SUNDRE — The start of the school year for a local educator who brings to his classroom unwavering passion for learning could not have been more bittersweet.
Tidings that Ryan Beck was named the regional recipient of the Canadian Association of Physicists’ (CAP) 2020 Award for Excellence in Teaching High School were tempered by the difficult discovery of a terminal cancer.
“It was my appointment that day with my oncologist to find out what my scans showed,” said Beck last week during a phone interview.
The 43-year-old husband and father of two teenage sons said he was driving out to Red Deer when he received a call from CAP congratulating him on the award.
“And then I got to my oncologist, and the news was," he said, pausing, "...not good."
Throughout the summer, Beck said that while he had frequently been experiencing fatigue, he had no reason to suspect anything serious.
“I was feeling just kind of low on energy every now and then,” he said.
“And it seemed random, I couldn’t figure out any rhyme or reason to it. But I was still doing pretty good, I was still hiking out west.”
There were days when he felt well, and others that left him feeling drained.
“But then when school started, I was really struggling to make it through the school day. It was on the Friday of the first week of school that I couldn’t make it through the first class — I was just completely wiped out.”
Checking himself into a local walk-in clinic to see his doctor, Beck said he was sent to Olds to get a blood sample analyzed. As he was pulling into his driveway in Sundre afterwards, his doctor urgently called directing him to immediately head into the emergency room.
Eventually ending up transferred to Red Deer, physicians expressed serious concerns about the results of the blood work. Following some scans, he was admitted to hospital in Red Deer.
“What they told me at the time, is I had pulmonary embolisms — I had blood clots throughout my lungs — that I had some masses, and that I’d have to talk to a specialist,” he said.
The appointment with an oncologist at the Central Alberta Cancer Centre in Red Deer yielded a devastating blow. Beck was informed an incurable Stage 4 esophageal cancer had metastasized to local lymph nodes and to his liver.
“It’s pretty surreal still for me,” he said, adding, “It absolutely floored me that it was this serious.”
From there, the situation devolved from bad to worse.
“It rapidly progressed through September,” he said.
Early that month, there were two metastases in his liver. Following an episode of excruciating pain that sent him back to the emergency room for more scans, the prognosis looked even more bleak.
“At the end of September, the number of metastases in my liver was innumerable,” he said.
Liver like Swiss cheese
“My liver just looked like Swiss cheese that had gone through a war zone — just completely full of holes.”
Promptly placed on chemotherapy, Beck said he’s responded really well to treatment.
“That’s why I’m able to be back teaching now.”
As of last week, he said his liver functions had fully returned, showing no symptoms or pain — for the time.
“It’s a really good sign that the chemo is working. But what happens with this cancer is, even if the chemo works, it just one day flips and starts to progress. And once it does that, there’s no stopping it.”
But at least the treatment has provided him with some good days, he said.
“The chemo week is tough — I’m really sick during the chemo week. I’m laid up in bed and have extreme nausea, and I have a couple of days where I’m completely dependent on my wife to take care of me,” he explained.
Despite the physically as well as mentally exhausting treatment involved in slowing down the spread, Beck remains dedicated to making the most of every minute still available to him.
“Once I get through that week, then I have a couple of good weeks where I can do whatever I want. And what I’ve decided I want to do, is teach. That’s who I am, that’s what I want to do.”
Beck’s unwavering commitment to his students has reached well beyond the classroom. He's fostered opportunities for students who are so inclined and inspired to pursue science outside of school time, embarking on student-driven projects that have led them to conduct experiments at the Canadian Light Source on the University of Saskatchewan campus located in Saskatoon. He has also played an active role in offering guidance and support to the school’s leadership program.
A different path
Yet there was a time he was embarking on a completely different path.
“My first year in university, I was in pre-med because I had really good grades in high school, and so the thing you do in that case is you become a doctor,” he said, with a chuckle.
“It wasn’t so much that that’s what I really wanted, though…I was reflecting on how much I enjoyed helping my friends with their homework, and how kind of gifted I was at the school work, and my love and enjoyment of science. It was really my desire to share that love of science with students that drove me to go on to be a teacher.”
He remembers the Calgary Science Centre, known now as the TELUS Spark Science Centre, leaving an indelible impression on him at a young age. He also had a voraciously insatiable appetite to consume as much knowledge as he could, demonstrating an interest in science books, which his parents happily indulged, often buying him new texts.
“My mom told me that I was six years old when I told her I was going to be a scientist,” he said.
Growing up, he realized a career path in education most appealed to him.
“Scientists study just one thing very narrowly and very specifically, and I have a broad range of interests in science. So, being a science teacher was a much better fit.”
Passion for teaching
Building relationships with and getting to know his students during what he describes as a precious and formative period of their lives solidified his passion for teaching.
“They’re going through so much. They’re becoming who they’re going to be, and it’s such an opportunity to be a part of their lives at that time and have some influence over them to help them set their direction and course in life — help them find their strengths,” he said.
Asked what he most enjoys about his field, he said, “I would describe the scientific method as the best way we have of knowing how stuff works. The simple idea that you do an experiment, and you test your idea to see if your idea is right, and revise your idea if it’s not right, is clearly the best approach we could take.”
The teacher also challenges the notion that science acts as some kind of authority on absolute truth.
“I’ve spent lots of time talking with scientists, and they spend a lot of their time trying to prove their stuff wrong,” he said.
“Often, it turns out that their ideas were right, because they had science to back it up and they weren’t just random ideas. But frankly, that’s a little bit boring, and it’s most interesting when an experiment proves something that we thought was true, proves us wrong. That’s when scientists really get excited.”
In a world flooded with misinformation and wild conspiracy theories, the former University of Lethbridge student who in 2000 graduated with general science major and a focus in biology, feels the importance of science education is paramount.
“I wish we could get the fact that science is really just that simple, and get the word out about that more. Because there’s so many people who distrust science, or who only believe the science that fits with their ideologies, and then they disregard the rest of the science,” he said.
“But it’s all the same science — the science that makes your cellphone work, is the same science and the same process that tells us that evolution is how humans got to be here on Earth, and it’s the same science that tells us that global warming is caused by humans and that we need to do something about it…if you’re going to trust your cellphone to work, then you should trust the rest of the science too.”
Wearing masks to stem the spread of a global pandemic is no exception. Counted among those considered at risk as a result of his compromised immune system, Beck said he must exercise caution.
“I sure appreciate the people who wear masks, because I’m one of the vulnerable people who they’re protecting,” he said.
Start of a career
Relocating to Sundre in 2007 to teach at the local high school, Beck had previously spent seven years in a small, remote northern community called Eaglesham, located between Grande Prairie and Peace River. There were only about 100 residents and a single K-12 school with grad classes typically numbering fewer than a dozen students, he said.
“It was a wonderful place to start my career, and a wonderful community,” he said.
“I was the first person who applied for the job, they’d had it open for months—and my phone interview mainly consisted of, ‘Are you sure you want to come up here?’” he said with a laugh.
Over the years, seeing his students grow has been a rewarding reminder that reinforced his enthusiasm, which reaches far beyond the classroom.
Fostering opportunities for students who were interested in designing and conducting real experiments, Beck enabled them to participate in extracurricular projects including field trips to the Canadian Light Source.
“They got to do real science for themselves,” he said.
“One of the things they saw in that, is it takes a really significant team. And not necessarily everybody on the team is a scientist,” he said, adding such collaborative efforts also require talented writers and graphic design arts to understandably communicate potentially complicated findings with the public.
“Putting together this really diverse team to accomplish this goal is their biggest takeaway, I think, from the actual science projects that we’ve done. This of course creates lots of opportunities for them, where some of them have been able to do some research that normally they wouldn’t be able to do until they’re in grad school.”
A step ahead
That puts them a step ahead of university students when they reach the post-secondary level, he said.
“It’s opened some unique doors for them. For others, it’s changed their passions and their interests, and changed what they actually want to pursue for their life.”
A few, he added, have even decided to become educators “because they see the value of science and want to share that.”
Until being diagnosed, Beck was also a director of the Perimeter’s Teacher Network in Alberta. The Perimeter Institute, he said, is a theoretical physics research facility.
“They’re in Canada, and they’re considered the best theoretical physics research institution in the world in the way that they have designed things to help physicists come up with new ideas,” he said, adding scientists from the international community work together to push new boundaries and expand humankind’s collective understanding.
The institute was started by Mike Lazaridis, one of the founders of BlackBerry, who invested a portion of his multi-billion-dollar fortune to help fund tomorrow’s breakthroughs, today.
“His thought was that BlackBerry works based on physics, and he wanted to pay back to the physics community to pay for future discoveries,” said Beck.
A GoFundMe campaign called “Ryan’s Cancer Journey” that was set up to support the Becks had as of last week far surpassed a goal of $7,500 with more than $20,000. -
“It’s really helped us out.”
