Mrs. B a beloved teacher at khalsa school

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Mrs. B a beloved teacher at private school

SAN GREWAL

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

It's hard to walk around the halls of the Khalsa Community School in Malton where Beatrice Ramos teaches without hearing students talking about her — "Let's ask Mrs. B." "We learned that in Mrs. B's class." "Mrs. B will do it."

On a Tuesday afternoon, after the last bell goes off in Ontario's only private Sikh school, Mrs. B sits down in her Grade 4 classroom, in the chair where she eats lunch with her students every day. As she reflects on a lifetime in the learning business, her smile is wide and her eyes invite you to just sit and listen.

"It started out when I was 14, living in Windsor," she says. "My mother told me that my duty after church on Sundays was to go to Cedar Springs Hospital and work with children who had special needs. All the other kids were skating and playing while I had to work with the children in the hospital. I didn't like it at first."

Ramos began her unique teaching career almost 20 years ago, after graduating from the University of Windsor.

"I've taught mentally and physically challenged students with special needs, English language skills to children from different cultures, and now I'm at a private religious school. I learn something new every day."

In keeping with one of Sikhism's religious tenets, Ramos keeps her head covered while inside the building. "I'm a Baptist," she says. "When they take their parshad (sweet food symbolic of God's mercy) I take a piece of bread."

She is the only non-Indian teacher at t

he school. "I'm seven generations black Canadian and all my students are Sikh. But in the classroom, there is no separation, other than student and teacher. I have to be a good role model. I have to be patient and I have to be creative. That's what being a teacher, regardless of who your students are, is all about."

She teaches English and writing skills. She was approached about the job two years ago, after the school's principal kept hearing many of his students talking about a teacher known as Mrs. B who tutored them outside school.

"Teaching is how I identify myself," she says. "Not a week goes by without running into a former student who spots me somewhere and says `Hey, there's Mrs. B.' Knowing they remember you, all of the different students I've taught after all these years, is a feeling that can't be described."