Stephen Sidney Gilchrist

        I'm 46 this month (October 9th, 1998).  I was born in Saskatchewan and grew up in Ontario and in Zambia, which was still Northern Rhodesia when I first arrived there at the age of nine.  I've worked at many jobs: I've been a radio operator in the regular Canadian Armed Forces, worked oil well and water well rigs,  hotels (as an auditor) and restaurants, many different types of factories, a slaughter-house, an insurance company (as "executive trainee"), a vineyard,  a dynamite truck,  a computer logging truck in the oilfield, a hazardous chemical recycling plant, delivery trucks in downtown Toronto; drove tours on the Athabasca Glacier on the Columbia Icefield in an 8-seater Bombardier half-track, sold everything from vacuum cleaners to pianos and organs (earned a CCM Coaster bicycle selling Toronto Star subscriptions when I was fifteen and took the bike to Zambia, the only rear-wheel drum brake system anyone had ever seen there),  helped to build houses and industrial buildings, travel trailers and kitchen cabinet installations, was a gas jockey and then service writer for a Ford dealership, and done many other jobs, often several at once...but I had a lot of stamina and energy in those days!  I had no interest in a career as such - I believed all along that one day I'd be a novelist.  It never happened.
        In between jobs, I travelled extensively from childhood to my mid-thirties and visited about 35 countries, including one complete round-the-world trip which lasted two years, before settling down here in Ontario 13 years ago.  I taught ESL in Austria and Japan, and spent three years being a travelling musician plus two more as a music teacher in my own private studio.  I graduated cum distinctione from the University of Alberta in English and Drama (Playwriting), and also completed a full year toward my Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting, which I've never put to any good use yet.
        Slowly I began to realize that the jobs I'd enjoyed the most were teaching ESL to adults and music to kids, and I made the fateful decision to apply to the University of Toronto Faculty of Education (upon the suggestion and encouragement of a friend, Gary Pennington, who was a vice-principal at Maplewood school at the time.  Gary is currently co-principal of an International School in Bangalore, India, along with his wife Sherrill, who used to head the Family Studies department at Pearson Collegiate.)  I was accepted into the program, and earned my B. Ed.:  I made Michael Fullan's Dean's Honour List, specializing in Junior/Intermediate English, plus Instrumental Music plus Senior Basic Industrial Arts.
       So I got into public school teaching in my mid-thirties.  Since then I've been a music specialist for a whole school, a grade three teacher for four years, a grade five teacher, and a grade seven/eight math and science teacher, and a grade seven "shop" teacher for three years.  This year, my eleventh year in the public school system, I'm teaching "shop" again, to 450 grade 7/8 students from Birchcliff, Cliffside and Samuel Hearne Sr. P. S. in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.
        I love my job, because I am doing something that I really believe in:  Experiential Learning.  We learn to measure by measuring, to design by seeing the physical results of our success or mistakes, to develop the kinesthetic experience of moving and working with forethought on our feet, using our hands and our whole bodies as well as our minds; to use language sparingly, chiefly to co-operate effectively with co-workers, not for incessant "socialization"; to think spatially in images which connect and sequence in our minds without the need for the veil of language, either spoken or silently concocted.  We re-learn to dwell in a state of mind where conclusions are immediate and visceral, a state that is closer to feeling than to debate, and where culmination of a project brings pure, unmistakable joy, a great grinning pleasure devoid of ambivalence and qualification, even as we evaluate our product and begin to plan our next bigger, better goal.  It is the state of mind that every child brings to his and her first day of school, which the education system proceeds to try and excise from him or her through many years of linear, language-based abstract instruction.  No wonder every twelve year old loves "shop"...it is such an oasis!  "Shop" is where we actually do stuff.

     Click here to my school project book.
        I consider my calling noble, important and rewarding, and envy no-one else for their career choice, even when I wish I had the freedom to pursue other interests like writing, boat-building, and more travel.  I encourage my students to respect teachers and to aspire to become teachers.
        Deb and I still travel, when we can find someone to care for our dogs in our absence.  Our young friend Catherine Nyilas-Magowan has been very helpful in this regard, as have our friends Pat and Clare Taplin (Clare hasn't created his own web page yet, but there are photos of his family in our "Family Photos" album which you can see by clicking on his highlighted name).  Clare and Pat often invite us to join them at Tafelmusik concerts, where they have the best seats in the house.
         We went back to southern Africa two summers ago for a six week visit (to Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Pretoria and Durban in South Africa).  My father was a missionary in Zambia - he's back there now for another eight month stint, at the age of 70! - and my grandfather was a medical missionary in Angola his whole life (except for the war years, when he served as an army doctor in Italy).  We've also been to Maui, Mexico, Nova Scotia, Alberta and many places in between in the past ten years.
        My hobbies are as listed and linked on the home page: boats, concert band, etc - and, of course, developing this web site.

Steve G>)

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