Carolyn J. Rose
A teenage friend has a teacher who is, as we say, “phoning it in.” The teacher isn't conveying interest, isn't engaging with the class or the subject matter. So my friend, a girl who loves to read and learn, is, to say the least, disappointed.
Okay, I get that some parts of the English curriculum aren't what I'd call exciting. Diagramming sentences made my feet snore. And I would rather have eaten a pint of mealy lima beans without butter than figure out where to put commas. I doubt any caliber of teacher or degree of interest could have changed that. And the teachers I had back then were about as interested in the work as I am about finding a recipe that might make me relish lima beans.
But a good teacher could have made it possible to read Silas Marner (back in 1959) without getting a headache. Ditto with Ivanhoe. A good teacher would have provided context, provided information about time and place, prejudice and social custom. A good teacher could have made the characters come alive, made us understand and feel for them.
But I didn't have a good teacher. I had a woman who was, as my father used to say, “wound tighter than a two-dollar watch.” She was all about control, right down to the way we aligned our desks and chairs with lines in the linoleum, how we positioned our paper and pens, and how we sat with feet on the floor. It occurred to me years later that we mirrored her.
She might have read portions of the book aloud or acted out a character now and then. She might have asked us questions to make sure we were getting it. But she didn't. After writing a few vocabulary words on the blackboard with the mandatory squeaky chalk, she graded papers while we sat as still as was possible at that age and read silently.
To this day, even though I got an A in the class, I have no idea what went on in those books. I read words and sentences but they didn't hang together to deliver description, characterization, action, and plot. The books were spoiled for me. I hated them. And I'm not going back to see if I'd like them now.
The next year I was gifted with an outstanding teacher, a woman with energy, often fierce energy. She wanted her students to learn, to get it, and get it completely. She wanted us to be engaged and creative. She wanted us to experience more than words on a page. And she wanted us to find our voices as writers.
She gave us context for plays and stories. She broadened the curriculum to include works of art that connected to literature. In an age before the video available now, armed only with that squeaky chalk, she drew Picasso's Guernica on the blackboard. My eyes opened wide. The nerve networks in my brain hummed. She was willing to go the extra mile to get me to do the same. She cared. This was real education. And I was all in.
