The Footsteps I Follow (and the Few I Avoid)

It's Teacher Appreciation Week. Well, at probably every school except for the one where I work. We had ours back right before Spring Break. The Powers That Be decided that with it being so close to the end of school having Teacher Appreciation Week and End of Year gifts to think about was too much; so they moved it. 

A good friend posted on his Facebook account a list of 12 teachers by name and had nice things to say about them. This has prompted me to do something similar. Being that I am verbose I had to do it in this format, so David Slagle, thank you for the inspiration.

1st Grade - Mrs. Underwood. Yes, we called her Mrs. Underwear behind her back. She was mean. 1970s public school teacher mean, but she saw something in me and chose, for whatever reason, to not smack it down, but encourage it. We were making paper mache piggy banks and I decided to do mine all different colors instead of just one like everyone else. When she shouted out my name after looking at mine I thought my world was coming to an end. Instead she made everyone else do like I was doing.

2nd Grade - Mrs. Gartrell. Sweet, old southern lady that gave me a great line for my classroom, "Don't blame your mother for not having your homework."

3rd Grade - Ms. Rosen. She played "Disco Duck" on the record player for the class and one day when more than half of the class was out sick she took us on a walk around the neighborhood. I can't even imagine that nowadays.

4th Grade - Mrs. Pullen - Beautiful woman. Very kind. She left for a large portion of the year due to breast cancer, I believe. Her substitute, not so beautiful, not so kind. Maybe I'm holding a grudge because she busted me forging my mom's signature

5th Grade - Mr. Boyd. My first male teacher. Tall, salt  & peppered afro and goatee. Drove a silver Trans Am. He would leave the class for 15 - 20 minutes at a time. One time when he was gone I got up and was goofing around, looking out the door to see if he was coming. When I turned around to go back to my seat he was standing outside the building at the window of the classroom, just watching us/me.

6th Grade - Mrs. Rainey - Another kind, kind woman. I don't remember much other than she was basically the antithesis of the other 6th grade teacher we had - Ms. Stallworth

7th Grade - Mrs. Thomas. I sold Mrs. Thomas a lottery ticket from the Briarcliff Community Sports raffle and she won $100. That's what she wrote in my yearbook, "To my $100 friend."

Growing up in DeKalb County in the early 80s we didn't have middle school we went from elementary to high school. Starting in 8th grade I started a fairly consistent downward  slant in my academic career.

From 8th grade to the end of 10th grade nothing really stands out as positive. I know there are some moments there, but by and large it was a very negative experience for me academically. Unaddressed attentional issues, not understanding the importance of actually doing homework and knowing how to study guaranteed that these were not smooth years. I almost didn't pass 8th grade ELA because for some reason I could not grasp the concept of diagramming sentences. To this day I cannot stand the idea, and will avoid it at all costs.  My 8th grade composition teacher told me that everything I wrote was absurd. Granted, it probably was, but would it have killed her to throw me a little encouragement, or to try to steer my writing to something less absurd? I failed Geometry at mid-term in 9th grade and was convinced I would fail it altogether. I had one of the vilest, most evil teachers that I have encountered. I was horrified to find out that she was still at my high school 20 years later and was still spreading malevolence and ill will at students. She is the teacher that would literally smile as she handed back test papers with grades of F.

In 10th grade I asked my mother to move me out of advanced classes to general ones, but at the encouragement of a neighbor who taught ELA classes at my school she kept me in,  and then something happened in 11th grade that made the last two years of high school not just bearable, but mostly enjoyable.

11th Grade - Mrs. Merkle & Mr. Glass - Mrs. Merkle was the school yearbook editor, junior and senior ELA teacher and the teacher of my favorite class ever, Humanities. For lack of better wording it was a class on appreciating all aspects of the arts; music, architecture, literature, art. Mrs. Merkle was probably the first teacher since primary years elementary school that I wanted to please. I had her my junior and senior year. She was, to my memory, the first teacher to not just assign a book to read, but to actually talk about the book. She was the first teacher to help me relate to the characters in the stories. She got me to see that novels and short stories are more than just words on a page.She was a significant influence on me as a teacher. Sadly when I saw her again at the unveiling of the new additions at Lakeside High School she looked at me with absolutely no recognition at all. I was more than a little hurt inside. 

Mr. Glass was the art teacher at Lakeside. He was a meticulously dressed and groomed gay man. I have no idea what he was doing surrounded by the stinky, unkempt hormone crazed high school students that clearly repulsed him in so many ways, but he was always there. It was well known that art classes were where most of the stoners, rockers and punks could be found. Being that I was none of those I'm not sure how I ended up there. I had several friends that took art and loved Mr. Glass, so probably by way of those folks. Mr. Glass was incredibly patient with me. As Glitter Queen can tell you, I am a painfully slow painter. He would offer encouragement and snarky critiques as I finished my pieces. He was entertainingly offensive and offensively entertaining. He did not suffer fools and spared no one. At the same time, you could tell that he really cared for some of his students. You could also tell that he couldn't stand others of them.

12th Grade - Ms. Shelfer - Ms. Shelfer was the teacher that made me love to write. She was the first teacher since probably primary elementary school that I wanted to please. I loved that woman.

I was going to go into some vitriolic diatribe about the teachers that were so horrible, but it's not Hate on Hateful Haters' Week, it's Teacher Appreciation Week. So for all the teachers that have had a positive impact on me, THANK YOU! For all those other teachers that just had an impact on me and so many others, well,unwittingly you showed me how NOT to be a teacher, and because of that I will also say thank you.

First go round

Right, so where to begin? Sometimes you have to go to very edge to see how high you've come. Hopefully when you get there the overwhelming urge to throw yourself off will be overcome by the desire to see how it all plays out.

Current playlist accompanying my thoughts on it all this go round

• I Don't Wanna Know - Fleetwood Mac
• Rainbow Song - The Wagonwheels
• Sit Down I Think I Love You - Buffalo Springfield
• There She Goes - Chris Isaak
• My Friends - David Franklin
• Rusty Old American Dream
• Good Day Everyday - drivin 'n cryin'
• Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands - Elliott Smith
• Over My Head - The Fray
• Collide - Howie Day
• Upside Down - Jack Johnson
• If It Kills Me - Jason Mraz
• Just Gimme Some Truth - John Lennon
• Picture Book - The Kinks
• Suddenly I See - K.T. Tunstall
• Hanging By a Moment - Lifehouse
• Why Can't I? - Liz Phair
• I Wanted to Tell You - Matthew Sweet
• Cast No Shadow - Oasis

Music fills the background. I've often wanted to have a soundtrack to go along with my life, but the impracticalities of doing it are too many. The iPod has certainly made it more of an option, but really, the thought of sitting down and putting all that music in, well, actually, it sounds kind of enticing, but that's not what it's about. The problem is even after only the teenage years your soundtrack would be so voluminous that you'd lose some of those songs that were kind of pivotal, but not really vital, and even those songs deserve to be heard every now and again.

From the list above, I'm trying to see if there's a running theme there, but I can't see one. I'm sure I could if I thought about it long enough, but who has time for that when there's Crackbook status' to update, crackheads to email, new threads to post (that's right, you're being excluded sometimes), and profile photos to change. I guess the most obvious thing that hops out at me is, well, no, I was going to say music from the 90s, but Fleetwood Mac, Buffalo Springfield, John Lennon, and the Kinks throw that out the window. Dammit, I'm going to have to rethink this playlist thing.

If you were given the choice from the Powers That Be to compile a soundtrack for your life would you be able to do it? Could you narrow down the music that matters most to you from birth to present? You can have a double CD, that's a lot of songs you can fit on there, unless your tastes tend to run toward the Allman Bros., the Dead or John Coltrane. Would you be able to whittle and cut and scratch out and omit and resubmit these little pieces of notes and words and meaning and emotion and EVERYTHING to create a picture of you so that when you're gone some kid will pick up your soundtrack see your picture on the cover, flip it over to look at the songs and have a pretty good idea of who you were? It's a BIG task, especially since most of us are not even halfway through our lives yet.

Could you compile a soundtrack for a loved one? One that could really capture them? Whether it's someone you're going to spend the rest of your life with, or just someone you're currently obsessing over, do you think you could put together 14 songs that sum that person up? I challenge you to do it. Now we're not just talking a mix-tape here. This is a bit deeper than that, admittedly, not much deeper, but a bit. You've got to pick out songs that will be able to show complete strangers who your loved one was. I suppose there could be different volumes, two siblings might put together two very different soundtracks for a parent depending on the relationship. A spouse might put something together that s/he thinks creates the perfect image in sound and voice and a secret crush might create a completely different image. Is one better than the other? I don't know, and I don't think it matters (not that any of this does), but there's a challenge in this and that's to take yourself out of it and put that loved one as the focus. There might be songs that you don't particularly care for, but they somehow fit with your loved one, you've got to put aside your tastes and focus on the image you're trying to create.

So, you've got your challenge. Are you up for it? Do you even care about it? If you do send me the playlist and let me see if I can get the image of your loved on in my head. I won't tell if it doesn't look anything like them, but I bet a lot of you could do a really great job.

So, keep going back to edge, but don't forget seeing how it all plays out is worth sticking around for.