to an illustrious, successful career. I can't possibly blame the government of that day for his death…..because they didn't contaminate his blood. I can blame them heartily, for not looking and learning, before they slashed the budget, that ultimately killed his resource centre, and forced him back into the classroom.

     In the tangle of rhetoric on both sides of this new but old war, there are, believe it or not, teachers like the good Mr. Brown, who just want to pursue their careers to the best of their ability……who are the casualties of politics for politics sake. I don't expect the story of Dave Brown would cause more than a "sure he was" response, from the government, but it's not fiction.

     One thing Dave told me, just before he found out he was sick, was very disturbing to me…..being the spouse of a teacher myself. He said that he was invited, to join with a number of other retired teachers, who used to meet regularly for coffee at a local restaurant. He told me that, "they actually have it worked out, how long retired teachers live once classroom life is over." I don't remember what the number was exactly, but in that group of teachers he was referring, deceased colleagues were lasting about three years before succumbing. I just can't imagine talking about something like this, but let me tell you, I took it seriously. I've known teachers in this bailiwick of Ontario, who have had somewhat the same stats. The withdrawal factor apparently has something to do with it! I am worried about my wife, and the burden of her eventual retirement……as she, like Dave Brown, has imbedded herself in the profession from her late teens, and has never had a serious separation, even after the birth of our two children. I stayed at home, and she went back to work soon after.

     I have had close dealings with teachers. I have no interest in preaching about teachers being worth all the money they are paid. I'm just telling you folks, that there's a lot more to the profession, than the blaring rhetoric and critical headlines you read. This is the other side, I think you should know as well.

     Thank you so much for joining today's blog. Please visit again soon.