The worst teacher I’ve known in my 77 years was me at 23, in November 1972, at St. John’s Elementary School in Burlington, Iowa, in front of 44 6th graders, with my fly open.
Actually, the zipper incident didn’t occur until my second week. And my subjective teacher-quality ranking would’ve tied Rollie and me for first among the worst.
Sister Marie hired me in late October because the previous teacher, an older woman, had retired early after this historically monstrous class ran her out of town. I’m guessing I was the only male who applied. And, as I recalled my job interview in her tiny office, my only question was whether I could bring a Christmas tree into the classroom.
Baby Jesus wouldn’t be the only innocent in this classic three-story school building, which, Joni Mitchell’s warning notwithstanding, was knocked down three decades later to put up a church parking lot.
My boss wanted someone young, cheap, and male. I think she thought a man could control these adolescents who, it turned out, were mostly rambunctious, except for Steve, who threw a chair at me on the Friday of my first week.
My first-year salary, around $5000, fit my level of incompetence perfectly. I had taken a few education classes and spent the previous semester shadowing a middle school teacher who seemed to command control the moment he entered the room. The educational philosophy at the time, coming out of the sixties, was befriending your students.
Every night, alone in my first apartment, a few blocks down and then up the hill from the school, I quit. Creating what my education textbooks called a learning environment seemed impossible. Perhaps the innocent zipper incident was my subconscious looking for a way out.
Ironically, a couple of years later, I became good friends with the Burlington police chief, a few years older than me, but still the youngest commander in Iowa. I once mentioned the fly event to Ted, who responded that laws against public exposure required, well, actual exposure. Of that, I was innocent. However, I was still clueless about managing a classroom.
I asked Sister Marie for help. She listened, but this was also her first time as principal, and I sensed we were both in over our heads. I had to look elsewhere. Because, without realizing it, I wasn’t a quitter.
So during my free period, I decided to roam the halls to observe what was going on in other classrooms.
This was very, very interesting. The first thing that stood out was that some teachers kept their doors open, while others didn’t. Fortunately, all the doors had windows.
One teacher who closed his door was Rollie, hired the year before, who taught science in a classroom that shared my room’s back wall. I had never known a Rollie. He was a big guy with a deep, loud voice, a handlebar mustache, and strong opinions. The kind of man who dominated a room, and the type I’d always struggled to like.
For the first month or so, I could hear him bellowing even through the thick walls. He was always slamming his door, I suppose, as a signal to students that class was starting and to pay attention. But the first few times I peeked in his window, his classroom decorum seemed as chaotic as mine, immune to his foghorn-like voice.
Over the next few weeks, a few quiet conversations in the teacher’s room confirmed what I’d observed. Rollie’s take-no-prisoners approach, the opposite of my friend-first strategy, was an abysmal failure.
Across from my Social Science room, with my door always closed, lay Sister Ellen’s math space down the corridor, always open except during a test.
She was a stern-looking nun, one of many I had met in my 16 years of Catholic education. However, over many visits to Aunt Fawny, my mother’s sister, also known as Sister Marilyn Thomas, at the Dubuque Motherhouse of the BVM’s (Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary), I saw the other side of these kind, committed, and intelligent women whom I came to love.
Twenty-five years after our five-year St. John’s overlap, I met Sister Ellen, also an All-State basketball player in the 1950s and a lifelong BVM, who was in retirement in Dubuque. We talked about teaching, and I told her how much her little piece of advice meant to me.
From my many brief walk-by observations, Sister Ellen’s classroom seemed to purr with controlled energy. She was always on her feet, moving around the classroom, with, astoundingly, students raising their hands. Eventually, I summoned the courage to ask her if we could talk about teaching.
That led to many conversations, with the first being the most important. I don’t remember exactly how I phrased the question, but I’m sure it was something like, “How do you control your students?”
I remembered her answer word for word in every classroom I entered for the next fifty years.
You’ve got to show them you love them. And you’ve got to be firm. You can start out tough and then slowly loosen up. But you can’t go in the other direction. But always remember, you’ve got to show them you care.
