How Marshall Button’s Grade 8 Teacher Nurtured His Comic Instincts

This story is part of an eight-week campaign coordinated by the New Brunswick Teachers’ Federation, which advises and assists its 8,400 teacher members across the province. People are encouraged to respond by posting their own positive anecdotes of how a teacher has impacted them or a member of their family using the hashtag #EdNBdifference or share one of the 14 video testimonials found at www.ednbdifference.ca. 

Much-loved actor and comedian Marshall Button says he was always a jokester in class, but his sense of humour went unappreciated until Grade 8.

“From Grade 1 until Grade 7, I got in trouble for telling jokes in class,” says Button.

But things changed with his Grade 8 teacher Carole LeJeune.

“She encouraged my humour instead of suppressing it,” he said. “Now all these years later, I make a living in the performing arts where I spend a lot of my time making people laugh – and they pay me for it!”

Carole LeJeune says everyone in Dalhousie remembers Button well. He made them laugh, but he was also very attentive to classroom interactions.

“In class he was always very observant and sometimes he would look through his hands [like a spyglass] to look around the class, following me or a student,” said LeJeune. “He was an observer – observing his classmates, observing humanity, their actions, their feelings, so I think that’s what he continued doing.”

Throughout the eight-week campaign, 14 prominent New Brunswickers, from entrepreneurs and athletes to artists and executives, will share how teachers impacted them and how they make a difference in the lives of New Brunswick’s students.

The short video testimonials from people like Button will be shared online, in English and French, beginning on January 17. They will be posted across various platforms, including television, radio, digital and social media, to spotlight the teaching profession in New Brunswick. People can also post and share their own positive anecdotes using the hashtag #EdNBdifference.

“The professional expertise that teachers and school administrators bring to their roles is essential to quality public education,” explains Connie Keating, Co-President of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Federation.

“Helping students realize their full potential entails building positive relationships and responding to students’ social, emotional, cultural, and academic needs – the investment that teachers make in our young people is key to New Brunswick’s long-term growth and prosperity.”

LeJeune says teachers hope students like Button have more successful lives because of what they learn in school.

“You really don’t know during class if you affect children’s lives or not,” explained LeJeune. “You hope they learn what they are supposed to learn but you also hope they take it and do better in life.”