School’s out forever for Mary Pollock who is retiring after more than 40 years of teaching — 36 of which were spent in the same classroom.
The Newmarket teacher has been with the York Catholic District School Board since the 1980s and spent the majority of her career teaching primary grades from Room 106 at Canadian Martyrs CES.
“It’s been my place to go to, my home. So it feels funny to now be giving that up because it’s always been so much a part of my life to go to school,” Pollock said.
She said she wanted to be a teacher since she was a child in eastern Ontario, playing school with her sister and friends.
She went to Queen’s University for her bachelor of arts and bachelor of education before moving to the GTA, as that was the only area that seemed to be hiring at the time.
It meant moving away from her hometown but looking back, Pollock said, “It’s a move that I’m very happy that I made.”
After a few years of teaching, she found herself moving to the newly built Canadian Martyrs school on London Road.
Since then, she has taught countless children and even some of her former students’ children, too.
“One of the parents found out I was still teaching Grade 1 and she said she was so happy to find out that her child was able to be in my classroom,” Pollock said. “She found an old school picture of when I taught the mother and the daughter brought it into school and said, ‘Look, Mrs Pollock taught my mom and now she’s teaching me’ and she was so thrilled about that.”
Ivana Todd was Pollock’s teaching partner for most of her career after the two first met as new teachers in Unionville.
“Mary arrived and I realized she just graduated like I did,” she said. “We just kind of hit it off from the start.”
The pair had a shared teaching philosophy, earning the nickname the Young Gals from their older colleagues, who Todd said were great role models.
In the 38 years they worked together, she said they both moved to Newmarket, ending up at St. Paul's CES and then Canadian Martyrs, made it through "the Mike Harris years" and saw the addition of technology to teaching.
“We were able to really learn and grow from each other,” Todd said.
She also taught primary grades and said she loved her time working with Pollock.
“I don’t know if it was fate or whatever that put us together, but I do know that I feel so fortunate to have been in the teaching profession and to have been able to teach with such a dedicated and hard-working professional,” she said.
Todd herself retired in 2018 and now Pollock is following in her footsteps.
“I wanted to continue teaching for at least 40 years and I’m now in my 41st year,” Pollock said. “I’ve definitely gone way past the time I could have retired. I could have retired 10 years ago but because I’ve loved being in the classroom I was not in a rush to leave my job.”
However, the pandemic has been a challenge for the elementary school teacher. She said the biggest thing has been being flexible with all the changes and keeping the students engaged while they’re staring at a computer screen all day.
“Definitely this year has proven to be probably the year I’ve worked the hardest in my whole career,” she said.
COVID-19 is one of the factors in her decision to retire.
“Now the time’s come. With all the different challenges facing the coming school year again, there probably will still be more COVID protocols in place. There’s a good possibility that there could be hybrid learning and that’s difficult to split your time between working with kids on the computer and in the classroom, so that’s a bit of a challenge,” Pollock said. “So I knew the time was going to come and this felt this was the right decision for me to make.”
She said she hopes to spend her retirement travelling, volunteering in the community, camping, and spending more time with her family.
