Ep9 Private School Education for $400 a Year Part 2

[music] This is part two of my conversations with Michael McMaster, my high school math teacher and curriculum leader of the TOPS program, a public math and science program. In part one, we walked through the history of the program, the late 80s when it started at Overly Secondary and underpopulated inner city school that will later become Marker and Uncle Legit to Michael starting his teaching career and eventually assuming headship of the program through the 90s and the evolution of the program under him all the way until his retirement last year in 2021. The first portion of this episode is actually spill over from our previous conversation from the last episode but the bulk of this episode is from the subsequent conversation that we recently had where we were joined by my lovely girlfriend Melissa, who is currently wrapping up teacher's college herself. A passing of the educational torch, if you will. Please enjoy. [music] Yeah, you know this reminds me a lot of my own career choices. I've never one day worked at a company larger than what's my current 145 people because I don't like bureaucracy. I like the idea of working at smaller companies that are more nimble. You wear many hats and you have more control over your own projects but more importantly, you know, there's no like book this thick on how you should be reviewing each one of your designs and the protocol and process and you can use your own common sense and make the rules yourself. But I guess at this point, there's not much you can do. And this actually helps me go into public versus private education, the topic that I was just talking to with my girlfriend who's studying to be a teacher right now. She's completing her second year of concurrent ed. And I asked her, you know, if you had kids and you were very well off, what would you send them to school? What would be ideal? Because she's doing placements and she has a, I think, a pretty good idea of, I guess, the states of public school education. I said, you have the option if money was no object to you to send your kids to a boarding school, to the UCC's and they would be, you know, they'd be going to school in uniforms with a bunch of other rich kids who've had everything available to the math classes, tutors, the whole nine. Or you could send them to a public school. You can try to move to a more affluent neighborhood and you can try to choose your school. What would you do? So maybe I could turn that question on you. I would, I would have never have wanted to have been in a private school. And I have a lot, my sister taught in private schools and I know people who have, those teachers have it much harder than public, than public school teachers. They are under way, way more scrutiny than I ever experienced as a teacher. You know, places like Upper Canada, they have nice facilities, no doubt. And, you know, that's all very nice. But I always thought in some ways, tops provided a better high school experience in a public setting than places that were charting outrageous amounts of money for their kids to go to school. And I was always embarrassed about asking for the $400 for the enrichment fund every year to pay for the stuff that we would do with you guys. Like Pinecrust costs about $275 a kid to go there. So of the $400, that's where a good chunk of it went. And then, you know, there'd be things in math, class, or English where you got books and stuff. We basically spent the money that you had and I actually kept records so that by the time the end of grade 12, if there was money that had been accumulating over time, it went to offset your grade 12 trip. And then, if people didn't go on the grade 12 trip, which didn't happen very often, I actually gave people back their money. So we provided more of a private school experience in a public school setting for $400 instead of $25,000. Imagine that what could be done in public school education in terms of providing people experiences an opportunity with not very much money. And so I was really proud of that. I actually said, I remember thinking that, you know, when you guys were applying, our big competition was University of Toronto schools. You know, it was either us or them, right? And I thought, I want to put them out of business. If we were to grow, we could put them out of business because, you know, there were a lot of parents who were happy to not pay $25,000 a year and pay $400. You know, that's like that's a pretty good deal. And, you know, even with that, the thing with the money, because I brought that up. There were colleagues of yours over the years where that was $400 more than they had. And not once did anybody get left out of doing stuff because of money. And even the grade 12 trip, you know, when we had a little chunk of change to help offset that, there were like, there were many times almost every year we apply for things to get students some external money because they couldn't afford, and it was more expensive to go in those pictures. No one didn't go because of money. I'm glad to hear that. And so I would pick public education. And like when it came to things like those stupid math contests and everything, you guys just wipes them off the face of the earth for the most of the part. You need all those private schools. So there's like, you know, you don't need to spend that much money to have good education. You just need teachers who care. And when they can sort of like work together in like a small community, like what we had in tops. You know, I'm writing that down. You don't need money. You just need teachers that care. So that actually brings me into a question I prepared beforehand. And I'm going to read it verbatim. Do you think private school education is valuable because of syllabus or attention? Why do some parents shell out the $25,000 a year? Is it just so that it can't be just so that it makes them feel better. I think it makes them feel better. They have the. This is where it's all about perception. They have the perception because they're paying money that they get. Sir, they get value for service and value and service for for the money that they pay because that's how you know you have some of you guys broken. You take it into the shop. You pay money to get it fixed. That sort of causal sort of relationship. So I think people have that. But it's misguided. But you know, it gets ready for you private education for sure. I think for for some kids, the fact that you'll have smaller classes, that sort of environment. There are some kids who really respond to that. And that's good for them. But I don't see that as any different than us providing an enriched math curriculum for people who kind of like math. I think it's similar. And so for some students begin in that sort of environment is good for them. You know, the more I hear about this and the more I look at this retro, expectively, the more it sounds like tops was an experiment in some ways. Oh yeah, I had a really, really good phase and might be in decline now. It did. And we made it up as we were going along. Like, you know, people might find that terrifying to hear. But when I took over as the curriculum leader for the program, that was right when they were getting rid of the OAC year. And we had to make a decision. Do we keep tops as a four year program? Or do we turn it into a three year program? Because it used to be tops was a four year program. And then everybody was thrown into the OAC year. So all their graduating classes were with everybody else. You all got stupidly high marks without having to do much. And that was sort of that sort of level the playing field. We decided to keep it as a four year program. And so then that's like, you know, like think back. to your colleagues who were all concerned about getting into university and what their marks would their marks be less because they were in the top program. And you know, I understand that. I think I think teachers fixed things so that you would not be penalized. In the long run, I think it worked out okay for the most part. I was always a proponent of keeping the OAC here. I thought it was a really good thing. And if you think about how it works elsewhere, like in Quebec, they have that say-jap, right? Where you don't go to university for a couple of years after grade 11 in order to do that. And again, it's just sort of like a maturity thing. In Sweden, they had like, and this is more for young men. Like in Sweden, you would have had to have done mandatory military service that could be up to 18 months before you really go up to it. And that's because they need to get you living away from home and making your own bed and feeding yourself and not being too stupid and like just time to grow up so that then you're ready to do it. And I'm sure that they have similar systems all over the world where it's just something. Yeah, whether, you know, the loss of the fifth year of high school in Ontario, what that effect that haven't been, when I'm sure there's lots of publicly funded studies that went and looked into that. But going back to this idea that tops was an experiment that you were a huge participant in. What was it in you that made that major want to do all this experimenting that said, I don't care about not being commented that I don't mind that a lot of my colleagues, they're not as interested in trying new things. And I'm in this public system where things tend to most lower where, you know, it's a more conservative environment perhaps than maybe a fast pivoting startup, for instance. What was it in you that, you know, propelled you to keep trying these new things and be fairly entrepreneurial in that sense? Well, I, you know, I don't mean to be flippant, but I wonder if I have a bit of attention deficit disorder in that there was lots of stuff that I would look at. And I would want to do because I got a kick out of it. And so in some ways, there was selfish motivations in terms of wanting to try things. And with that being like with that, I would just do it because I wanted to do it. I didn't care about like other, and if other people wanted to come along, great. So part of otherwise, I just didn't want it to turn into like you show up, you go to your class, you do your job, and you go home every day. That wasn't, that's not fun, I thought. And so trying these other things was fun. And then having other colleagues, like there was a serendipity really of having other teachers around who also wanted to try things because they found them fun. Like I'll tell you, that was, that was the magic of what happened. Like really with Henry Van Behmel wanting to run Elk Enkwyn, are you kidding? It's like I always said it was like, it wasn't my cup of tea because I always thought he ran it like the Afghanistan deployment. There was a better that. But you know, he got a kick out of doing that. And so he did all this extra stuff he needed. He put in so much work it was insane. It wasn't. It wasn't. But it's what he liked to do when when Mr. Hussie Michael Hussie was around too. Like there was all sorts of things that he would do. I didn't get it because he was doing this English stuff that like I really liked it was just like too Englishy for me. And but he got a kick out of it. And so what I think what I did as a CL was I just stayed out of their way. Like I like I wasn't going to I wasn't so controlling that it was like, oh well you're not allowed to do that or you shouldn't do this. Like occasionally I might point out things like like, oh if you do that like I don't know I'm going to be really busy. I may not be able to come visit you in prison. And so like you know there's some things that are like, that's maybe not a good idea. But it wasn't ever about the substance of what they wanted to do and what they were. And I may not have understood it, but they did. And they had a passion for it. So I just stood out of the way. And maybe that was just benign neglect. I don't know. You know, when you say that this makes a whole lot of sense because when we were in school and we were going, oh, it's the greatest. And we were really enthusiastic about being in the program. I think we often attributed the magic as you said to the teachers and the energy that you guys put in. What Henry Mr. Van Vehmel put in for the Ogonk and Trip was insane. Like I've never seen anybody create a handbook. For a less than one retrip that you know that he takes 400- His 400-page handbook that he would get printed out and I'd say Henry, no one's ever going to read it. I didn't read it. Don't tell him. I know. Well, I know. Well, I was just, that's where I was like bursting the bubble and you know the truth tell I was like no one's going to read this. Even though it was like a masterfully done. And part of that was you know an attempt to deal with all the edupe abble about curriculum outcomes and stuff like I was the worst team player in the entire TDSB about being concerned about curriculum outcomes because I never read them and I never cared about them. Maybe for the best because it turns out that we did fine on the EQAO. But if we were to, if, if we were to try to recreate tops or something similar other enrichment programs and you were consulted, how would you recommend curating the teachers that go into it? Because they are the secret sauce. They bring in their own flavors and they impart their own passions on the kids and we've seen firsthand that that has a huge effect. So if you were responsible for interviewing them, curating them, what sorts of, what sort of things would you look for? Well, before I get into that, like this is where the, how things are set up with both the teacher union, like OSSTF and how the board goes about hiring people is an obstacle. But in terms of how do you get that, that's where you need people like myself or Michael Hussie or Henry or Miss Wood Cheryl Woods, like various people who are, who, who get it. You put those people together and you, like, you have a, you have a cocktail party somewhere with a whole bunch of perspective teachers and just by meeting and talking with people, I can tell you. I, like, I can tell you, oh, that person over there would be ideal. And part of it is one thing that I always said was I didn't care so much about credentials. Like, you know, it's all nice if someone had a PhD but like that didn't matter. But they needed to have a presence. And if, if they have a presence where they walk into a room and you know that they're there, then, and they, and along with that presence, they have a passion for what they do and a passion outside of what they do, then that's it. Like, you know, that's, that's going to work. So like Henry having his thing about wanting to do outdoor, like all gone, like things, that's not part of being a physics teacher. But it, it complimented what you did in the class. Yeah, or a meat day. Like, like, it was just something else. Like, you know, I was constantly talking to, and maybe you didn't get it. But like anybody who played the piano, the number of piano references I need inside the class about, you know, that it's, you know, a whole bunch of what they were doing was like technique. And so it's, it's like, I'm sorry. Like, you're just not worthy yet of doing like real music. You need to do scales and arpeggios and dominant sevens and get all that in place so that then you don't have to think about it when you actually get something in front of you. And, and so that in my interest that I had with architecture, even though it was really very not very knowledgeable, those sorts of things, teachers bring those other things when they bring those things into the classroom, as well as knowing their subject matter, that's when all these connections start getting made. And that's one thing I used to try to do in my math class, where there's somewhere where I want to get and I could bring in a whole bunch of other things. And then at some point you get the punch line at the end where it ties everything together. And then that's the aha moment. And when those happen, it's like, oh my god, I win. Because then it's like, that's where I think real learning happened. anyway you know it's hard to to do that in vector analysis things. But I tried my best. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty tough lesson to plan for every lesson in their structure in a way where the "ah-ha" comes at the very end. Well, but that's where. that's the art of teaching, I guess, in terms of figuring out where things are, where to go. Being the class in terms of, are they receptive to going where you need to take them? You know, there'd be times I'd be teaching and I'd look around and it's like, there'd be all these slack-jawed, glassy-eyed looks. Oh, yeah, I've lost them. So it's like, you would go up on some diversion somewhere, give them a mental break and then pull them all back in. And that's one of the reasons why I think a good teacher, when they do that, you rarely ever have classroom management issues. Like you don't have kids acting out and being super disruptive. If you make them sit there for, like when we had 75 minute classes and they can't handle more than 30 minutes, you better then they're going to destroy your classroom on you and you won't be able to do anything about it. I don't care how good of a teacher you are. I saw this one video and I think it was an American teacher and it was like his response to COVID and like the procedures that were put in place, like by the government. But it was like just so impactful because he talked about how like for these teachers, they spent years and years and like pouring their heart and soul into their careers and when something like the pandemic happens, you know, it's like they have way more responsibility is they're like expected to just like carry basically like the difference in education and the difference in like the quality and they're expected to just carry it without like any compensation. And then yeah, and he basically gave this like very angry speech and then he quit like on the spot. He was like, I can't do this like this is ridiculous. It sounds like a similar thing was what's going on with the nurses. A huge source of nurses right now and I think they're losing more nurses than they're hiring right now because they're being paid the same and they have double the responsibilities and they're being asked to work double the hours. Yep. And I remember this summer, I saw some of my colleagues from teaching at Garnow and a couple of them when I sort of said how are things. They were in tears because they like like the one thing that that was coming up was there was like this thing called hybrid learning. And I don't know if they're still doing it or not. Like I don't want to know because I just get upset. You're in the classroom, students are in the classroom, you're teaching to those students but you are simultaneously teaching online to those kids who are at home. Now you know there's lots of teachers who wander around the room. They don't stay stagnant in one location. Well that's fine with the camera but if you're moving around the room the camera is going to follow you. So students who were online couldn't hear very well, they couldn't see what was going on. Like you would need a production crew with every teacher in order to try to get that to work properly. And like they like trying to do that because that was what was expected. And don't forget teachers aren't taught how to do this. Are you kidding? Like they have to figure it out on their own. They're expected to use their own equipment. At least that U of T we had the lecterns where the professor they're having technical issues they could press a button and somebody from the stage crew would show up in literally 30 seconds and fix their problems for them. That's great. Text for it. Well, I was I taught. There's someone. Someone I know who was working for. Maybe it was like an insurance company. I don't know. But it wasn't anything ginormous. But whatever it was, their IT crew for their company, which was not that I don't know, maybe a couple hundred people or something. Was larger than the IT crew for the entire TVSB with I don't know how I don't know. 6,000 secondary teachers, I don't know, eight or 10,000 elementary teachers and then all the other people. Like the idea, like there's no IT. We used to refer, there was something called the help desk. We would just call it the unhelp desk because you'd call and you'd be on hold. Like there'd be nothing. Like you couldn't get anything done. And I'll tell you that when the pandemic first hit and we were then to teach at home, no one knew what to do, no one knew how to do it. And myself included. And one thing that at the time, and again, maybe it was just a premonition as to why I needed to get out of teaching was, I resented having to use my home as a classroom. My home is a sanctuary for me that after putting everything I did inside the classroom at school, when I got home, I wanted to block it all out. And like having to set up my living room as a classroom. I was so hard. And then I was using my own equipment. Why should I have to use my own equipment to do my job? Like I don't think that's fair. And so their own computers and stuff were the wear and tear of doing all that. People had to go out and buy stuff. And I resented that. And because I don't think teachers should have to do that because enough is expected of them, that's not right. Now, if they want to give me a $3,000 laptop and like a really good camera and all this other stuff, but like I remember having to sign up when I could eventually get in the school. So I could steal one of those flip chart boards. But I didn't have one of those. And then fighting as to whether or not then when I bought the paper that goes on the flip boards, whether or not I would get compensated for that. And there were lots of things where about the board is going to compensate people over whatever. I put those bills in with sort of the expectation, you're damn well going to pay these because I'm doing my job for you. Did they? In my house. I think they did. But like it took months and months and months. And like I spent like $100. Like, Cripes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that goes to show what you were saying earlier that we are almost definitely under investing in education and public education here in this part of the world. And that goes in accordance with, I guess the second article they sent you guys this week, from the interview with the Robert Putnam guy that wrote the book on how we need to invest in other people's children because that seems to be the best investment that we can make. And when we say other people's children, we mean as a whole, as in just because you're an upper middle class person and you live in a white pick of fence home and you drive, you have two SUVs between you and your wife. And you can send your kids to the private school that all your rich friends and also send their kids to. Your kids probably doing fine because they're taking Taekwondo on the side and if they're not doing so well on math, you can send them to Kumon. All the other kids who are struggling, they will be falling behind. A lot of them won't finish high school. A lot of them will probably end up in the criminal system or NB, frankly burdens on society. And that's bad for everybody. Well, there's unfortunately a lot of people who, again, they're so resentful about having to pay taxes. They think if they shouldn't have to deal with those things. But that's where it gets all messy because it's true. If we do not invest in things like mental health initiatives, then or in people who have addiction issues, they become a huge problem. They become more expensive to deal with the acute systems of when people become ill and they need to access hospital care. It's more expensive to deal with that than to give them affordable housing. But some of those things require a 20 year plan in terms of setting those up and getting those things going, which is one of the terms of a politician. It's longer than a term of a politician. And so they don't do that. And it's too bad. And so I briefly let that, some of those articles you sent me and the guy going on, there's elements of truth. truth in both of them in terms of what but like it's true I believe that for a lot of people elementary school is there's an element of babysitting. You know I always find it amazing how people will go on and they're up plotting their elementary school teachers and what a great job teachers do but as soon as teachers go on strike after two weeks the outrage comes in because people have to look after their own kids and they get tired of it and I get that I really do but it's just like well well doesn't that I think that's more indicative than that well we don't have after we don't have other programs for kids like in place to to sort of offset that because people do need to go off to work and and all these and like it it's a complicated issue but like the the whole idea of also what we should be teaching kids for jobs well that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard because half of it is that kids who are in elementary school right now we have no clue what their what the jobs will be when they start entering the workforce 20 years or 50. They don't even know what they want to specialize in what what what what what they take in we school we don't know what those jobs are there's lots of jobs now that didn't exist 10 years ago how do you prepare for that that I think you prepare for that by just having students who are engaged in critical thought so that they can learn to think for themselves and and be able to make decisions and so you know I have no illusions that people are going to remember you know all the stuff on eigenvalues and eigenvectors I didn't mind linear algebra course um but I think they what are those again yeah well they're eigenvalues is a number um they it's just teaching people to think who cares what the subject matter is like I'm you know that's I think that's what's more important like no I suppose there's some things like it's true you can teach people to become a plumber or an electrician but there's such snottyness that of they're right now like oh many of the top's parents if I sort of said oh they should consider going into the trades it'd be really great they could make really good money but like there are some parents if if I said oh let them become electrician and they're going what no they have to be a doctor um like it would be like you know they're going to want to vandalize my car um and it's too bad they're like it's really too bad um because I think you know for lots of people doing something like that is a really good option it can be stimulating they can you know they make good money they can set their own hours um you know there's a physicality to it um but you know there are people who you know they don't mind that you may not want to do it when you're 60 I'm a huge proponent of side hobbies a lot of my past uh I guess podcast guests here a lot of them do what they like just because they like it on the side maybe in addition to their full-time jobs life is so rich and there's there's so much more to it than having a stable job I think there is a case for having a stable job I think well it's convenient you know it's nice to know that you can pay the rents for the mortgage payment like you know yeah um I I appreciate the the security of that um and I do understand that but at the same time yeah if you don't have outside interests then I don't get like I don't understand that night I just think for people who don't have outside interest I pity them like I feel sorry for them um and it because they don't have they don't have some sort of foil to what's going on all they're doing is working and there's some people you know they're they're suited for that and they're okay with that but there's lots of people they need something they may not realize it but they need something outside of what they're doing um just if again I see it as all part of their own mental health um you know it's it may not be anything of value um but it's of value to them and so like you know I think now like one thing I used to do as a kid was I used to do jigsaw puzzles hmm I like doing jigsaw puzzles is therapeutic well it's very analog I'll tell you that and so I'm doing jigsaw puzzles again and and you know there's no value in this like really I'm not going to like glue them and then frame them and put them off because that's just stupid and goddy um so like it's just it's the process yeah yeah and and and part of it is that um and I think back to when I was a kid like doing jigsaw puzzles we played a lot of card games and stuff a lot of those things were really useful skills I think they were they were useful and like all those games as a kid I think that's far I'd learned to like math we used to play this one game called the hot sea that has like five days that's the thing yeah I was it no I didn't know that but it's all about optimization you know and it's all about sort of probability um and you know and and those things you know cribbage was another card game that I use to play like it it's all dealing with optimization that's why like um well with most card games you should never play card games with me because I'll beat you I believe it I mean I mean that nicely but I would yeah we're playing uh sushi go which is a super simple game you pass along cards and you choose the card that you want to play you're trying to build yourself a sushi menu and the first time that I played with with Mel was also with um I guess a friend and her boyfriend that lives in the same building and she said there's no way that Peter is calculating expected value for for each card why is he taking so long playing with cards and and and then Mel said yeah no believe it he he's he's doing that well it's I know for me like a lot of those things it's not that I'm doing calculations but you're you're weighing your options trying to optimize what you're what and what's likely to come now in like I do know with some card games like there could be times where I could say I've only seen two sevens there's 14 cards left in the deck so the the chances of getting it a seven in I want a seven is increasing like that I would do that's like I could do that sort of thing but I would never sit there and doing like I'm not doing melt multiplications of probability to try to figure it out that's where it would become like an instinct and I don't know if you're a member in class I used to tell kids like feel the answer mm-hmm like just like don't and don't be afraid if you get it wrong but it's like playing the piano and then you reach for I like if you have to reach for an interval you don't sit and look to make sure you land there sometimes it's too fast you just have to feel it I would do the same thing with math I think one of the most valuable lessons that I learned from mr. van Behmel is the VB law of extremes that he he passed on when we and I think he taught it when we were learning about momentum and what happens when you have a collision and I still use it to this day where you know he would say let's say you have a ball of five kilograms gliding with a ball of eight kilograms now when you don't have an intuition of which way the collision is going to go which direction they're both going to go afterwards think about take that smaller ball and make it a pebble and then the smaller the larger ball make that a train what direction is the pebble and the train going to go after collision and that's the same direction and that's that stuck with me to this day and it's uh yeah and what you going back to what you said about education teaching critical thinking I can go on and on about how there's a lot there's a huge lack of critical thinking in not just a workplace but maybe also in our education system but trying to pull this back towards policy and perhaps how proactively we could try to design an education system or at least make step-by-step reforms to the one that we have currently without doing what the the Brian Kaplan guy said about abolishing education and everyone homeschools their own kids and it's up to I think that's ridiculous but let's and I think we tried this uh this exercise last time but so he'll also ask if if you were you know made king dictator whatever and you can wave your your your magical wand and try to redesign an education system what would be the tenets of it what instead of trying to optimize EQAO scores of and and trying to maintain I guess home agility and in in that respect we just want to improve society and we want our education program to be to be working for us as opposed to against us what sort of tenets would you install I'm well one thing I would do would is that I think people need to understand that things like EQAO the literacy to tests, etc. are not really very meaningful metrics on any level. It makes some people feel better about stuff, but on the whole I don't think that they're worth it. And so I would abolish the EQAO people completely. Because there are hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year in trying to measure these things that I don't think are very measurable. Now that being the case, that I think in many places, if you have a school, you, like if you think there are a lot of teachers, they all went to university. They kind of know what it is that you're going to be experiencing when you leave high school. At least in terms of university, many in terms of college, etc. So when you have a class at a school that is like a senior English class, you need to let the teacher teach to the students that are in front of him or her. And let trust them to some extent as to take those students from where they are so that they can improve upon where they are. I suppose to try and improve to a specific outcome, like a test, like a literacy test. Just trust them and let them go. Same thing with math and science. If someone's teaching chemistry, if they're teaching chemistry, they know what first year kind of chemistry is going to look like. They're going to want to try to get students so that they're prepared in order to get there. Just let them do that. Now that might be in some schools that you can go further and you can do more in depth material that you can teach maybe extra goodness. But you might have another school where the kids are, they don't have the same background. You may not be able to cover as much. It's okay. Because again, most of the, there's a lot of university, and I'm just going to talk about university material the most because I'm probably best about that. For a lot of courses, you could go in there. You would have experienced colleagues who went into classes who didn't have the same background. It may have been difficult, but they could pull it together and they could make do. Maybe it wasn't pretty, but they could make do. So like you guys were very, you guys were lucky that you learned calculus in grade 11 and then it was allowed to rot and fester in years of conscious for two years. Because then when you go off to university, I would think and hope that for most of you, maybe you didn't get it at the time, but it came back a little bit easier and that you could do that. So that's what we were doing in terms of you were prepared or you were ready to do that calculus course. And so we had you do it because we had the luxury of doing so because we weren't following a curriculum guideline. We were taking where we thought you needed to be and for the group that was in front of you, we more or less brought you along for that. And I think teachers at other schools need to do the same thing. Now, would this require, this is still our hypothetical world, but would this require reform in hiring? Because I think when Mel tells me about the hiring practices now and how once you get that full-time position in the school board, it's almost like professor tenorship. And it sounds like, oh, it is. It's ridiculous. It's incentive to, you know, continue trying because you're now on this track where your salary is going to be a function of how many years that you've been at the school board. And why would you want to continue putting more effort in? Well, it's not always money. That can be a motivator. Like, it's true. And I, I don't know how you do that. Like, I know there's been many places in the States where if you run clubs, you get paid to run a club. Like as a, as a, and like some things are more than others, like in terms of, and you know, for some people, maybe that, that will encourage them to become more involved in extracurriculars. But again, that comes down to money. Like for me, even though I wasn't getting paid anymore, the fact that I basically got to do what I wanted to do anyway, that was, that was the payoff. Like if they said, oh, you must tell the party line. And you know, you can only teach these things. Then I would have been miserable. And I probably would have left ages ago. But I ignored that. And I'm glad I did. Like really, I was a terrible team player. I think I think I'm a similar way to be devil's advocate to be clear. I think that we should be giving more, I guess, free reign to, to teachers to use critical thinking on their own in order to impart critical thinking. But isn't it for control? Isn't it for feedback? Isn't it so that when the school board has, I don't know how many schools are within their system at the same grade level so that they can do some kind of measuring so that they can see if one school is just, I don't know, of all the teachers there decided to put movies on every single day for all their kids. And by the end of grade 12, they're illiterate. They can catch that. Aren't there enough levels of management to figure that out? You have vice principals and you have principals and you have superintendents. And you have instructional leaders. You have executive soup. There are people that they know that they're going to know that now. And so Like what else they need in order to make that happen? Like it is about control. And you know, in something that's smaller and more maneuverable. Can change based on the needs of the moment. And a good teacher does that all the time. You may very well encounter times where you've got a lesson, I'll put together that you're going into class. And certainly it's more so with high school kids, maybe the elementary kids, but you're all prepared to go in and you look around the class and you go, oh my God, none of this is going to work today. I can't do this. It won't work. And you have to be able to put that to off to the side and then change. And you know, that's hard to do. But a school board is like asking a giant super tanker on the high seas to pit it on a dime. You know, they could turn all the engines off and it's still going to glide for 10 kilometers. And it is it's about control. It is. And all those other things are a way of trying to indicate some measure as to why they need to control it and keep going. And again, that's right. I think it's all meaningless. It's all meaningless. Like a good teacher in a good school is going to try to improve the kids that they see there. The kids who are at Garnet who come from Flemma are different than the kids who go to York Mills in terms of their needs. And you so don't treat them the same. And don't have the same expectations on them. Like again, if this is where if you were to measure things like the literacy or the EQA, I bet you Garnet does better in terms of the differential. Then then York Mills because York Mills might already be higher, but they might improve 1% where Garnet could improve 20% well, who's doing the better job. But yeah, you know, that's hard to hard to figure out. So let them do let them. I like that. I could leave them alone a bit. Give them some agency. Let them show that they are adults that You know, have the best intentions for the kids and other wing. I will be the first to admit there are teachers out there who should be encouraged to look for employment elsewhere. Which is not the union position. And I get that. But there's lots of people who like they're in a nice secure place because they've got a decent paycheck coming in. It's very secure. It's impossible to fire a teacher and it's too bad because there are people who are The hate kids, the hate teaching and they should they their life must be miserable coming into a job that they hate every day. And they're stuck in it. And it's so nice and cushy. That's so that's insane because I feel like it's it's such an arduous process to go through like you have to go through your bed and then you have to go through all the years of supplying and But they like a lot of your colleagues will start off in a job and then discover they don't really like it. And they're going to look for something else. And look in the private sector. I think it's easier that you can all see to get rid of people but people who then teach for 10 years. And then they discover that they don't like it anymore. They can't handle the the marking or whatever it might be. There needs to be things in place. And this is where the union needs to like do something. Have counseling and support in order to get rid of people. So that for them to go somewhere else and try something else because it's not good for the it's not going to for that person to go through that misery every day. I think that's that's torturous and and they feel helpless in that they that there's nowhere to go. They need to be shown that there are places to go and you know but again that involves change and you know that's really hard. But you know I kind of wish that some of my union dollars went to council people to leave and so like I'm sorry. I can vent on these things and I know I would join you in the venting and we'd probably just add fuel to each other's flames. I don't want this to go much longer than the two hours we had last time out of respect for your time but I would like to go through a couple of things that pass alumni have I guess wanted to ask and we touched on some of them we touched on Sohels magic wand problem and the motivation. Avalon said that from from my year that one of the twins it's sad to see that you got jaded to the point that you got you stopped caring in your own words. Well well it's not that I stopped caring I know but I can see where that I can understand what you say okay then finish the question. Yeah you got jaded to some extent. It's not really a question though it's more statement. You're right you're right it's I guess it's more of a comment. She says that yeah it's it's sad to see that and you know you got jaded for this thing that you poured your hearts and soul into and she says that you know we respect your decision that you made and we're glad that you seem to have made peace with it so if you needed any insurance there it is from Jackie and also Sohels they're both interested in trends that you are you have seen because you've had such a long career and they're curious as to Jackie is curious as to what changes in culture and interests for example cubing which we saw with a lot of kids when I was in school did you see in the students over time oh my god what what fads came and went oh my god I'm hackathons true and again kids going to that Olympia school those those Saturday courses that their parents would force them to take thinking that it'll be good for their university applications or their career nonsense log garbage I think those were some of the big ones like you know in terms of I didn't pay attention to that all that much because whether was at the beginning or at the end like students for students there wasn't really much difference from year to year in terms of what they were like coming in and what they sort of what they went through just the the experience of growing up as a high school student was more change than anything else so I think the trend of wanting to apply to US schools thinking that that was going to be like some sort of like magic bullet I thought I was thought that that was nonsense so that wasn't always the case no no it became way worse it was just awful I hated it I see and because I thought it was just I thought it was complete bull like yet no there there's a Canadian guy Malcolm Gladwell who all right so he's from he went to U of T I think he was in I may have met him he was at the around at the same time I was he you know he came up with a this one thing about well if a student is going to Harvard that was at the time say 60,000 US per year for tuition and U of T was say 6,000 is it 10 times better no like you know the again it's one of those things that it's impossible to measure but like in part of one of the his other arguments was that he looked at graduates from places like Harvard Princeton etc he looked at middle range schools you know the not the upper elite ones and then you've got the the dump schools that you know the last resort schools that and whenever would want to go to and what he ended up doing is that he looked at the publication rate of students who got PhDs in economics or something like this right so you it's super hard to get into a PhD in economics at places like Harvard and stuff like you or to even get into Harvard like it's impossible like you know hardly even gets in the middle range schools you know you know you have lower G-NAT scores you have you know it's it's different and then the bottom of the barrel schools that take you can't get into the other ones does do you understand my three different categories so you look at the publication rate after they got their PhDs in economics now you would expect places like Harvard where it's so much harder and you've got students who are academically the best of the best that they should have way higher publication rates no it's basically the same regardless of which system they came from and part of it was that if you're a big fish in those horrible dump schools you are treated like royalty and you are like seen as like really good and you are they foster you alone and as a result you you meet the expectations that are given above you but if you're in the lower percentile of the people who are at Harvard you're gonna say oh my god I can't do these people are way much better than I do and so you meet those you meet those expectations of doing horror and and so you know these things of with top students who wanted to go to pan or Harvard or whatever I'm sure it would be a nice place to go but they would put so much emotional energy into applying for these things when I thought oh my god they need to go to these middle-range schools and stuff because it'll be easier to get in they won't have nearly as much stress and then they're going to be a shining star once they're there and but it was all asked backwards and trying to convince you people otherwise was like trying to squeeze a stone yeah and I wouldn't be surprised if this if this fetish with American schools is correlated with the proportions of Chinese students that tops off in the flux of but that's just I would never mention anything like oh but I did okay Jackie would also like to know did students become more competitive and that's right I don't really think so what they became more concerned with was are they gonna get into university and their marks like because of mark inflation that was happening all over the place that became more of an issue because again like when everyone has a 90% average like you get a 90 on a task like people are like oh my god I'll never be able to do anything yeah it's ridiculous no it's actually insane it's it's it's paralyzing yeah and like kids now in high school are like aiming for hundreds like they they they're like oh yeah like in order to get into like UW or like a good Canadian school you need a 98 average like you're not even learning at this point you're just making sure that you don't make mistakes on any tests so that you can have the like 100 it's really dysfunctional yeah they would have hated me students like that would would not have liked me because I might have a test where the class average is 64 oh yeah which I actually thought was a sweet spot I think 50 is the perfect if I were a teacher I would make the average 50 the kids would write like the parents would call me no and the best performing kid would have a hundred and the worst performing kid would have zero or maybe I would give like 5% headroom on the other side then you have the most signal I don't know about that I just see here's the practical the practical understanding of how it needs to work for self preservation because yeah like if you don't want parents lining up outside of your office like it's it's true and otherwise you could end up on like one of those like British murder mysteries find your body somewhere and it's like then you need someone to figure out yeah yeah like I see the difference between even when I was in high school and now like now parents are like bribing like I've heard about parents like gifting teachers wine or whatever like expensive things just so like they can get the grades up get into like a Canadian school and that's it so ridiculous to me and I think it's insane. - I'm surprised that I was never offered a bride by a fan. - Really? - Especially to get into the top program of yours. I was sort of thinking, "Come on, I'm like, "I was like, where's my wine?" - Yeah, and I actually, I would always tell students that I'm easy to bride, but I need like $5 million because it needs to be enough to run tired and I could lose my pension. So it's gotta be enough. But you pay me enough, I'll fix it, I'll do it. So I might be easy, but I was not cheap. And then fortunately, it never worked. - That's unfortunate. Maybe you'll have better luck, Mel. - I have seen things about elementary school teachers who are on parents' night or whatever who are given bottles of wine. And the one I really liked was, it showed a picture of a small child 'cause it was like in kindergarten or something like that. And on the label, it's like the reason you drink. (laughing) And so, these parents have the picture of their own kid. - It's like, thanks for the reminder. (laughing) - Yeah, that's fine. - Oh my God. - Wow. - Do you have a moment? - I think we got through them. - Yeah. - So Hill also wanted to know what's one thing that you wished that you guys did differently, interpret it as you will. - I do wish that we would have been successful at convincing the board to let us move. - Yeah. - But that's not, again, that wasn't our decision. And so it's not that, and so I don't know if it's that we had the wrong approach, but at the time, I'll tell you, we had supportive students. We had supportive parents and we had support of some teachers. But, and it would have resulted in changing the program, but at the time, I wasn't jaded. And, like we were willing to put in the effort to try something and make it work. And I think our track record showed that we could have done it, and that we could have been successful with that. And so I do wish that we would have been successful with that, because at the time when all of that was happening, we were having 550, 600 people applied for 55 spots. We were turning away tons of people who we thought who could handle the rigors of it, and be that there was the interest for that. And then all this side things, I thought, this, there are positives everywhere. The idea of, like, you know, at the time, getting rid of 240 people that have marked our now when we were at 2100, that's a positive thing. You know, there's lots of students who, they wouldn't have science and a science classroom because we didn't have enough of them. And that would help them. - You would have the gymnasium split in four. - You would have the gymnasium, like all of these things, but we were, we just weren't successful. And I'll tell you, if, was, Averlyn, who had that questioner, was Averlyn. Probably the, you know, after that, when none of that went through, I think that's where, at least for me, I, like, I don't know if I want to say that to him, Jaded, but I learned to, like, be careful about how much energy I would put into caring about something, because that took a lot out of us. And, and, and, and, like, again, at the time, I talked about how we were looking about secession planning for when we all got old in the tooth about who's gonna take over and, and how things, like, after we're done, and that you have new teachers coming in. All of that was part of that messy plan of what we wanted to do. And so, the TDSB has no plan for any secession of anything. And so, it's, you know, between that and the rules about hiring and all this other stuff, it's whoever's available, who takes things over and all sorts of stuff. So, you know, there might be, I don't know what's really happening inside the program. I don't ask, because I don't need to, it's not part of my life anymore. And the people who are taking over don't need me looming over their shoulder about how to run a program. They need to do their own things, make their own mistakes, and try their own stuff. And so, I don't, I don't ask. But, you know, I, I do predict that the board, like it, it will not be anything like what you experienced in relatively short order. And it's not that people aren't trying, but, you know, my entire career, it felt like I was swimming upstream, going against the grain all the time. And then, at, you know, at some point, you just get tired. And, you know, it's not that you've given up in all this other stuff, but you just get tired about it. You know, that's a, that's a bittersweet place to end. It sounds like like a strong salmon fish. You swam up that stream and you did a good job, but yeah, and then they get there and they die. Thanks. And then they spawn and it's, okay, maybe we'll ditch that. Yeah, please contact. And it magic-savated. Michael, thank you. I think you've given us lots to think about. I'm still sort of amazed that anybody would want to listen to this. Like in terms of listening to this. Me, the first episode was great. I think it's my most listened to. I, I loved it. Now, I'm definitely biased, but after these conversations, I realize that Michael is cut from a different cloth. Not only does he have ideas that depart from that of the establishment, but he also walks the walk. He didn't just acquiesce to becoming another cog in a system he didn't believe in, but gradually collecting a stable salary and then a pension. He and his colleagues went out and carved out a unique enclave in a public high school where passion for teaching could be matched with ability and passion for learning. They had something special going for 20 to 30 years, mentoring a group of kids that today make up a disproportionate number of the most admirable young adults I've had the privilege to have in my own life. Including Christian and Daniel, who were in episodes three and four respectively, and Maelan and Meg in episode six. It's really a shame that Michael and his entrepreneurial colleagues did not receive the support that they needed from the board to expand the top's program beyond the overcrowded halls of Marcono Collegiate and Blur Collegiate. Because there are many more than 60 students a year that tops and enrichment programs like it could have helped actualize through self-actualized teachers. Just some food for thought. For now, we should celebrate a successful experiment and a passionate man behind it. Thanks for listening to Part in My Passion.