Teaching

Second Chances

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Sometimes I get to work too early. The sun had not made an appearance as I drove around the gym toward my parking place. I would not have been able to see Ole Sol if he had been up as it could not have been foggier if I had been in an old werewolf movie. We were still a few days away from the official start of school and were in the middle of the mandatory teacher workdays that, despite its name, allow teachers to get no work done. As I pulled into my parking place I noticed a car parked next to the fence separating the parking lot and the baseball field. I saw movement off to the side near our activity bus. It turned out to be a young man carrying a gas can and a cutoff garden hose. Hummmmmmmm. I wonder what he could be doing. Give the kid credit; he walked right over like he was supposed to be carrying a gas can and garden hose.

Despite recent true life horror stories, I have really never felt fearful in a school environment. This was not a normal school environment and I freely admit to certain feelings of, ah, trepidation. When he spoke I could actually smell gasoline on his breath. Rather than point out the dangers of huffing gasoline I just asked him what he was up to. He was good, I admit it, as cool under fire as any twenty year combat veteran. “Man, I just ran out of gas and the coach just came by and said I could get some gas.” Really, can you describe him for me? “Ahhhh, it was so dark and foggy I didn’t get a good look.” I decided to take a direct tack and told him what I knew to be true and who I was. Realizing he needed gasoline I was going to let him have it but at a price. He would have to return before five o’clock that afternoon with gas or money to replace it. If he didn’t I would call in his tag number to the police and have him arrested. He agreed but of course never showed up. I called his tag in and found out it had been reported stolen. Imagine that.

The following Wednesday, school started for real. I walked into my first period class ready to impart my vast knowledge of driving to the impressionable young minds that were now in my charge. As I called the roll I noticed a young man sitting on the front row trying to make himself look invisible. When I called his name he raised his hand and continued to think invisible, really invisible. “Son, do I know you?” He replied, “No Sir.” “Oh I believe I do and providence has delivered you right into my hands.” I told him to hang around when the bell rang. We came to a quick understanding since I had a name and access to an address. He returned the stolen car tag and spent the rest of the semester doing all of the odd jobs that I cooked up for him. He did such a good job I enlisted him to play football the next year.

This is a short excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” The complete book may be purchased or downloaded at the following link: http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Was-Never-Only-Thing/dp/1500597732/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446497350&sr=8-1&keywords=winning+was+never+the+only+thing

THE TEE SHIRT

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It is time to go through all of those tubs containing old tee shirts. I have somehow collected hundreds of them over the years. Some are old athletic tees that date all the way back to my first years teaching and coaching. Many are tattered and yellowed from age, others carry what I hope are grass stains. Some are covered in memories which is why I have a hard time getting rid of or “repurposing” any of them. I am drawn to one, almost forgotten, which brought back memories of the player who gave it to me. It was actually off white from its conception, not just with age, and has a prominent hole in the back. On the front there was a design including a Kiwi, the bird not the fruit, surrounded by the logo “Kiwi Country.” Underneath the logo, screened in block letters is “New Zealand.” Wow, I had forgotten all about this particularly beautiful fashion statement.

Back in the day, before charter high schools, academies, online schools or magnet schools became a way to give children and parents more choices and teachers more headaches, Riverside High School could be found on lists next to the elite public schools as it related to overall test scores, graduation rates and whatever additional standards were incorporated by the state for a given year. Actually Riverside still finds itself on those all important list of list. At or near the top in the county and state, many times, dear old RHS would find itself in the top fifty or one hundred public schools. Today, with everyone embracing private schools, charter schools or whatever this year’s “school de jour” might be, the statement that you are a top one hundred public school might be like saying you don’t sweat much for a fat guy. Before I digress to my “soap box”, Riverside’s lofty standing made it a desired destination for foreign exchange students. Over my twelve years there I was lucky to have several and all were very memorable.

“Hobby” Hobson or Hobart R. Hobson had a thick and somewhat odd English accent and the coaching staff decided to pronounce it as a cockney would, ‘Obby Obson’. I don’t think he was very impressed. Hobby was also not impressed when I began to sing “Walzing Matilda,” the unofficial Australian National Anthem. I would have sung the New Zealand National Anthem had I known it. Oh yeah, it’s “God Save The Queen” I guess. Hobby was from New Zealand and while New Zealand is in the same “down under” hemisphere as Australia and was settled by the same Imperial Power, Great Britain, I found that they were more than thirteen hundred miles apart in distance and even farther apart in culture and mind set.

Hobby seemed to be a very serious and quiet young man; much more mature than his American counterparts. He was quite unlike the Crocodile Dundee character that I was still attempting to compare him to and he really never understood why I continued to belt out “Tie Me Kangaroo Down” after his repeated denials of the existence of Kangaroos in New Zealand. Physically dark, with brown hair and a sturdy build, he looked and sounded nothing like Paul Hogan. This did not stop me from kidding him with questions about “shrimps on the Barbie” or “What did your didgeridoo?”

Hobby found that his serious good looks and exotic accent gave him an advantage when it came to man’s favorite sport, girls. Hobby was a “chick magnet” despite his quiet demeanor. They all seemed to want to take him gently into their arms and crush him passionately while lining up as if on a bill of faire at some blue plate restaurant. When questioned about this week’s “menu choice” he would just smile and add that New Zealanders were more gentlemanly than their Australian counterparts. Never having met an Aussie I don’t know.

Hobby played rugby and therefore thought he wanted to play football. Of medium height and stocky build, physically he was typical of Riverside athletes, undersized for a linebacker or defensive end and too slow to play defensive back. That sounds like a typical Riverside player, small and slow. We moved him from position to position until he settled in as an outside linebacker. He would hit you if he could get into position but there is a learning curve in football and sometimes we found him curving in the wrong direction. It began with the simple act of dressing. Did I mention that Rugby players don’t wear equipment? The game of rugby involves blocking and tackling, all without benefit of the equipment that we associate with our game of football including helmets and shoulder pads. This might explain why when “Googling” rugby I saw so many smiling rugby players without all of their teeth.

Once he learned how to dress, and made it to the field, we decided to limit him to defense because of the learning curve involved with offense. In addition to never having played football, Hobby had also missed all four weeks of preseason practice. Defense is more about alignment and reaction than having to learn a play with all the terminology that is involved. “Bunch Right-Liz-Move-Combo Veer-On Three” is akin to learning another language in addition to acquiring the technical ability required to execute the play. He did find a place to play. Despite his disadvantages, Hobby would run as hard as he could and was not afraid to cause a collision. This made him perfect for the kickoff team and he became a good “wedge buster.” Unfortunately this was not one of our better teams meaning we might not get to kick off but once due to our propensity for being shut out. As the season drew to a close we also put him on the kick off return team which gave him many more opportunities to play.

The end of football season also meant that Hobby and I did not run into each other as often. At the fall athletic banquet he presented each member of the coaching staff a wall hanging of a New Zealand map which was divided according to their rugby teams and each of their team uniform shirts. After the banquet there was limited contact until one day the following spring that I saw him in the hallway and we paused long enough to catch up on how well he was doing and to remind him that I still thought he was Crocodile Dundee despite his protests. He was dressed in typical teenage faire, which is universal it would seem, blue jeans and tee-shirt. This particular tee shirt featured his county’s name and logo and I made a big deal about how much I liked it. That is how I got the tee shirt; not that day but later in the spring, the day after graduation. After bidding the seniors a fond adieu, the next day would be spent completing those tasks that teachers must complete before we can run, cheering and dancing to the closest bar as we close school for the summer. I had completed my list of duties and had wandered to another room to try and assist another teacher. When I had assisted or interfered all I could I wandered back to my room and found the tee shirt neatly folded on my desk. There was no note but I got the message loud and clear. It would also explain why I have held on to it all of these years, hole and all.

WHAT I TRULY HATE

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I hate it when South Carolina is on the national evening news because it is rarely news that it is good. North Charleston, Emmanuel, the thousand-year flood, all were horrible and showed the worst and the absolute best that South Carolina and her population have to offer. I really hate our population must continually “step up” to meet these challenges. Seeing the “body slam” that took place at Spring Valley High School was like adding a cherry to the top of a messy banana split. Am I comparing dozens of deaths to a body slam? Absolutely not but I was a teacher, and this troubles me to no end….

Despite what has been written, posted or openly argued, my own personal OPINION, which is based upon forty plus years of teaching, is that ninety percent of the students in our state, and in most states, are upstanding youth who sometimes make mistakes but truly want to learn. Could we do without the other ten percent, probably but what do you do with them. Put them in jail so they can learn a real trade? Do we have an erosion of authority in schools? I will answer that with another question. Do we have an erosion of authority in society? The answer then should be easy. Why would we expect our schools to be any different than our society?

Nothing has really changed over the years except for the bandwagons people have jumped on. There was always the one or two “little Johnnies” in every class that at the end of the day made you shake your head, take a deep breath and say, “If it wasn’t for so and so, fourth period would be a great class.” There were also a few classes that I wondered what the computer was thinking when it spit out my class roster. The difference today is that social media plants “so and so’s” face all over the web or on wide screen televisions and allows us to pontificate about what the underlying causes are and anonymously call students, teachers and police officers whatever descriptor we desire.

There is rarely any good news posted because good news doesn’t sell commercials or internet advertisements. There were other videos posted right after the Spring Valley video came to light so that right wing trolls could point out the decline of society caused by the libtards running the country…or was it vice versa?

What I really hate is the way we jump off of cliffs before any of the facts are available. We make our choices on which side we are going to support and refuse to accept any other course because our choice fits into some preconceived notion that we have. I admit to have fallen into this abyss on occasion. Does the un-named young lady bear any guilt? Yes, but posters were still saying that her parents needed to “tan that butt” hours after it had been revealed her parent had died and she had just been recently put in foster care. Does that give her a free pass? No! Should it be a consideration? I guess it depends on how heartless or bleeding heart you are.

I believe the teacher and the administrator bear guilt to. I don’t know what her discipline record is, AND YOU DON’T EITHER, but I cannot for the life of me believe that the teacher and administrator could not have found a way to defuse the situation before Officer Fields was called in. Teaching is tough and teaching in a big urban high school is tougher but that shouldn’t give people a free pass, and how you handle issues starts at the top and works down.

For those of you who have never set foot in a high school since graduation you may want to curb your suggestions until you get a degree and try it yourselves or maybe try and affect change in your own households. I find it interesting that when it comes to teaching and coaching, any doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, or person, breathing or not, has a better idea on what you should be doing in a classroom. Yes that’s another thing that I hate.

I have toiled at four schools that had SRO’s and found each and every one of those officers to be competent, caring and wearing their badges in the right place. I was always glad to have them, used some of them in my social studies classes when studying law, made cop and teacher jokes with them, and found them to place the students in their care just one small step below their primary function which was to insure safety for all. I believe each and every one would risk their lives to save those same students or teachers. Are there bad apples? Again, are there bad apples in society? Sure, but are we to throw out the baby with the bath water?

Unlike the young lady’s record, Officer Field’s steps and missteps are right out there for all of us to read and comment on. A kind of Dr. Jekyll and Officer “Slam”, he has been decorated and disciplined and we have jumped right out there to suggest his body building led him to PED’s and the “roid rages” that their use implies. None of us have the right or information to comment…but it doesn’t stop us because it is our “opinion.” I was with Officer Fields right up until the body slam and the body “chunk” across the room. DO TRY and explain to me why a two hundred pound plus body builder needed to do that to a sixteen year old who may or may not have slapped at him.

There are no winners in this. Officer Fields has lost his job and a student, who should have acted better, got battered, bruised and probably suspended for her efforts. Well, maybe her lawyer will win a tidy sum for the both of them. All we get to do is debate racism, police brutality, teacher incompetence and the decaying society that we call the United States. That is what I hate the most because while we are able to see the symptoms of our fall, like our government, we are unable to suggest a cure…or maybe suggest too many.

WHEN LITTLE JOHNNY WAS A REAL PERSON AND NOT A JOKE AT ALL

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If you are a teacher you have heard Little Johnny jokes. Enjoy.

For some reason a teaching friend of mine decided that her Self Contained Special Education children should have access to the Industrial Arts lab and to the same experiences as any other student. This was very progressive thinking for the Seventies and inexplicably the powers-that-were agreed with the special education teacher, much to the chagrin of the Industrial Arts teacher. Also inexplicably I was somehow convinced to lend another pair of eyes to help monitor the proceedings. It did not begin well.

I am sure many of you have heard of the little Johnny jokes. They may have been created specifically with this young man in mind. Johnny was not just little, he was scrawny and I am sure underfed. Johnny was also unkempt. Longish “bed” hair stuck out in all directions framing a narrow face with a narrow hooked nose that was a very prominent feature. Dressed for the month in jeans and a well-used tee shirt, he was not an attractive young man. He was also not very bright or sweet. After receiving instruction, the class’s task was to build a blue bird house which would require everyone to use a table or band saw. Johnny did not want to use either and was very vocal about it. In his slow, whiney drawl he loudly stated, “Ain’t gonna use the damn thing! It’s too damn loud!” After much cajoling from his teacher, Johnny finally strode over to the band saw, turned in on, placed his measured one by six in position and with some forethought cut the end of his index finger off. Proudly showing his bloody nub, he said, “Told you I didn’t want to use the damn thing! It is too damn loud!”

Several months after school had adjourned for the year I drove to the gym to do my summer weight room supervision and was met by an unusual sight. Resting on the hill overlooking the baseball field was a hang glider. Not something you see every day or even once in your lifetime on a high school campus. Buckling himself into the contraption was Johnny “the nub” from Industrial Arts fame.

“My, my Johnny that is a fine hang glider. What are you going to do with that thing?”
“Gonna fly off Glassy Mountain.”
“Johnny, you are a long way from Glassy Mountain, I don’t think you can fly that far.”
“Coach Miller, I gotta practice to fly off from there.”
“Johnny, I am sorry. You can’t practice here. Ms. Koon (our principal) would have both our butts if I let you fly off here.”

I should have been a little clearer about what ‘not here’ meant. An hour into my supervision I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. As I looked out over the baseball field, motion to my right caught my attention. To Johnny, ‘not here’ meant that he should move to the hill that the football stadium was built into, and I was too late to abort his takeoff. To add to the excitement, he had drawn a crowd of football players and band members who decided to cheer him on. I took off at a ”sprint”, yelling all of the way. Johnny just grinned, waved and took off on his own sprint and then leapt into the sky as he got to the beginning of the hill’s decline. It was pretty anticlimactic. With feet tucked up under him, his toes might have been two feet, ten inches off of the ground. I estimate this because the field restraining fence was three feet tall and his toes did not quite clear it. With toes hung on the fence, forward momentum was changed to downward momentum causing the nose of the hang glider to “staub” up into the ground with Johnny’s toes acting as the fulcrum. By the time that I got to him he was out of his harness and painfully jumping from foot to foot, softly saying “oh, oh, oh, oh!” I don’t know if Johnny ever got to fly off of Glassy Rock. Since I have heard of no fatalities, I would guess not.

“I HEAR OF TEACHERS CRYING ON THEIR KITCHEN FLOORS”

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This was an article that caught my eye earlier today. If you are interested you can read if you so desire at the following link. https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/%E2%80%98i-hear-teachers-crying-their-kitchen-floor-because-stress%E2%80%99

Being a retired teacher it would be natural that this headline might catch my eye. I can say that during my forty plus years teaching I never cried on my kitchen floor due to stress…I would be more likely to pass out on my kitchen floor from stress. Hey, Jack Daniels would be a great reliever of stress if it wasn’t for the health and emotional issues of alcohol addiction…and those blinding headaches.

What have we done to our teachers? It would be natural to think that this was some poor first year teacher who really wasn’t cut out to teach. It would be reasonable to think this but that wasn’t the case. We were all first year teachers at one time and I assure you many times during my first year, and during the next forty, I wondered if I was cut out to teach or to coach. When I stepped into my first class, I was a blank slate. A clean canvas, blanker and cleaner than the freshly erased and washed chalk boards located in my classroom. I wasn’t much better the second year when a relative of mine congratulated me for “graduating” from teaching junior high school to teaching senior high school. No I didn’t attempt to explain it to her.

I am going to discount my six weeks of student teaching and my first year of actual teaching because I learned little until my second year of teaching. That year I learned that young teachers get the classes that older, more seasoned teachers are glad they don’t get. For about ten years that seemed to be pretty unfair…then I started getting the good classes and it seemed infinitely fairer. I was fortunate to have had a lot of help becoming a better teacher. Great mentors and great people. I remember walking into Nita Leatherwood’s class at the beginning of my free period early my second year. Just so you non-teachers know – THERE IS NOTHING FREE about a free period. It is actually known as a planning period, though because of department meetings, teaching team meetings, conferences or a dozen other meetings, it is actually a time in which teachers get to do little planning. If you are lucky you have time to grab a cup of coffee and a quick trip by the “facilities.” I really believe that my bladder issues occurred because…anyway, I digress.

As I walked in to Ms. Leatherwood’s classroom, I found myself amazed at how well-behaved her class was. My classes resembled cats on amphetamines until I was able to calm them down. That usually took about fifteen minutes longer than the class itself. I tried to use the technique of boredom to put them to sleep but that didn’t work either. Her class was talking quietly and she was joining in. Books and notebooks were open and displayed on their desks, pencils poised at the ready. You could almost hear them thinking, “What are you waiting for? Teach Meeeeeeee!” More amazing, she was smiling to, wait…she was even laughing at something one of her students had said.
Sometime early in my first year, a coach or teaching peer advised “Don’t even think about smiling until after Christmas and then only do it infrequently!” This led to a developing philosophy called the “Vince Lombardi/Attila the Hun” school of instruction…and coaching. Not much fun for my students or for me. Ms. Leatherwood gave me what would become the first step of my teaching philosophy staircase when I asked about her classroom management and how it related to smiling. “You do realize this is an upper level chemistry class and not the barrel of monkeys you teach. It’s taken me twenty years to get a reputation…and classes like this. They came in this way on their own.” I didn’t believe her but then she asked me, “Are you teaching who you are?” My confused look convinced her to continue, “You have to teach within your own personality, not someone else’s’.” It took a while but I did get that one down. Later that same year Jay Lunceford, our head coach, punched me on the shoulder and said, “Quit yelling so much!” Before I could ask why, he added to my philosophy by explaining, “If you yell all of the time how do they know you are pissed off? Besides, you are going to give yourself a headache…and everyone else.” Between the two of them I put the “Lombardi the Hun” philosophy of education to bed…for good.

I’m not sure you get to teach “who you are” in today’s educational landscape and if I were in a position to be a mentoring teacher, I’m not sure I would have the time to tend to anything other than my own “beeswax.” I am also unsure that I would be able coach and teach if I were starting out today. It’s all about the bottom line…the gospel according to TEST SCORES and how to improve them. My last year of teaching was spent trying to figure out how to teach to a test that was kept under lock and key in the deepest recesses of a locked vault, heavily guarded, eight million lightyears away in a parallel universe. Get it. You are attempting to play a game you have never seen and have no instruction in and the only rules are to make sure you are kept in the dark. Although you have meetings several times weekly to try and figure it all out, the people who you are meeting have no more of a clue than you do. I have never seen teacher moral at a lower level than that last year. Thankfully “No Child Left Behind” is being left behind. Unfortunately, I don’t know what is going to replace it and sometimes a known evil is better than an unknown one. Common Core?

That second year of teaching, my first at Mauldin, the guidance department did me no favors when they put together my sixth period class, the last period of the day each and every day. The Class from Hell? No it was the Vampire Killer Clown Class from Hell. I went to my principal quizzing her about what I should do. They couldn’t read a Dick and Jane book or do basic math and had an attention span the size of an amoeba’s penis. I know, amoebas do not have that particular accoutrement and my class had no attention span. I had one child that could not write his name. How could I teach him science? You know what she said? “That’s where you start.” “Your lesson plans should reflect teaching him to write his name.” Not sure you would get that advice today and if a teacher can get that done and raise test scores, that teacher is an exception and not the rule. By the way, Earnest finished the year able to write his first, middle and last name and I felt like a master teacher.

According to Jim Henson of Muppet fame, “[Kids] don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” I hope he is right and I hope these new teachers are remembered for more than crying on kitchen floors and teaching to a test. Good luck my former compadres, known and unknown.

TEACHER CREATIVITY GOES AWRY

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Sometimes teachers can be more creative than they intend to be and sometimes their best laid plans do go asunder. There was one student teacher from Bob Jones University who had her students create flash cards to assist her student’s review of material for an upcoming test.

Questions were written on one side with the answers on the other. This is something that most teachers do to assist their students as they learn new material. I only mention that she was from Bob Jones University, a fundamental Christian university, because quite a few of their student teachers were not very…well…worldly. Most became exceptionally good student teachers once they realized the games that high school students sometimes play.

This one student teacher may have been worldlier than she let on, but from all accounts she was not a particularly good student teacher. As she held an in-class review, the student teacher asked, “This American activist crusaded on the behalf of the mentally insane in the late 1800s, who was she?” After giving her students time to search for the answer, she then asked, “if everyone had their Dix out?” Okay say it slowly and aloud. “Do you have your Dix out?” If you burst into laughter, you now know what her class did.

Early in my career I also tried to be creative. I tried to be creative late in my career but was smarter about it…. Well not; I just remembered making a pickle light up, blowing up hydrogen balloons and demonstrating a potato gun. One of my favorite demonstrations was to show the behavior of metal sodium when placed in water. As I look back on this time, I realize it might not have been a smart thing to do because the reaction produces heat and hydrogen, along with a caustic base, and there is a potential for an explosion and therefore some danger.

I would drop a ridiculously small, bee bee sized amount of sodium into a lab sink with a small amount of water. Everyone would be wearing safety googles as we watched the sodium spark and smoke as it ran around on the surface of the water like a “scrubbing bubble.” If we were lucky, the spark would ignite the hydrogen and would cause a small “pop” that might get a few people wet. All of this was strictly monitored by yours truly.

I had to quit doing this demonstration when a group of student lab assistants decided that they would recreate this demonstration in the sink located in the chemical storage room. Using the logic that kids and not so bright adult, Southerners sometimes employ, if a little is good, then a lot would be great.

Instead of dropping a bee bee sized amount of sodium into the water they dropped a golf ball sized amount. As the reaction progressed all was fine until one of the other science teachers walked in on them. To cover up their crime, they pulled the plug in the sink to dispose of the evidence and this is where the dangerous fun began.

All plumbing fixtures in a science lab are made of glass to prevent chemical reactions involving corrosive acids and metals. They are also connected to each other. When the sodium hit the trap, it had nowhere to go and exploded. Luckily, no one was injured but the same could not be said for many of the interconnected glass traps. Also, a few students standing near to lab sinks got unexpected baths in what could be described as a toxic brew of water. While no one was injured, the old saying that “it is all fun and games until someone loses an eye” still applied.

Another of my favorite activities was the end of year “water rocket” project. Who knew that a two-liter soft drink bottle with fins and nose could fly so far? Filled with water and pumped with a bicycle pump to eighty or so pounds of pressure, we had one fly from the front lawn of the school, over said school, and to the far side of the football stadium. Granted, there was a stiff wind blowing but the designer was smart enough to cut his fins in such a way to impart spin. It flew and flew and flew.

Most didn’t. Quite a few just barely got into the air, which was the one requirement to receive a passing grade. Get off the pad for a ‘D’! For a dozen or so well-designed rockets, you might have thought of the movie “October Sky.” Because we flew them from the front lawn during the late day classes, parents waiting to pick up their kids in the car line were given a show, and many left their cars to have a better view. The parents loved it and the flights became an unexpected public relations coup for me as they praised my creativity and innovation.

They would stand in groups, applauding every liftoff and cheering for those who cleared the launch pad. Most of the good ones flew a hundred or so feet and then crashed harmlessly onto the lawn or at worst the top of the school. That was until a change in wind direction brought them crashing down into the car line. I don’t think my parents realized that they could move so fast, and the scene reminded me of film from World War II. Well, so much for scoring the public relations coup and all my creativity with it.

Excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing….” which can be downloaded on Kindle or purchased on Amazon at http://goo.gl/UE2LPW