Daily Meaning: Counternarratives of Teachers' Work

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

In this book, 11 teachers reflect on their experiences in an education
system that is experiencing the effects of cutbacks. One of those
effects is that teachers are now expected to serve not only as
intellectual mentors, but also as surrogate parents, social workers,
counselors, security guards, paramedics, and psychologists.

The editor is a faculty member in the Literacy Education Program at
Mount Saint Vincent University, and at least half of his contributors
work in Nova Scotia. Some of the stories are predictably dismal. In a
piece sparked by the Ontario teachers’ strike of 1997, Gary Knowles
reflects on his experiences in the South Pacific that convinced him to
leave the frontline to teach at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education. (Sadly, he is not the only contributor who has departed the
frontline.) In one of the book’s more uplifting accounts, Pat Clifford
and Sharon Friesen, who observe that a school system that “flattens
the complexities and contradictions of the contrary child also seeks to
flatten those complexities and contradictions in its teachers,” win
their battle to teach the way they think best.

This unique and well-written book should be read by parents, as well as
by politicians and bureaucrats who think that excellence in education
begins with cuts. As Daily Meaning makes clear, excellence in education
begins with teachers.