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Kurt Browning's Remarkable Teacher Leonard McLean
| Source: |
Professionally Speaking |
| Date: |
September 2010 |
| Author: |
Bill Harris |
Kurt Browning made a career skating through tense situations. But
initially there was no skating around the intense gaze of his
super-strict Grade 5 teacher, Leonard McLean.
Recalling those bygone school days in tough and tiny Caroline,
Alberta, Browning - a former world figure skating champion and current
host of CBC's Battle of the Blades - says, "It was Leonard McLean's
first teaching job, and he was the heavy.
"He came in and he obviously had a swagger. He was the new sheriff in
town, and he was going to teach these kids something. And he was not
above throwing some chalk or an eraser brush at you if you were
messing around or not paying attention.'
But something odd happened during McLean's first year at Caroline
School. First of all, the tough farm kids kind of bonded with the
tough teacher.
"We took pride in the fact that our homeroom teacher was the toughest
teacher in the school,' Browning says. 'We liked it.'
And with that link established, McLean became more comfortable with
the kids. And the kids became more comfortable with him.
Lo and behold, McLean is still in Caroline today. Retired from
teaching, mind you, but still there, a pillar of the
community.
'I think we changed him as much as he changed us, and I'm not putting
words in his mouth - I'm only saying that because it was something he
told us later," recalls Browning, 44.
'He has told us, 'I feel that you guys sort of helped me come to peace
with my teaching style.' And he went from being only the strict
disciplinarian, with a cold shell, to someone who everyone looked
to.
"It was a tough farming town, with tough farming kids, so we connected
with his toughness. But he became so much more. Lenny became the guy
everyone trusted. That's what he was called, Lenny."
Childhood memories of teachers often get tinted with new perspective
as students grow into adults. At some point a light bulb appeared over
Browning's head, and he's anxious to run something past
McLean.
"I would really be curious to know something from him,' Browning
says. 'He came in with all this knowledge, and as an adult looking
back, now I'm thinking that maybe he didn't want to be in a small
town. I don't know. But maybe he didn't want to be there.
"Perhaps he got there, and after a while he just sort of went, 'This
is cool.' I'm just guessing, shooting in the dark at flies we can't
see. But even as little grade fivers, we could see that something
changed for him within that first year."
As Browning's theory is relayed, McLean chuckles. "Wow - Kurt reads me
well,' he says.
'Anything to do with Kurt Browning is always a pleasure. I guess I
made an impact on him, but I wasn't really thinking along those lines
at the time. I was more surviving."
It sounds as if McLean did far more than that.
McLean grew up in Montréal and got his teaching certificate in
Edmonton. So after spending his entire life to that point in some of
Canada's biggest cities, he got his first teaching job in wee
Caroline.
"I remember I called up my mom and said, 'I got a teaching job in
Caroline, but it's not on the map,' " he recalls. 'So Kurt read me
right.
'At the time I said to my wife, 'Well, we'll stay here for a couple of
years.' That was our plan. But we were so close to the mountains, and
I love the mountains. Within a year or two I just fell in love with
the place. And my wife was accepted into the community quite easily,
so what the heck, we looked at each other and said, 'We can't get any
better than this.'
"Now, that was much to the chagrin of my oldest daughter, who wanted
the big-city life of Montréal. She's in Edmonton right now. But my
youngest daughter is in a small community too, so there's one of each
kind."
According to Browning, nowadays it's virtually impossible to imagine
Caroline without Leonard McLean.
"He just became the kind of guy the community looks forward to seeing
at events,' Browning says. 'If there's a new museum outside of town,
who's working the front gate? Lenny. He's that kind of guy. You're not
surprised to see him.
"And when he's not at an event, you wonder why. It's only the really
good community type of person who gets noticed in that way. And anyone
who keeps getting invited to our class reunion - he has been to at
least a couple - is the kind of guy kids trust.
"He became the guy who, if you had a serious problem, you'd go to
Lenny."
So, Kurt, did you ever go to Lenny with a so-called serious
problem?
'I left town quite early to go and pursue this figure skating thing,'
Browning says. 'So right when I was getting old enough to have a
problem worth talking about, I left.'
Oh well, that's probably a win-win situation.
All things considered, Browning says, his school experience was
positive.
"Yeah, I liked school. But I went to school in the days when we didn't
get pummelled with homework, and it was a really small town. So, to be
blatantly honest, school wasn't a problem.
"I can tell that school is just so much more work for kids now. It's
much more serious. Back in my day, the teachers were members of the
Lions Club with your father. The gym teacher was your hockey coach,
that sort of thing."
McLean, in fact, was Browning's hockey coach for a couple of
years.
"I still go to hockey games and figure skating and curling and
baseball in the summer here - it's just me being part of the
community," McLean says. 'The only times I'm not at events at home is
when my grandkids are playing hockey or something and I'm probably
following them around."
Considering his own transformation from tyrant to touchstone, McLean
understands it was a much different era for teachers back when he got
started.
'If my teaching style hadn't eventually been so well accepted, then
maybe I would have been more inclined to move on," he admits.
'You had to be tough - it was a tough farming community. But in those
days, 99 per cent of the time a teacher would get the parents'
support. If a kid went home and said he had to be disciplined at
school, he probably would be disciplined at home too.
"It was a harsher time in that way, but by the same token you could
also give a kid a pat on the back and not be checking over your
shoulder to see if someone was taking a picture of you. So in a lot of
ways it's harder to be an elementary school teacher today."
When asked what advice he would give current-day teachers, McLean
notably gives the same recommendation that he gave himself all those
years ago.
'Chill out,' he says, simply. 'You just have to relax a bit.'
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