As hundreds of students throughout the Lakeland and Lac La Biche County wrapped up their 12 years of grade school, a popular local teacher retired after 44 years in the classroom.
Pat Boon–Anderson has been a familiar face at J.A Williams High School in Lac La Biche since 1980. She’s always cheerful and upbeat, and eager to make a difference in the lives of others, say her colleagues who threw the long-time teacher a retirement lunch on the last day of school.
St. Paul to Lac La Biche
After receiving her education degree at the University of Alberta in 1979, Boon–Anderson and her husband Dan headed into the Lakeland Region. She spent a year getting her feet wet at a school in St. Paul before moving to Lac La Biche. It was supposed to be a short stop-over before moving onto other areas … supposed to be.
“We were only supposed to stay for one year, but we fell in love with the area, the people, and saw an incredible amount of potential here,” she said.
Always wanted to be a teacher
From the time she was a young girl, Boon–Anderson always wanted to be teacher. She liked the idea of helping people to find their place. She struggled a little herself in university to find her place, overcoming a few obstacles to remain on the teaching path. She said there were even instructors who questioned her career path.
In the end, she proved them all wrong, and not long after graduating, entered the teaching profession with an interest in home economics. Early on her career, she also worked with special needs students. Again, helping people find their own paths was part of her early foundation in the job.
“Back then, I wrote a lot of the curriculum for courses based on home economics and related subjects such as family studies, making clothing, and cooking food,” she said.
But it was in (CALM) Career and Life Management where Boon–Anderson truly excelled, preparing young people for the future by providing them with such valuable life skills as proper resume writing, career exploration, as well as money management. She likes to find the spark inside the students and encourage it to grow.
“Everyone I have taught over the decades has had such greatness inside,” she tells Lakeland This Week. “I felt that it was important to encourage students and always try to bring out the best in them.”
Over her decades in the classrooms, Boon-Anderson has watched her work pass from generation to the next. In the years leading to her retirement, she marveled at teaching the grandchildren of students she first encountered decades earlier.
“Over the past few years, I’ve felt as though this has been the best time of my teaching career because I have had the honour of being to say that I have worked with three generations of students. This is another reason why it’s so hard to retire.”
She’s also enjoyed watching some students use their skills to find their own ways into the education profession. One of her earliest students at JAWS was a freshman named Terry Moghrabi, who went on to become the principal at JAWS and recently retired as the deputy superintendent of the Northern Lights Public Schools district.
Watching families grow over her decades of teaching, Boon-Anderson says there are distinct differences from generation to generation and even year to year. It’s such a diverse career, she says.
“You truly get to know the local families and their history.”
While the kids haven’t changed dramatically, technology certainly has.
“When I first started teaching in 1979, schools were still using those old overhead projectors as well as old printers,” she explained. “What I remember most about those printers was their massive size and the fact that you always got purple ink on your fingers after use. Luckily, a year or two later, the school got a modern Xerox printer.”
The advancement of technology followed Boon-Anderson’s own motto of always moving forward and striving for more. She started various student groups over the years at the school, including a betterment movement in the 1980s committed to making the high school a much better place.
“I got staff, students, and their parents involved in various projects around the school including painting and building an outdoor classroom,” she said with a sense of accomplishment. “I rewarded five of my students who worked very hard with a trip to a Fortune 500 conference in Seattle which was all about self–motivation and being the best you can be.”
The field trip was one of many that Boon-Anderson enjoyed with students.
An avid traveller, some of her most memorable moments took place “journeying around the globe with many of her students.”
“Being able to go on international trips was one of the aspects I enjoyed most about teaching,” she stated. “I have chaperoned many of these trips, including to Egypt, Australia, Thailand, China, and most of Western Europe.”
More to come
The past 44 years have been one big adventure for Boon-Anderson. But even though she has officially called it a day, the adventure continues. She continues her passion for helping others, and is an avid community volunteer. She was one of the founding organizers of the Lac La Biche Winter Festival of Trees, and enjoys the work of many other local organizations. She’s also not planning on being out of the classroom setting permanently, seeing several options as she starts a new chapter.
“I still plan to do some substitute teaching as well as do more of the things I love,” she said. “You never know, I might just write my book of memoirs.”
