TREENA MIELKE/Rimbey Review
Walter Johnson’s career has been much more than just providing formal education to a group of students within the confines of a classroom.
For Johnson, who is packing it in after 33.5 years, teaching has been a challenging, fun and interesting career and one that he believes he was destined for.
“I think I was born a teacher,” said the soft-spoken assistant principal at Rimbey Elementary School. “I had three sisters and I was the youngest and the teachers always said I wasn’t a quality student at all, but I was the only one who kept at it.”
Johnson said he got the bug to become a shop teacher while a student himself in the industrial education classes.
After graduating from the University of Alberta in the spring of 1977, he began teaching industrial education at McCoy High with Medicine Hat Separate Schools.
After three years in Medicine Hat, he and his wife, Grace, whom he married just as he was finishing his last year of university, moved to Rimbey.
“Bob Collis, the former assistant principal of Rimbey Junior Senior High School, hired me to come work at the Rimbey High School one day in early July while I was working at the Rimbey Co-op in the lumber yard for the summer.”
Johnson taught a few years at the junior/senior high school in Rimbey before moving over the elementary school where he taught band and grades 5 and 6.
He then went on to teach at Crestomere School where he served as assistant principal with Jerry Deckert.
“We had such fun and we still remain close,” he said.
Finally he moved back to Rimbey Elementary School.
“This has been my last teaching position and my colleagues at Rimbey Elementary School have been my dear friends for many, many years,” he said. “I know I will miss them for sure.”
But as much as Johnson knows he will miss his teaching friends, he says he will especially miss his students.
“Kids have always been why I loved teaching,” he said. “They have kept me young at heart. I am just a big kid myself.”
Johnson really doesn’t believe young people have changed over the years.
“Kids are still kids. Kids are genuine. If you love them, they love you back and it doesn’t matter what age they are. They see you as you are.”
He notes that lifestyles have changed somewhat over the years, however, and there is a great deal of pressure on today’s parents and many times one parent is away working.
“There is lots of pressure (in families). In some ways kids have to be wiser.”
Over the years Johnson has developed several hobbies, all of which he enjoys immensely.
When he is retired he is looking forward to spending more time pursuing his hobbies which include camping, golfing, skiing, sailing, bike riding, kayaking, cross-country running, playing hockey, music and travelling. “I have lots of hobbies and I think it is important to take your skills and hobbies into retirement and not try and learn new hobbies after you retire.”
He is also looking forward to the opportunity to spend more time with his wife. They have two adult boys, Bert and Tully.