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ATA Magazine
First step leads to 30-year involvement
Former ATA VP looks back on decades of service
Jenny Regal served as vice-president of the ATA from 2017 to 2023. She came to the role after three years in the role of district representative for Calgary City and five years as local president for Calgary Public Local No. 38.
Now retired, Regal is still substitute teaching and volunteering in various capacities. She reflected on her decades of experience as an ATA volunteer.
Q. What was your first ATA volunteer role and how did it come about?
A. I became the school rep for my small elementary school in southwest Calgary in the early 90s. The previous rep needed a break, so I agreed to take that role on for the staff. I quickly realized that I’d found a new passion!
Q. What volunteer roles did you hold over the course of your career?
A. So many: Communications Committee; chair, Subcommittee for External Communications; elementary rep, Calgary Public Local's executive committee; delegate, ARA; ARA Committee; member, chair and vice-chair, Economic Policy Committee; five strike committees; local vice-president, president and past president; district representative, Calgary City; vice-president, ATA; delegate and vice-president, Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF); delegate, Education International.
I quickly realized that I’d found a new passion!
Q. What did you find rewarding about being an ATA volunteer?
A. Number one, serving my colleagues by using my experience, knowledge and skills in so many different capacities ... learning more and more about my Association and seeing how all the CTF’s member organizations work together.
Q. How did your volunteer experience inform your work as ATA vice-president?
A. My decades of experience gave me confidence to do that work. Without it, I wouldn’t have been as grounded in the Association’s work and aware of how I could continue to serve in increasingly responsible positions.
Q. What have you been up to since leaving the ATA vice-presidency?
A. I’m enjoying some travelling “off season” and hope to do more in the future. I am reading more; curling up on the couch in the middle of a weekday with a good book is incredibly satisfying! I am subbing, I still sit as CTF vice-president until mid-July and the end of their 2025 AGM, sub rep on Local 38’s Teacher Welfare Committee, and I applied to be a local ARA delegate.
Q. How does your experience as an ATA volunteer and vice-president inform what you do now?
A. I thought I would be able to leave that work behind. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Once I was involved over 30 years ago, little did I know that my path was set. While I don’t pay day-to-day attention to
the issues anymore, I’m still informed about what’s happening and doing my part to advocate for publicly delivered, publicly funded public education. Who knows where my career-long passion will take me next?
