Some background about Susan Smethurst


I'm a native of Washington, D.C, but I have spent most of my adult life in Ontario. After graduating in Classics from the University of Wisconsin (Madison), I moved to Toronto for graduate work, fell in love with the Canadian milieu, and began teacher training, planning to teach classics at the secondary level. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I enjoyed the wide-ranging curriculum and diverse challenges in elementary education even more!

A stint of teaching in a remote community in northern Canada (talk about cognitive dissonance!) inspired me to seek further training in Special Education: there had to be a better way to reach all learners than what I had learned in my basic training. I returned to Washington and earned an MA from Catholic University with an emphasis on learning disabilities, educational assessment, and diagnostic/prescriptive teaching. It was a "hands-on" program that emphasized taking responsibility for teaching ALL students, no matter what obstacles stood in their way. I found it an energizing, as well as practical, program.

Since then, I have taught primarily junior and intermediate grades (3-8), and several special education programs (self-contained learning disability, gifted, resource) in both elementary and middle schools in Toronto. I've also been involved in curriculum writing projects in science, mathematics and computer studies, as well as in professional development and teacher federation activities at the local level.

I believe my extensive experience in three urban schools -- and short-term assignments in several others -- has given me a broad perspective on the challenges facing city schools today in a climate of tightened budgets and rising (but often conflicting) expectations that demand changes from new and "veteran" teachers alike. I've also developed a sometimes sardonic understanding of the political agendas that often inform the debate around school reform, and consider myself an "equal-opportunity" skeptic!

At present I am a special education resource teacher at a middle school in Toronto which is struggling to adapt to changing demographics, an increasingly needy student body, scarce to non-existent resources, and a climate of political uncertainty, budget cuts and crisis around public education in general. A self-confessed computer geek since the early days of the Commodore PET, I envisage online networking and information sharing as a powerful tool both to combat the isolation that committed teachers often experience and to develop expertise and leadership at the school level, "where the rubber meets the road."

Top-down "reform" has little lasting impact unless flesh-and-blood teachers -- that's US -- turn new ideas, research-based methods, and improved curriculum into practice in classrooms across the continent.

In my "spare time" (ha!) I'm an avid dog trainer who enjoys exhibiting my Shetland Sheepdogs in agility, tracking, flyball, obedience and conformation shows, and am involved in pet therapy at a rehabilitation hospital (and sometimes at school!) with my certified Therapy-Dog Shelties and my pair of uncertified but highly effective Burmese therapy cats.


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