Teecherz

Have you ever been a teacher?

    Had a great teacher?

      Had a bad teacher ?

   And, if you are of 'a certain age', had a 'paddling' by a school teacher ?  (Full disclosure, since I am 'of the age', and my parents [who promised one at home if there were one at school] are now deceased and unable to fulfill their promise: I had two such encounters in grammar school. ) But  those are other matters, best left untold.  Although, Charles Hobby, you were implicated in one of those when we were in Mrs. McManus's first grade.
    And, there was a musical ditty: "Reading and writing and 'rithmatic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick . . ."

   Well, this has been National Teachers' Week.  And there are college/university graduations all around.  So, remembering teachers (excellent and otherwise) from my school years as well as those years when my wife and   I were each teachers has been an exercise in nostalgia and gratitude.

    On occasion, I have been called a packrat who retains all kinds of detritus from by-gone times.  I prefer thinking of myself as an archivist.  At any rate, somewhere in the archives are all my report cards from grades   1-12.  Seeing the names of those long ago teachers (mostly women) provides appreciation for those who conveyed more than just their subject matters.  I know . . . naming names can be problematic: why are some included and others omitted.  And, in truth, a few of them are now more appreciated than they were when I was in their classrooms.

   A brief 'roll call' of my public school teachers:  
     .Mrs. Smithwick whose pedagogical method for learning math in 3d grade was rote repetition thereby often eliminating my need for a calculator in simple math.
     .Mrs. Campbell who taught us in 8th grade the then-revolutionary truth that women had their own names and were not 'Mrs. John Doe',etc.
    .A gigantic name-unknown 'practice teacher' (as they were then called) from Duke who read to us in his quasi-British accent Kipling's Gunga Din.  The take-away for my 9th grade self was that  males could like poetry.  A 'big deal' in the early 1950's.
   .Mrs. Yates, my 11th and 12th grades English teacher deepened my appreciation for literature.  We read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and MacBeth among other 'classics'.  Does that happen in high  school now?  I don't know. She also drilled us in the fundamentals of English grammar.  Did you diagram sentences?
   .Coach Blankenship .  He taught French I and II, Physics, Chemistry, PE, and coached all the athletic teams. He was not my favorite teacher at the time but I have come to value the academic excellence he expected.
   
   When I taught high school History and French in the mid-1960's,
my annual salary was approximately $4200.  In today's dollars, public school teachers do not fare better.   And, there is the public misperception that teachers work only nine or ten months a year with a subsequent 'vacation' of two or three months.  For those who opt for monthly increments of their annual salaries, that division lessens the already problematic budget. The others often must find supplemental summer work (if not already doing so during the school year).  In our state one consequence of the salary inadequacy has been a teacher flight to other states.  And the state legislature has done away with pay grade promotion for teachers with graduate degrees.

     And, the profession is not an 8-5 occupation !  One of my college professors rightly observed that "a teacher's work is never done, never done."  You know, things like lesson plans, grading  tests, the pressure of end-of-grade exams, endless forms and paperwork that consume many hours away from the school house.

     A co-ed a couple of years younger than I went to California upon graduation and taught high school English before 'making it in the Big Time' as a singer.  At one of her early concerts, a former student held up a huge banner proclaiming that " NAME  learned me English !"

    Were you helped, encouraged, guided by a teacher? Has your life had a different trajectory because of a teacher's influence?  If so, please pass it on . . . whether or not you are a  'professional educator'.
     
    Satchel