While entering Houston’s Minute Maid Park for the opening
night game four months ago, standing at the gate poised to scan the sheet of
paper that nowadays passes for a ticket is a familiar face. From my mouth,
pretty much of their own accord, spring the words, “Hey, I know you, I taught
you!” The young lady gave me a big smile and called me by name. A steady stream
of fans – yes, at an Astro game – spared me the discomfort of “chatting up”
someone whose name did not come immediately to mind. I did, though, learn that
she’d become a middle-school Math teacher. The name came to mind halfway to our
seats, and she and I did get to “visit” briefly after the game.
That’s one of the pleasant perks of the teaching profession.
I can still recall the “Wow!” I felt the first time a kid told me that he now had a classroom to call his own.
I don’t know what influence, if any, I may have had on the
career choice of these two young adults. I do know that I genuinely enjoyed
going to work every day, and I’d like to think it showed – far more often than
not.
In the old days, teachers were believed to serve “in loco
parentis” – that is, “in place of the parent.” And wise parents know that the
most crucial results of their work reveal themselves over time, not immediately.
Once in a while, though, some evidence appears more
promptly. Let me give you a “for instance.” It involves a boy whose name I’ll
never struggle to recall.
Robert was a pistol from Day One – tall, athletic, handsome
and plenty bright, accentuated with a charm that bordered on arrogance. He’d
evidently breezed through his prior schooling, so the effort and discipline
required in a demanding college-prep engineering magnet program was foreign to
him. Thus, he was not a “happy camper” and it showed – in various shapes and
forms.
I’d met his Mom early on at our Open House, and we’d chatted
on several subsequent occasions, even at a couple of football games. She was a very nice
and pleasant young lady, but clearly the frustrated parent of a teen-ager. (Is
that redundant?)
After school one day early in the spring semester, I stepped
into the classroom of a colleague for some reason or other. A handful or so of
upperclassmen were wrestling with some calculus. There, too, were Robert (a
student in this instructor’s lone freshman Algebra class) and his Mom. The
scene and words were all too familiar, student wiggling and jiggling
uncomfortably. But when I saw Robert roll his eyes for the second time in about
30 seconds time, I decided to intervene.
Offering a quick apology to my co-worker (a former college
prof slightly older than me), I turned to Robert and said the following: “Robert,
you’re a real snotty-assed little brat. And you’re going to stay a snotty-assed
little brat until the day you realize that the best friend you’ll ever have is
standing to your left.”
With that, I informed the teacher I’d come back a little
later and returned to my classroom directly across the hallway. About ten
minutes later, a head peeped into my room. “Thank you.” It was Robert’s Mom.
I haven’t crossed paths with Robert or his parent since the
end of the 2006-2007 school year – he didn’t return to the program for his
sophomore year. (To quote the illustrious high-school basketball coach Bob
Hurley, Sr., “What we do here isn’t for everyone; that’s why doors have hinges.”)
Robert’s class was on schedule to graduate from college this
year.
Who knows … maybe he’ll become a Math teacher.
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