What a discovery!
They’re all there, in one blast from the past. I threw everything away, as did my mother, so I have nothing left from my high school years, not even my red-and-black-sleeved letter jacket with the large white A.
Fortunately, my old high school didn’t. It had the good sense to put its Yearbooks online. So I’m writing this morning with ALL my teachers looking at me, surely from the teacher’s lounge in the great beyond, as this photo was taken in 1965. I’ll be joining you someday. Save a donut.
I went to a Catholic high school that separated the boys from the girls, except for the 17-minute lunch period. The boys were in wings A and B, and the girls in C and D. You can see the boys’ faculty in the picture.
Here are four vignettes from my sophomore year. The names are real, as are my memories. Can you put a name to a face?
Sister Laurent taught Algebra. Strangely, she liked me. I never knew what to do with a teacher who showed me favor. She returned tests with the lined papers folded vertically, with the grade inside and circled in red. B- repeated ad nauseam, a phrase I didn’t learn in Latin, open only to the highest achievers. She occasionally admonished the boys, who had just returned from gym class, to keep their knees firmly touching.
Mr. Loras Schiltz taught Spanish and American History. In first-year Spanish, he accused me of cheating on a quiz. I hadn’t, and that night I called him at home and explained. That was the only time I ever phoned a teacher. I don’t recall the conversation, but he let me retake the test.
I also took History from him, with a book the size of a Bible. Schiltz, an assistant football coach, patrolled the six aisles of thirty boys with military vigilance. Joe Graham’s head was resting against a wall when Mr. Schiltz whacked Joe’s left ear with the text. I knew what would happen next, as I had gone to grade school with Joe.
His false right eye popped out onto the desk, after which he gathered it up and popped it back in.
I always felt sorry for Mr. Robert Grenier, who taught English and was my homeroom teacher. Empathy does not come easily for a 16-year-old. He seemed too sensitive to be in charge of hormone-charged teenagers. His biggest weakness was that he didn’t seem to like us.
Looking back from my own fifty-year teaching career, I may have learned this lesson through osmosis, years before I could imagine myself in the front of the classroom. My final image of Mr. Grenier was on the last day of school, when he stood helpless as his class of gangsters charged out of the classroom, overturning desks at the sound of the final bell. He didn’t return the next year.
Oh, Mr. Raymond Ambrose, I’m sorry, you were a good man, but your Civics class was so dull. Duller even than typing, where I pounded out 22 words an hour on the first day and 21 words an hour on the last day, for a well-deserved D-, the same grade you offered me. It was a gift, I know, so I didn’t have to retake the class. You could have punished me for those 0’s on the dreadful Friday quizzes, but you didn’t.
Perhaps you saw, beneath the pimply surface, an inkling of the future college teacher of Politics, who would learn from his biography to see beyond the immature moments of the young men and women sitting before him.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
