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Random musings about elementary school

School ·Tuesday April 7, 2009 @ 02:18 EDT (link)

On reading Murray's Real Education, the topic of influential teachers came up. A few came to mind for me: of course my father was always supportive, but neither one of us were great communicators (we've definitely both improved), and he frequently didn't understand what school was like for me, what my (largely self-taught) learning goals were.

In second form in England, Miss Williams was understanding, although I don't remember much that far back. I was only in that class a half year, and then we moved to Canada. My first teacher in Canada (grade five, skipping a grade in the move) was Mrs. Ozog, who let me pick my own spelling words since the ones from the book were too easy. Moved to gifted class in grade six, I know I acted out a lot in Mrs. Rashleigh's (she was some other R. before that; she got married during the year) class (I cut some girl's hair once—only a very little—Shelly D. was her name, and I've no idea why I did it, but it didn't go over well. I learned that girls value their hair much more than boys do). I also think I did some things (chucking a binder, telling the teacher I'd take a zero for an assignment because something didn't go the way I wanted) for effect, too. It was a good class, though; I made some good friends there.

In seventh and eighth grade I was in Mr. Sinclair's class (and he was also on my paper route, and I learned the meaning of not mixing business and pleasure when I ignorantly tried to collect the weekly subscription in class one day). He was a good teacher; he kept things challenging (I remember his A(rithmetic?) and P(problem) sets he gave us at the beginning of class). I sometimes see him walking his dog past my parents' house when I'm visiting.

High school was more of the same. Grade nine was miserable; I suppose this is expected. Several teachers had no control of their classes (The names Kemp and Simpson—Yoda—come to mind). I do remember Mrs. Lazowski (technically, as she told us, it was the feminine form Lazowska), a tough but fair old lady who taught typing and could easily be coaxed to stop the lesson and hold forth on various hot-button issues such as abortion. (I think it was she that first noticed that I needed glasses, since I had trouble seeing the board.) In later years, especially in the advanced track (which wasn't all that advanced, really—when picking classes in grade eight I had selected the general (out of basic, general, and advanced) geography class because geography wasn't my strong suit, but whatever teacher was overseeing it told me to check advanced).

As now, I read voraciously (usually in math class, although I once got kicked out of class by an exchange teacher from New Mexico for reading in English class), taught myself computer programming and to some extent computer science, and although was pretty small, didn't put up with crap from anybody (not wanting to get killed, though, I usually left class rather than starting fights: if the teacher couldn't keep order, I felt morally justified to go to my locker and read). It wasn't my fault that I fell asleep in Mr. Chambers'—grade 11?—computer science class: it was mind-numbing since I'd taught myself the day's lesson at a single-digit age; he sent me to the office and then had the gall to check that I made it there: I hadn't (I went to read by my locker), so the principal had me paged. There he (Willard Thorne) attempted to browbeat me into confessing that I didn't know the topic and should have been paying attention, except I did know the topic pretty thoroughly (it was still rude to fall asleep, but I was a kid; give me a break, plus I'd probably been up late in BBS land).

Paul McCormick was an influence in grade 12: he taught physics. Unfortunately he came down with cancer that year and did not survive; the class was finished by a substitute. He gave me (and another girl in the class that did well) a book: Hawking's Black Holes and Baby Universes, which I still have (I keep it with my textbooks), and in which he inscribed the following:
January, 1995
David:

Congratulations on your oustanding achievement in SPH 4A0.

I trust you will find, as I continue to do, something new and wonderful in this book every time you read it.

Best wishes for success in whatever you choose to do with your abilities.

Sincerely,
Paul McCormick

I think I'll read the book a while again now…
I was never more than about halfway up the class. (It was a very bright class.) My classwork was very untidy, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better. When I was twelve, one of my friends bet another friend a bag of sweets that I would never come to anything. I don't know if this bet was ever settled and, if so, which way it was decided.

…

When it came to the last two years of school, I wanted to specialize in mathematics and physics. There was an inspirational maths teacher, Mr. Tahta, and the school had just built a new maths room, which the maths set had as their classroom. But my father was very much against it. He thought there wouldn't be any jobs for mathematicians except as teachers. He would really have liked me to do medicine, but I showed no interest in biology, which seemed to me to be too descriptive and not sufficiently fundamental.
Ah, the English, what a talent for understatement and wondrous dry humor we have. (My handwriting was never that great either; the computer printer was a godsend. And right there with you on biology, old boy—too squishy. "Oh, hey, I didn't see you guys all the way over there.")