a thank-you, and a confession

During one's Education education, one is asked countless times to think back to The Teacher who made you want to become a teacher.  And while you might think fondly of many of your teachers, there is usually only one, perhaps two, of your former teachers who really influenced you enough to make you want to be a teacher.  While I didn't realize it at the time, The Teacher who influenced me the most was my 12th grade English teacher.

Prior to this teacher, all of my English teachers had been dinosaurs.  While there is nothing wrong with teachers on the brink of retirement (in fact, I have had the pleasure of working beside two such ladies who were still creating original and engaging lessons up to their final days), there are some who lose their spark and run on auto-pilot for the remainder of their teaching days. Compared to my previous teachers, this one was a baby.  She must have been fresh out of college and was brimming with new and innovative ideas.  She made Shakespeare come alive, literally, by forcing us to act out scenes (I clearly remember being Ophelia and doing my best to sing her song, which seemed like nonsense to me).

While the thought of being an English teacher wasn't even entertained in my mind as I sat in her class (I was so ready to get out of high school that I couldn't even begin to imagine spending more time in that institution than I needed to), she is who I came back to, time and time again, in my undergrad education classes.

This teacher no longer teaches in the district I grew up in, but she does still live in the area.  Occasionally I will see her at the grocery store or at Target, but never have I approached her.  Until the other day.

I was in the grocery store checking out, and The Teacher began emptying the contents of her cart in the lane next to me.  I knew it was her, I've seen her there before, but I always lacked the guts to tell her that she was one of the reasons why I'm doing what I do today.

I paid for my parcels, loaded my groceries into my car, and walked the cart back into the store when suddenly she was in front of me.  Before I knew what I was doing, I blurted out "Did you use to teach at Bay? Are you The Teacher? You don't remember me, but I'm KJ, and I had you for 12th grade English.  I just wanted you to know that I'm a high school English teacher, and you're part of the reason why."  Yes, I verbally accosted my former English teacher in the grocery store parking lot.  I guess I was over taken with the thought of how much it would mean to me if one of my students came back to me, more than 10 years later, and told me that I helped to influence them in some way.  So I told her.

And while she claims to remember me, I'm not sure that she did.  I wasn't a particularly good student.  I was passable, but I didn't try as hard as I should have.  In fact, I almost always think about how I wish I could go back and be the student that I wish I was -- pay attention, be active in class, that sort of thing.  I wasn't a trouble maker, I just wasn't memorable.

We chatted for a while in the grocery parking lot.  She asked what I was teaching, where I lived, that sort of thing.  She told me she stopped teaching in the district two years after I graduated -- she never came back from her maternity leave.  She now teaches drama at a local private school, and even knows the drama teacher at my current school, with whom I am good friends.

I always imagined myself telling The Teacher how she had influenced me, which I did.  What I didn't expect was my confession to her.

Twelfth grade English was World Lit., and following our reading Brave New World, we were to to write an analysis of the hero journey of the main character (John? was that his name?).  I was suffering from a tremendous case of Senioritis had had successfully procrastinated myself into an issue.  Knowing that I wasn't going to have my paper done in time, I created an elaborate excuse to gain myself more time.

During my lunch period, I shuffled into the bathroom with a bag of goldfish crackers.  I chewed some up, mixed them in my hand with a little water, and then smeared my paper with the mixture, all in hopes of giving the appearance of vomit.  I took an incomplete copy of my paper to The Teacher and told her that I had gotten ill on my final paper and asked if I could have until the next day to turn the paper in.  I told her that I would be able to print a new copy of the paper out that night and turn it in first thing in the morning.  Knowing full well that she would not want to examine the paper to see if it was actually complete, I succeeded in buying myself more time to complete the paper I couldn't have been bothered to write in a timely manor.

So in the parking lot of the grocery store, I told her of the goldfish paper, and she laughed.  Because she had remembered the vomit paper.  She told me it was probably the most elaborate scheme any one has devised to get out of turning a paper in on time.

I hope one day I will encounter such a student of my own.