Smith

By Carol Dunk

Smith is a story about a week in the life of an iterant yardman and a retired teacher. The yardman brings Buddhist quotes to Kate. The quotes help Kate with her transition from teacher to something else. Together they complete tasks in Kates yard and explore the possible meanings of quotes from the Tao Te Chingthe writings of Lao Tzu.

Almost by accident, Kate becomes caught up in a school in the making in South America. She is revitalized with the prospect of playing a part in the establishment of a tiny school in Ecuador.

At the end of the week, Smith is on his way again, and Kate is able to say goodbye with a smile. Life goes on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543449907

Carol Dunk

Carol Dunk I am a retired teacher. Prior to 1972, I taught public school for 9 years. From 1976 to 1997, I taught business and computer courses at Georgian College in Barrie. In 1975, I initiated the first word processing program at Georgian College and lobbied for, created the curriculum for and taught in the first pc lab at the College. I have been married to Mike for 55 years and have one daughter, one granddaughter and two great grandchildren. When I retired, I had time to spend on my favourite pastime: gardening. I trained and became a Master Gardener in 1999. I have taught gardening courses at Georgian College and often speak at local horticultural groups about my gardening experiences, gardening ideas, soil care and reduction of pesticides and pollinators. It has been my pleasure to speak to many groups in central Ontario. In 2003 and 2004, I was a seminar speaker at Ontario Horticultural Association Conventions. I have been a plenary speaker for 2 OHA conventions. For two years, I did noon-hour sessions on a local television channel and from those shows became known around Simcoe County as Master Gardener Grandma Dunk! I am an emeritus member of the Simcoe County Master Gardeners and have served on the provincial Master Gardeners of Ontario Board as a Zone Director, Treasurer, and Chair of Education. I am also past-treasurer and past-president of Barries Garden Club and published the monthly newsletter for that society for 6 years. I have become part of the provincial organization, the Ontario Horticultural Association, and served as District Director of District 16 (Simcoe County) and as the President of the Ontario Horticultural Association in 2011. While on the OHA Board, I created and published a booklet on Rain Barrels and another one on my pet project, Pollinator Patches. I also initiated a tree-planting project to commemorate the Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth. Ten years ago, bees and their precarious situation became my passion. I planted the first Pollinator Patch across from Canadian Tire with the blessings of the City of Barrie, talked of pollinators up and down the byways of Ontario and created a website to encourage planting for pollinators. I was given the Canadian Pollinator Advocate of the year in 2012 by the Pollinator Protection Campaign an organization out of the USA encompassing pollinator issues in Mexico, USA and Canada for my work in Ontario. Last year I worked with the City of Barrie and a citizens group to begin a pollinator corridor along one of the walking trails in the City. You may visit me on my web site: http://www.caroldunk.com or at my pollinator site: http://roadsides.caroldunk.com or on my blog: www.caroldunk.blogspot.ca I also maintain the OHA Conservation site: http://conservation.gardenontario.org Two booklets I have authored: http://www.gardenontario.org/subdomains/conservation/resources/guide.pdf http://www.gardenontario.org/docs/rollout.pdf Carol Dunk 96B Bernick Drive, Barrie, ON L4M 2V6 737-0147 [e-mail] http://www.caroldunk.com

Book preview

MONDAY

When the Student Is Ready,

the Teacher Appears

CHAPTER 1

in which We Meet Kate’s Dilemma

K ate Anderson had retired from teaching at the end of the last semester, taking advantage of a good offer from the board to retire five years early. She thought that she was prepared to enjoy retirement. Then summer arrived. This was her first summer of retirement, the first summer without the need to work on material for fall classes. The urge to plan for next semester washed over her in waves. After all, course outlines and preparation had been part of her late-summer routine for thirty summers. A feeling of general unrest hung over her, a sensation of having forgotten something. She had talked about this sensation with her three Wednesday Coffee Mates earlier this month.

Kate and the other three Mates (Lois, Anne, and D’Arcy) had met years ago at a course they had taken at Ottawa University and had hit it off immediately. They had kept their relationship fresh with Wednesday lunches while they worked. Through the years, they had been friends and sounding boards whenever one of them was going through a rough patch. Now that all four were retired, Wednesday lunch had changed to a Wednesday midmorning coffee talk, followed sometimes by a shopping trip, sometimes by a late lunch, and sometimes by both.

Kate was the last of the four to retire. Her Mates had nodded when she explained her funny feeling of being and not being, of not being able to get started on anything, of feeling there was something she had forgotten, something she should be doing. They told her from their experiences she just needed a little time to adjust and warned her not to take on anything big until she was at home with her retired self.

The feeling had heightened as July waned and August loomed. It was the sensation that she should be doing something to get ready for a new semester starting in September. Telling herself that there was not going to be a new term for her had led to the thought that she might reduce the feeling by clearing out some of the paperwork and books in the study. Maybe the act of purging some of her accumulated papers would break the feeling.

Kate had taught for the last thirty years, and much of the preparation work for her classes had been completed and stored in her study first at the older house and later in the new study in the Cape Cod. Smiling, she looked at a book of lesson plans from the days when she had taught public school—over twenty years ago. The stuff one keeps, she thought. Much of the material in this room was outdated and no longer of use. Why was she keeping it? The bookshelves and filing cabinets were full of past work. This room needed a general purging.

The study was her workroom, her creative space. One wall housed her computer and printer and a file cabinet of household papers: taxes, passports, family accounts, and personal papers.

The rest of the room was an accumulation of all things teaching, an indication of her love of her trade from pedagogical philosophy to the merits or demerits of New Math. Bookshelves filled one wall. Some shelves sagged under the load of binders full of plans: lesson ideas; day, month, and year plans; and other binders were filled to capacity with research on lesson content and collections of articles from magazines and from Internet sources. She could tell you what she was teaching on a Tuesday in March five years ago.

Other shelves housed her books on teaching skills and learning theory or her textbooks from courses she had taken or had been assigned to teach. One shelf of the bookshelves contained her self-help books and tapes, including a series of lectures from Wayne Dyer, books by Deepak Chopra and others, and a smattering of Eastern religious books and tapes—mainly Buddhist, several by Pema Chödrön. She’d become interested in self-development several years ago during a spell of depression and had slipped into Buddhist philosophy quite by accident. But for the most part, her bookshelves were about teaching and learning, and until recently, their content defined who she