After seven years of consistent effort, the Our Hidden Heroes Education Program for elementary grades is beginning to expand beyond Vancouver Island to schools as far away as England, Saskatchewan, Western Quebec and Ontario (Toronto, Ajax, Barrie and Ottawa).

It would seem that we are on the verge of a potential nation wide growth spurt, but none of this would have happened if it weren’t for a number of Hidden Heroes who have supported us along the way.

First there was the late, Peter Godfrey, the former Managing Editor of this newspaper. Peter saw the value of a column about “Hidden Heroes” and chose to take a chance on a former Toronto broadcaster who had never written for a newspaper before.

A few months later, the column led me to consider creating a Hidden Heroes curriculum for schools. That’s when Mary Lynn Epps encouraged me to develop an Internet based Hidden Heroes WebQuest. When I needed help to take it to the next level, Ray Schlitz donated dozens of hours to help out.

Then the WebQuest led me to develop a set of Hidden Heroes amateur lesson plans, plans which a couple of dozen teachers worked with and adapted to meet the needs of their classrooms. I learned a lot from each one of them.

About that time, we decided to form a not-for-profit society. The first board included: Karen Clevette, Leslie McWhinnie, Bruce Mitchell, Bill Preston, Ed Poli and Ross Fraser. Ed and Ross are still with us as chair and vice chair respectively and Bill is an active supporter/consultant. Bruce Mitchell sadly passed away two years ago.

Over the years we have been joined by Laura Harrison, Patrick McMurchy, Lorraine Lemmon, Carol McNamee and Cori Lynn Carlson.

Two different School District 68 Boards of Education and three Superintendents offered letters of support over the years. That kept our spirits up until in the spring of 2006, when the District Review Team discovered several teachers using my amateur lesson plans. They were impressed and named our program, “a promising practice that should be further developed.”

That official backing made it possible for us to attract enough financial support to cover basic printing and other expenses and to pay small honoraria to Dolores Gottenberg, PhD, Educational Leadership and Kirsten Verhoeven, MEd who spent the summer of 2006 developing the groundwork to make sure that our lesson plans, which were based on our Hidden Heroes concepts, snuggle up nice a tight with the BC Ministry of Education’s general curriculum and especially their Social Responsibility Performance Standards.

Since then Kirsten, Laura Harrison and Terri Zolob, all full time teachers, have worked with me during holiday periods to develop our lesson plans and support materials for Grades 5 and 7. Grades 1 and 3 will be ready for the fall of 2008.

After presenting our program to a special committee of the Toronto District School Board a few months ago, we have been hand picked to attend a special Character Education Showcase to demonstrate our materials to teachers from the 500 plus Toronto schools.

It seems as if we may be poised to become another “overnight success”. If so, there are a lot of Hidden Heroes who worked very hard through that entire “night” to make it happen.