TORONTO — When Carole Traister returned to school at age 40 to get her B.Ed., she was determined to make a difference in the public school system, where one of her sons had negative experiences related to his learning disability and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Carole Traister, seen in her classroom at USDS. [Frances Kraft photo]
But Traister’s first job offer after graduating from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) came from United Synagogue Day School, and she accepted it with the intention of staying for a year.
Eleven years later, she is still at USDS’ south branch, at Beth Tzedec Congregation, where she teaches Grade 2 general studies in the morning and Grade 3 in the afternoon.
“I fell in love with the philosophy, the children, the parents, the administration and my colleagues,” Traister said in a recent interview. “It was a force greater than me… I was meant to come here. I truly believe it.”
Her warmth and ease with her students is evident as soon as she enters the school office trailing three of them who wanted to see her “guest” from The CJN before the interview.
Traister, who had already received an M.Ed. in child assessment and counselling from U of T’s Institute of Child Study in 1981, used to teach junior and senior kindergarten at the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre. She also has a BA in psychology from York University and early childhood education credentials from George Brown College.
She credits her son’s Grade 6 teacher for focusing on his positive achievements, an unexpected experience for him at the time.
Now Traister tries to do the same with her own students.
“If I know that I have a child who perhaps needs that extra encouragement on the first day, I’ll make sure I say that I see that child sitting nicely on the carpet… or sitting at [his or her] desk prepared to learn. It just builds a positive relationship from that very first moment, and it’s so crucial to teaching.”
She stresses to students that they have to be prepared to make mistakes in order to learn.
“My job is to teach them in a way that they can learn. Every child is capable of learning. It’s just a matter of finding the way that they learn best,” Traister said.
On the first day of school, she has students write her a letter outlining what they think she needs to know about them as learners and what they’d like to get out of the year in her class.
In June, she returns the letter to them. “We look to see if their goals were met,” she said.
Also, “they love seeing how they wrote in September… They all have growth in their writing.”
She recalls a student a few years ago who wrote that she was a “bad” math student. Traister’s response was that there’s no such thing. “You have to believe that you can be a good math student,” she recalls saying.
Recently, the same student told her that she had just gotten a high mark in math and that Traister had been right.
“Kids need to know that everyone has challenges, and it’s how we handle them that make a difference,” she said. “Challenges can be overcome or compensated for.”
Traister also believes it’s important for students to see teachers taking a leadership role in the school. A student council adviser who is involved in annual school fundraising projects – as well as in fundraising outside of school for JWI – she said, “We see our kids as future leaders.”
A lesson from the teacher: “Success comes in ‘cans,’ not ‘can’ts.’ If you say you can, you will. If you say you can’t, you won’t.”
