Striding past orange plastic chairs rooted into the floor of the cafeteria, AnnaLee Fuhr grabs milk and a banana loaf slice before her 10 a.m. class.
It’s not a bad breakfast for the nutritionally aware home economics graduate who is completing her teaching degree this month at the University of Saskatchewan.
Her choice of beverage is probably determined as much by the five years she spent working in the Dairy Farmers of Saskatchewan school milk program as it is from growing up on a dairy farm near Langenburg, Sask.
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Fuhr wants to help children learn, among other things, how to pick good breakfasts as part of her job as a home economics teacher in a rural Saskatchewan school. That’s her plan, anyway.
But first, there are classes to attend, exams coming up and a paper due tomorrow that is two weeks late.
Fuhr slides into a seat in the back row of the lecture theatre for a class about the legal context of the education system. Her friends arrive five minutes later, greeting her with hoots of “You’re here early. This isn’t regular.”
The 90-minute class could be a dry rendering of the statutes listing the duties of the minister of education and school boards, but the professor, Pat Renihan, enlivens the lecture with jokes. He recounts how he earned the nickname “Landslide” for squeaking in as the seventh of seven winning candidates in each of his three terms as a school trustee.
A discussion about school district amalgamation reminds Fuhr of her teaching internship last fall in Moose Jaw, where the school boards voted in favour of merging. She whispers that the boards were having problems in their negotiations because an unexpected large debt showed up on one of their books. Still, Saskatchewan at 88 school districts has the highest number in Canada compared to 60 in British Columbia, 61 in Alberta and 54 in Manitoba.
Fuhr has rearranged the date of the exam for this class because she wanted to attend the annual meeting of Canadian Western Agribition in Regina. She plans to run for the board of directors some day. It is a public activity she wants to do, just like becoming a 4-H club leader once her teaching job is secured. Past public relations work included a year in 1991 as Saskatchewan’s last dairy princess. After her term the title was changed to dairy youth ambassador. She also was part of a Ukrainian dance troupe and travelled with an Up With People group singing and dancing.
It is now lunch time, but Fuhr doesn’t stop to eat yet. Her communication class is role-playing, showing would-be teachers how to handle angry parents or fighting students. Some of these university students look like teenagers and most are younger than Fuhr, who earned her first degree in 1993 from the University of Manitoba.
“I couldn’t wear the green and white, I was brown and gold,” said Fuhr, referring
to university colours.
The U of S had eliminated its home ec degree, forcing Fuhr to go to Winnipeg. The college there recently fought off an attempt to eliminate the degree and remains the only such school in English Canada.
Now Fuhr’s profession is tackling the moves by many school boards to cut the frills, which can mean eliminating home ec or making it an optional course in high school.
In a News release
news March 21, Fuhr, as public relations representative for the Association of Saskatchewan Home Economists, quoted Linda Ashley, head of the national association: “home economics is more important in the world today, not less. Consider that childhood obesity is reaching epidemic levels, violence is on the rise, teenagers are walking around with debit cards in their pockets and post-secondary students are receiving pre-approved credit cards…. Now consider that Canadian parents have traditionally relied on the school system to teach the basics of nutrition, consumerism and financial responsibility to their children.”
Fuhr said she studied home ec because of her 4-H work. Then more senior home economists, who served as her mentors, persuaded her to become a teacher. She said rural kids “might value my perspective better. I talk about butchering in class. Rural kids are exposed to it.”
She is the oldest of seven children. When she returns to her family’s farm this summer to help her parents renovate their home after leaving it more than a decade ago, her baby brother will be graduating from high school.
Fuhr will also spend five weeks in Ukraine on a travelling scholarship studying her specialty of textiles. With no spouse or children, she is free to travel: “no baggage right now.”
Fuhr retrieves two more bags full of heavy binders and packs them to her final course of the day – a three hour class where future home ec and industrial arts teachers give verbal reports on their research projects.
One has costed out front-loading versus top-loading washing machines. Another explains to a hypothetical school board why they should buy a new planer and jointer.
Probing questions and polite applause follow each presentation. At the break, the professor hands out muffins he has made.
A classmate turns to Fuhr, who is her sewing tutor, and pleads for a lesson tonight. Fuhr, who was up until 4:30 this morning and has to complete her late research paper tonight, gives in and agrees she can do both.
She advises another student on future job prospects and gets a hug and a “you’re the best.”
Chalk it up to good experience when she will be the teacher helping 20 or 30 people at a time, instead of one or two.
