Mr. and Mrs. Piper

It has been a short and sweet and super hectic first week of work at my new school. I am still a Spec Ed teacher in an ISP classroom, but I have older students and more integration and more interaction with other teachers.

Day before yesterday, a teacher walked in and asked me if my grade 7s will go on a field trip. I told him that I need to consult with my CYW. He looked at me seriously and told me that I am the teacher and that I need to make the decision. Fortunately, my CYW, arrived and we told him that we are happy for our students to go on the trip.

Yesterday, I ran into another teacher in front of her classroom, and she wondered if our grade 7s would go on a field trip that she was organizing. I was a little confused and she clarified that there are 2 separate trips. Then, I saw her name behind her, beside her classroom. It was Mrs. Piper. So, I exclaimed loudly, “Hey! It was a Mr. Piper I spoke with yesterday!”. She revealed that that was her husband.

I had never met a husband-and-wife teacher team within one school ever!

By the end of the day yesterday, Mrs. Piper sent an email to all grade 7 teachers asking them to fill out their excursion forms. I had never filled out these forms, and I was glad when my CYW helped me out with it. This morning, Mr. Piper sent an email to all grade 7 teachers letting us know that he filled out the forms for all of us!

I was glad to run into him after work today. I thanked him and unwittingly blurted out about the differences I noticed in how the 2 field trips were being managed. He quickly jumped to his wife’s defence by saying how much she hates paperwork and how she showed him how to do the excursion forms. That made me feel like I was criticizing his wife. So, I quickly brought up the “give a man a fish or teach a man to fish” proverb, and I thanked him for my fish! It took him 2.2 seconds to realize what I said and he smiled.

Although Mrs. Piper came across as unhelpful to someone like me who is still learning, I did appreciate her approach because I got to learn how to fill out the excursion forms. However, since it has been such a busy week, I also appreciated Mr. Piper sparing me the tedious task.

The husband-and-wife teacher team are music teachers, and so I decided to name them Pipers!