Two Barrhead teachers say their goodbyes

After more than 30 years in Barrhead, a husband and wife teaching team will retire when the last bell rings in June.

Barrhead Composite High School (BCHS) physical education teacher Gayle Lamothe, and husband Laurin, a teacher at Barrhead Elementary School (BES), will be ending their full-time careers later this month.

“We both graduated from the University of Alberta and out of the 35 schools we applied to, Barrhead was the farthest north,” Laurin Lamothe said, adding the pair first came to Barrhead in 1982, though both are from the Edmonton area.

“I had gotten a call from the superintendant at the time saying he had a mat leave opening for Gayle, and so we decided we’d come up here. It was originally supposed to be for only 10 months, but it’s been 34 years now,” he said.

At the time, Laurin said he was teaching English Second Language (ESL) courses in the evenings and subbing wherever and whenever he could.

“I was offered a long-term sub position out in Meadowview, a school that used to be about 30 kilometres outside of Barrhead, and I taught pretty much everything from art to French, social studies and more. I coached, and I drove the bus. It was a small school with maybe 50-60 kids,” he said.

The one saving grace about working at Meadowview, Lamothe said, was the fact the recess button was manual and not an automated system.

“On the days that were a little bit more desirable for the kids to be outside getting exercise, we made sure they got a bit more time,” he said. “It was a great place to learn the job because everything I did after that was easy.”

Two years later, Laurin said, he was offered a job at BES.

“When we moved up here, every weekend we were in Edmonton because that’s where all of our ties were. The plan was never to stay in Barrhead. Once the maternity leave was done, we had intended to move on, but when we had kids we decided this was the place we wanted to be. It was a nice little town to raise our children in,” he said.

“We are going to take a deep breath and figure out where we want to go from here,” he said, adding both will still be on the sub list and are open to the possibility of coaching again in the future.

“When you don’t have a busy day of teaching and you can do the coaching part, maybe that’s what we’ll do,” Gayle said, adding while they have coached other sports, volleyball and track and field are the two they are most passionate about.

“It has been a very enjoyable experience and we never thought it would be like this,” he said. “Teaching is not a nine to five job, but we’ve had some great mentors over the years and it has been really satisfying to watch our students grow up.”

For her part, Gayle agreed with her husband.

“We came up here, did the 10 months and when that was up, they offered us both jobs,” she said, adding it was a stroke of luck that the lady on maternity leave opted to not return.

“We never figured we would buy into the small town mentality, but I think we have over the years,” Gayle said.

Having spent the majority of their lives teaching and coaching, she said the pair will be heading to Mexico in the first week of September.

“Usually we go in July, but we don’t want to be here when school starts up again,” she explained, adding between the two of them it is 50 years of such starts.

“We decided we are going to our favourite places in Mexico. We’ll kick back and enjoy it. We have long-term travel plans involving Europe — we might do a month in Portugal, a month somewhere else. We’ve had awesome jobs and really enjoyed our time at these schools. It will take some time to adjust to not having that new-school-year rush feeling, but we’ll make do,” Gayle said.

“It never felt like a job,” her husband added.