A rookie year to remember.
Jessie McCauley, a Grade 8 teacher at Okotoks’ Meadow Ridge School, has been at two schools, taught through a pandemic and has been through a steep learning curve in her first year of teaching, which has resulted in her being the Foothills School Division’s Edwin Parr Award nominee.
She ended up at the K to Grade 9 Meadow Ridge School after completing a maternity leave stint at Senator Riley Middle School in High River at the Christmas break.
“I got a phone call saying there was a position available for a Grade 8 generalist at Meadow Ridge,” said McCauley. “That’s a tough position because you are teaching all four subjects at the junior high level.
“I took it because it was a great learning opportunity.”
The Edwin Parr Award is for outstanding teaching performance by a beginning teacher.
Although she grew up in Calgary, she has roots with Foothills School Division.
Her stepmother, Cathy McCauley nee Dodds, taught in High River and was a vice-principal at Okotoks Junior High School, before going to teach in Calgary.
Helping her stepmom led to McCauley’s interest in education.
“I got to volunteer in a lot of my stepmother’s classes when I was younger and I really enjoyed seeing the impact that she had on those around her,” McCauley said. “The relationships she got to build in the profession was really of interest to me.”
Her first days of teaching at Senator Riley School (Grade 6) in the fall got off to a rough start – she actually wasn’t in the classroom.
“At Senator Riley, we didn’t have any outbreaks but at the beginning I had a close contact so I was gone for two weeks, and kind of teaching online while planning with my guest teacher,” McCauley said. “It’s challenging starting off your teaching career in a pandemic, but the best thing about starting your career in this scenario is you are open to any challenge and you understand you have to adapt to anything.
“The transition into teaching was relatively smooth.”
Although standing in front of a classroom of young teens in Grade 8 sounds scary, McCauley’s loving it.
“They are entertaining and they have their own challenges," McCauley said with a laugh. “I actually prefer Grade 8 over all of the other grades that I have had the experience of having practicums or teaching.
“They are so much fun. The relationships you make in middle school are so complex, it’s nice to kind of guide them through that.”
She had the full support of Meadow Ridge staff when she came in mid-year in January.
“Honestly, it was great – the colleagues were super supportive,” she said. “It was a very warm welcome I got.
“A lot of the beginning was building relationships with the kids, getting to know what I had to do to help them.”
It turns out having some experience with isolation paid off early at Meadow Ridge.
A class had to self-isolate about two weeks into her start at the school.
“It was a little bit tough meeting these kids for just a couple of weeks and then going online with them,” McCauley said. “But given my experience online already it wasn’t too bad.
“But being one-on-one with the kids and seeing them face-to-face is so much easier.”
The Edwin Parr Award is awarded by the Alberta School Boards Association. The six recipients from the association’s respective zones in Alberta will be named later this school year.
