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Official response: I wish more of mine were still alive. The current Virginia public school teachers whose names are familiar to me were my classmates, not teachers. However, younger readers are encouraged to use Twitter to salute the good ones.
Among other hack writers, worldwide, I've been writing about education in general lately. The articles are anonymous and not meant to be recognizable, but several of mine reflect my belief that there's no such thing as a "best school" or "best teacher"; there are very few completely bad schools and teachers, but mostly it's "the best school/teacher for a particular student."
I may have noted this before...If asked from which teachers I'd learned most at Gate City High School, I'd say Mr. Cleek. Nobody liked Mr. Cleek. (He didn't want to be liked.) A few of us disliked him so much we rose to his challenge and forced him to give us A's in algebra. There might be more enjoyable ways to learn algebra, but it worked.
Also there was Mrs. Ramey, who taught home economics. She taught me to slow down, not rush on to more different designs, but make sure every seam in a simple garment was sewn right. I can still wear the skirt I made in ninth grade home economics.
Then there was Mr. S., who still believed in reciting poetry. I'm not sure of the value of knowing how to recite all four verses of "When the Frost Is on the Pumpkin," but I did learn that. That ought to count for something. (His full name does not belong on the Internet because he could still be alive.)
From which teachers I learned least? There was a lot of competition because I worked ahead of grade level, but Mrs. B. and Mr. M. would definitely have been leading contenders. Mrs. B. didn't go far enough, fast enough, past what some of us had already learned from Mr. Cleek, to keep my mind awake. Mr. M. taught mostly the slower students in English, plus a few people stuck in his class by schedule problems, and spent most of the time bantering with the sort of boys I avoided. I remember fast-track students laughing about how we got away with changing the boring grammar reviews to liven them up a bit and still got those "automatic" A's. Well, at least I had enough free time to watch for and smile at my favorite boy after dashing off those boring review assignments in Mr. M.'s class. (Yes, children, aunts and even uncles were once sixteen years old.)
Twenty-five years later, some classmates surveyed the friends with whom they'd stayed in touch and wrote a very nice article about their favorite teachers. I saw the names of Mrs. B. and Mr. M., and thought, "Say whaaat?" Then I read what those former students had to say about those two teachers, and I believe they were sincere. Mrs. B. and Mr. M. did bore me because they spent so much time going over things with people who had not learned those things in grade eight, or maybe even six. For people whose brains matured later than mine, which is normal, such that they weren't able to absorb grammar and algebra in middle school, Mrs. B. and Mr. M. were great, dedicated, bighearted teachers.
Even Principal Oscar Peters...he was my third cousin once removed and I hated him in a more enduring way than I hated any of the other older relatives who believed it was their duty to teach me things by hitting me. (Not only did baby-boomers think nothing of fourteen-year-olds dating thirty-five-year-olds if both of them were desperate enough, in the 1970s; many of us also thought it was normal that almost any adult could hit almost any child, and usually the parent of the child who'd been hit would side with that adult.) He paddled people whose footsteps could be heard in the corridor when he had a hangover, and worse than that, he'd stand in the corridor glaring at people he'd paddled and then greet my brother and me by our given names, which led to accusations that we were exempt from those paddlings (we weren't) and from those to hostilities. A lot of our relatives despised him: for being a heavy drinker, for having settled for being a Democrat Party boss and school principal rather than a lawyer or politician, in some cases just for being a Democrat. That he was handsome and had a good speaking voice...bah, other relatives did better things with those assets. I grew up absorbing the idea that "How he kept his job as elementary school principal, much less got promoted to being high school principal, had to involve bribery and corruption."
Then when I'd grown up and talked to more distant relatives and non-relatives, sometimes I wondered whether we were talking about the same man. Oscar Peters' speeches inspired people to win all those trophies. His political connections had a lot to do with the class trips to Washington, the college internships and scholarships, the real need for my brother and me to be drilled in what to say if we ever had to talk to the daughter of the President to whom we were Loyal Opposition. He'd used his assets and connections to allow old people to avoid forced retirement, allow people with disabilities to attend regular classes if they could, get tutoring for people whom other educators saw as ineducable. In some ways Oscar Peters' competence to be even a school office worker was still subject to some debate, and yet, in other ways, at the same time, he was an excellent principal.
So, for those who may be thinking "Why would I thank a public school teacher? None of mine was great," a suggestion: Maybe you went to the wrong school for you. Maybe you did, after all, have good teachers--even if they weren't particularly good for you. For any person of good will, having to teach a student who is just hopelessly stuck in the wrong course or school is a source of pain. Maybe, if they're still teaching, you could leave those teachers a note of appreciation for having put up with you.
Thank you, Mrs. B.
Thank you, Mr. M.
If I can't exactly apologize, I can at least regret that I was probably as much of a thorn in your sides as you were in mine.
Blessed may your retirement be.
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