“One of the girls said to me the other day, ‘You taught my grandma.’ That’s when I really knew I was going to quit,” says Chatelech Secondary School art teacher Enid Kelly.
The last Friday of June will be the final teaching day for Kelly, who has taught art to thousands of students over 41 years, the last 30 of them at the Sechelt high school. “I could have gone last year, but I stayed for these kids,” she told Coast Reporter, pointing to the students in her Grade 10-to-12 arts class. “Some of them are incredibly talented.”
Some of their talented predecessors have gone on to arts success, now working professionally everywhere from the Sunshine Coast to Los Angeles animation studios. Kelly starts listing some of her star pupils, but later asks that they not be named out of concern for inadvertently leaving anyone out.
Kelly’s quietly brilliant career almost didn’t happen. “I was fortunate. When I was in high school, I had a really good art teacher,” Kelly recalled. “There were three of us who couldn’t get into his art class, so he let us have another room all to ourselves to do clay. He trusted us.”
That “really good” Quesnel, B.C., art teacher’s trust and generosity paid off: Kelly was then motivated to go on to study art education at the University of British Columbia, followed by teaching stints in northern B.C. In the late 1980s, she and her husband settled in Sechelt with their young family.
Kelly’s teaching reputation built steadily. “She doesn’t take herself too seriously but takes the courses seriously and she’s incredibly open-hearted to kids,” said Jane Sproule, a retired Chatelech social studies teacher who worked with Kelly for decades. “When you’re in a classroom, it’s not just about the information you’re giving to the kids, it’s about their state of mind, and she always has time for that. She has great empathy with the kids.”
In Kelly’s view, her success with students is simple. “First rule when they come in here is respect. Everything follows from respect, not just for me but for each other and for themselves. If they do that, everything else falls into place.”
An innovation that Kelly leaves behind is the art exhibition in the Chatelech school foyer, which displays about 50 works by her students, and is refreshed three or four times a year. “It’s a lot of work,” said Kelly, “but it’s worth it, because the kids really love to see their work on display in their own environment.”
Like many retirees, leaving full-time work does not mean leaving work entirely. Kelly said she plans to continue doing art. She’s had many exhibitions under her maiden name, Enid Goodman. “I always have things that are in the back of my head, whether it’s fabric art or sculpting or acrylic or watercolour. I do everything,” she said.
But she doesn’t underestimate the life-change that’s coming. “Some mornings I wake up and think, ‘This is going to be very strange not being here with these guys.’ They are so much fun. They laugh at my lame jokes. Most likely because they’re a captive audience. They keep me young.”
