To hell with the bell 2013
Tisdale - Tuesday, September 3, 2013
by: Darlene McCullough
On Tuesday, September 3, about fifty superannuated teachers from Tisdale and area gathered at the Riverside Golf Course lounge for their annual To Hell with the Bell breakfast to celebrate the fact that it was the first day of classes for this school year and they didn't have to let the school bell rule their lives any more.
After a cooked breakfast was served to the group, the Tisdale Chapter President, Deanna Gruending welcomed everyone with a special welcome to new retirees Darlene Leroux, Jack Fulton, and Wilma McKie. The superannuates received their annual newsletters at this gathering. Deanna mentioned the highlights of the past year as well as the planned ones for the coming year.
Secretary- Treasurer Darlene McCullough then reviewed the financial report and explained the situation with the school they help to support with a yearly charitable donation. It is in the remote village La Lomas in El Salvador. So far their donations have gone toward the building of the school, the addition of a kitchen, enlarging the school and this year to the purchase and installation of solar panels so the teachers and students have power to operate the computers that were donated by another organization.
Deanna then passed out the yearly diaries that are published by the provincial Superannuated Teachers of Saskatchewan to those retirees who had requested them.
The business meeting was kept brief so that there could be a lot of socialization as members visited and shared the news of each other over the summer break.
The next meeting on Monday, September 16 will be an outing to Oma's Kitchen for lunch and a drive into the countryside .
Observations by: Timothy W. Shire
Most of our meetings do not deal with our former careers, but today was a bit different. As in almost all situation, where people share similar experiences and backgrounds, it is the informal part of such events that really has an impact.
This morning, with Tisdale making the provincial CBC news, the hot topic was the degrading of TMSS by the decision by the school division to no longer offer French in this community’s high school. Richard Hildebrand (below right) explained that in high school, his school offered four courses in each high school grade, in languages other than English and it was generally agreed that dropping the only other language from the course offering, impoverished the school’s students and diminished the community’s quality of education. One of the reasons given for the removal of the course was stated to be low enrolments in French and the discussion noted that when French was being pared with required courses, of course there would be low enrolments.
After breakfast, there were discussions between the former teachers about the things that made their work so meaningful through the years, as the dropping of French certainly made us all realise the vital roles we had all played in the lives of many students.
