There are stories of students acting as their own teacher in order to complete Grade 11 when no teacher was available.

It was rare indeed for a student to serve as the teacher for the primary grades in a school while completing Grade 10 in that school, but it happened in Twillingate in the second decade of the 20th century.

Edith Mary Manuel was born in Twillingate Jan. 5, 1902, the daughter of Georgina Maidment and Arthur Manuel.

A problem with Edith’s hips prevented her from walking until the age of four, and she spent much of her time during the next four years in a wheelchair. As a result, she did not begin school until age eight, but once she did begin attending the local Church of England School, she quickly made up for lost time. In 1917, after only seven years of formal schooling, she began Grade 10.

To teach a single grade at age 15 while continuing to study the Grade 10 curriculum and complete the work necessary to pass the grade is a daunting task. Manuel did more than this, however. She taught all grades from one to five, successfully completing her own studies at the same time.

She remained as teacher of those grades until the end of the school year in 1920. In September of that year, she enrolled in Bishop Spencer College in St. John’s, where she completed Grade 11.

Following her high school graduation, Manuel enrolled at the Normal School, the teacher-training facility in St. John’s, for one term before returning to teaching in January 1923 at Arnold’s Cove. She taught there until the end of the school year and then moved to Botwood, where she spent the next five years.

While at Botwood, she organized a fundraising project. The schoolchildren sold seeds. The money raised was used to purchase items to enhance the curriculum: maps, a record player and records, and additional books. During the four years that she co-ordinated the fundraising, more than $4,000 was raised.

After leaving Botwood in 1928, Manual taught for one year at Fogo before returning to St. John’s, where she joined the staff of Bishop Spencer College. She spent all but one of the next 35 years there, mainly teaching the primary grades, but during her last five years at the school, 1958-1963, she was vice-principal.

To Manuel, learning was a lifelong process. Shortly after her return to St. John’s, she enrolled at Memorial University College, where she completed courses required for the senior matriculation certificate she would need to pursue higher education.

Upon obtaining that certificate, she was accepted into the baccalaureate program at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City, where she began study in the summer of 1933. She also spent the summer of 1934 and the academic year 1935-1936 in residence there, graduating in 1936 with a bachelor of science degree.

Once back in Newfoundland, Manuel implemented many of the pedagogical concepts she had learned at Columbia in her teaching at Bishop Spencer, including inviting parents to visit the classroom to watch their children at work.

She returned to Columbia periodically in the decades that followed to work part-time on a master of arts degree, which she received in 1954.

At Columbia, Manuel majored in geography. She decided to put that training to good use by writing geography textbooks suitable for grades three, four and five.

Newfoundland focus

Two of these had a Newfoundland focus — Newfoundland: Our World, and Newfoundland: Our Country; the third, Visits to Other Lands, exposed children to countries in other parts of the world. They were soon adopted as part of the school curriculum and used all over Newfoundland.

Manuel was a lifelong supporter of the Girl Guides. For 22 years, beginning in 1929, she was a leader with the First St. John’s Brownie Pack.

She also became involved in promoting guiding in other parts of the country. From 1945 to 1950, she served as corresponding commissioner, with responsibility for keeping groups in rural communities informed of the activities of the Girl Guides. She used written and radio broadcast communications in this task. During several summers, she travelled to communities in Notre Dame Bay and along the south coast of the island, forming brownie and guide companies, and recruiting and training leaders.

In 1950, she accepted the position of honorary treasurer with the Newfoundland Council of Girl Guides, in which capacity she organized the first Girl Guide Cookie Day in Newfoundland. For her more than 60 years of service to guiding, she was awarded the Medal of Merit and the National Beaver Award, and was made an honorary life member of the Girl Guides of Canada.

Following her retirement from Bishop Spencer at the end of the 1963 school year, Manuel travelled to Montreal, where she spent most of the next five years in hospital.

It had been discovered that her walking difficulties were caused by the lack of hip cups, and she underwent a series of operations in an attempt to correct the problem.

She returned to St. John’s in 1968, her motor abilities somewhat improved, but she suffered a broken leg shortly after arriving home, resulting in a long period of recuperation at the General Hospital.

Returned to teaching

Once she was back on her feet, she accepted an offer from the Virginia Waters School for children with cerebral palsy to return to teaching. She taught there for three years, finally retiring from the profession — to which she had devoted more than 45 years — in 1972 at the age of 70.

In recognition of her many years of devoted service to education, in 1981 the Newfoundland Teachers’ Association presented her with honorary membership in the association.

Other recognition of her many years of dedicated service came from Memorial University, which conferred an honorary doctor of laws degree upon her in 1978, and the St. John’s Jaycees, who twice named her St. John’s Citizen of the Year, in 1976 and 1979.

Edith Manuel died in St. John’s March 25, 1984. The pain that plagued her throughout her life was but a minor inconvenience, one that she conquered through sheer determination and force of will.

By her own example, she was an inspiration to the many thousands of girls she taught at Bishop Spencer, for whom she was living proof of the heights to which one could aspire if one only dared to dream.

Bert Riggs is an archivist with the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University.

Reprinted from The Telegram Mar. 26, 2002