A former teacher looks back to a time of great accomplishments and possibilities

When I was a newbie teacher of middle-school-age students 42 years ago in the Fall of 1980, I had spent the previous summer preparing to teach English literature, composition and grammar. It was a private school and I only had a total of 44 students in two classes/grades. I was also taking education courses at the nearby university, as I had to get my master’s degree in secondary English and get state-certified so I could continue teaching.

You cannot imagine what would-be teachers go through in teaching methods and curriculum courses. It was quite an eye-opening experience. Lots of lesson planning, lots of lectures. I was always a good English student myself, and took to grammar and composition from 7th grade on, particularly. As you know, I still love to write.

One of my main goals was to have students write often, every kind of writing from creative writing, including poetry and short stories, essays on a wide variety of topics, and of course, a big thing with me, frequent journal writing.

I was always amazed by the results because being a first-year teacher, and thankfully more than a little bit idealistic and naive, I expected a lot out of them. When you have those high expectations, students respond accordingly. I am not saying I could possibly do this in a classroom today, where the kids would be texting and not paying any attention, and being discipline problems, but back then in the pre-Internet world, 7th and 8 th grade students still lived in an age of books and a vast variety of other printed material.

One of the technique to get my students writing was to use prompts. It’s pretty basic, but effective. One was to have them sit very still and, using three of their five senses in turn, write what they are hearing, seeing, smelling. At first I could hear a few groans, but before long, pencils and pens were moving across the tops of every desk. The results were quite interesting and enlightening. Unbeknownst to the students, they were learning to hone the skills of paying attention, and looking deeply and more consciously and meaningfully.

Another time, and this was in the first week or so of the new school year, and my first year teaching, I had them finish four sentences that I started for them. They were: 1) Wisdom is…..2) Happiness is…..3) I wonder when…. and 4) I wonder why…

Below is what one student wrote. I saved his paper because I thought the responses were quite remarkable and mature for someone his age. Ironically, he was not only smart, but sly and mischievous, and would try my patience at times. He had to sit out recess more than a few times. But he was a good kid and thrived in that class as the year progressed. When I had a cold once, the next day he gave me a quite humorous get well card. You remember things like that, many years later, and packrat that I am, I’m pretty sure I still have that card 40 years later.

I saved in manilla folders and file boxes selected graded essays and tests, creative writing and 8th grade graduation memorabilia. I also put out, with students and teachers throughout the school contributing news, the monthly school newspaper, a yearly literary anthology, and the yearbook for which I took all the pictures three years in a row. I also read aloud a lot of creative writing. That was probably the most popular thing I did. It was great fun because students love to be recognized.

Here is what that particular student wrote for the sentence completion assignment.

* Wisdom is when someone is old and knows what to do and what not to do, someone who can give the right advice.

* Happiness is when someone is happy      about their self, life, jobs, other people and the world.

* I wonder when there will be another world war. (He could certainly be writing that today.)

* I wonder why Iran is holding our hostages.

In my efforts to have them write frequently I wanted them to think about serious topics, recall memories from their pasts, and have fun with writing. A key goal was to have them become aware of the rich personal rewards than can come from writing.

I smile when I think about those good old teaching days long ago. I loved doing it for three years at the small, private school where the atmosphere was so conducive to what schooling should be like. When I left after my third year, newly certified and ready to make a salary that I could at least live on, my career sadly fell by the wayside in a large public middle school where I had three times as many students and some unsolvable discipline problems.

It’s also not a great profession for someone who prefers a solitary and rather reclusive life. Maybe it would have been fine at the college level, or maybe in some better world in the future where our descendants will shake their heads in bewilderment at the large-scale, industrial-model schools that prevailed then. I think it’s fair to say we are now living in an age when the civilizing liberal arts and humanities are scarcely valued over career training, nor are they appreciated by parents who themselves had inferior educations, through no fault of their own.

I sometimes think back wistfully on what might have been if I’d stayed in teaching, but I’ll never know the answer to that. so I’ll just hold on closer than ever to the very special memories I have of those times, some of the happiest in my life.