Connecting to Students

When I began my journey into education, I did so by accident. I was enrolled in college to be a computer programmer. I loved video games and wanted to make them myself one day. After a few courses, and realizing the entire scope of the math involved, I dropped out of school. I was then on my way to being a manager of a sporting goods chain at the local mall!

Let me set the stage of my school years. From kindergarten through 5th grade I was a straight A student. School came very easy for me. In the first half of my sixth grade year my parents divorced. It affected me more so than anyone could not tell at the time. They year was 1986.

I left the only school district I had ever known, a very rural place where most everyone knew one another, and went to a drastically different urban setting where cliques were the way of life, no one knew anyone out of their own class, and no one liked outsiders.

I scraped my way through middle school with relatively few friends. I never dated. I was overweight and standoffish. I stopped caring about grades. I had found a new passion – Mario! I made the decision that school was second to my new Nintendo Entertainment System! And Super Mario Bros. ruled!

I entered my ninth grade year being a solid C student. For English that semester I had a very attractive teacher whom I will call Joyce. She was very popular. She maintained her popularity by being a cheerleading coach at the school. She was fit, young, and pretty. The girls loved her because she was one of “them” and the boys loved her because hormones were in overdrive and they all had a target of lust.

The assignment was to read The Hound of the Baskervilles and give an oral report. I never took the book home. We read in class a few times, but most of the reading was to be done at home. When it came my time to report, I told her I wanted to pass and just take my F. I wasn’t the only one in the class to do this, so it came as a surprise to me that she reacted as she did. When the class was over she had a student collect all of the books. The bell rings. We stand to leave. She says, “Robert.” I turned around. I was hit in the right shoulder with a hardbound copy of the novel I had not read. “You will have this completed by Monday morning. So you understand?” The class laughed because a) I had just gotten pegged in the right shoulder by a novel and b) a teacher threw a book at a kid. This was 1988.

I read that book that Friday night. It took maybe three to four hours, but I did it in one sitting. I loved it! The next day I went to the mall and bought a collection of Sherlock Holmes novels and read them all. I returned to school and gave my report. I made a B because she said it was late.

That episode did not change my viewpoint of school. I still hated it. But, I did learn that just because students pigeonhole themselves into cliques did not mean teachers did as well. What it showed me was that teachers, really good ones, find out what makes the biggest difference to the greatest number of students, and they appeal to those students on their individual levels. She just saw me for what I was – lazy! She got my attention, and I did the assignment. For that, I say “Thank you, Ms. Joyce. I loved you. In more ways than you will ever know.”

The Education of South Carolina Revitalization Begins Here

The Education of South Carolina Revitalization Begins Here