Ex-students refresh memories of education

The 2004 vacation season is a done deal.

Back-to-school ads have dominated the pages of the morning paper, and one of my friends recently indicated that he and his wife were preparing for their annual trek to Arizona.

This means that the reunion season is over, too. It’s always one of my favorite times of the year.

Thousands of alumni from school systems throughout the Valley have come to town to attend their reunion. Many run into some of their old teachers, people like me.

I look forward to these chance encounters. They give me an opportunity to touch base with a few of my students from yesteryear.

It’s a pure pleasure to listen to their voices and to see their animated gestures as they gleefully tell about who they’ve become and share their dreams for the future.

Every once in a while, one of “my kids” will start a sentence with, “Do you remember when …?”

Frankly, these words always take my breath away. It simply never occurred to me that I would, or could have had, that kind of an impact on a child’s mind as I did my thing in the classroom and hallways of the middle schools in West Valley.

When confronted with the question, I react a bit like the fifth-grade kid who’s just been caught with the kindergarten class’ soccer ball: I blush, do the “guilty kid shuffle,” and stumble through a mumbled “thank you!” as our conversation comes to an end.

I found myself discussing these issues with my wife as we were driving home after a recent reunion.

She said, “So what’s bothering you?”

I responded, “I’m frustrated because I never get around to sharing the lessons the kids taught me as we worked in our classroom!”

You see, I too was a work in progress as we walked those halls together. And it’s those common learning moments that make my “book of memories” such a soft pillow to lay my head upon in these golden years.

At this point you have to be asking yourself, “What the heck is this guy talking about?”

It’s pretty simple. College professors, school administrators, teachers, parents, and kids alike talk a lot about classroom discipline. As a young teacher I spoke of “my class” and “my schedule.” But as my students worked their magic on my ego, I started talking about “my kids.”

You ask, “How come?”

Well, the kids taught me that while students came to me in classroom sets, only limited learning was going to take place until I got to know them personally. When I demonstrated that I viewed each child as an individual, that I worked at recognizing when one was having a particularly good or bad day, it made a difference in the learning dynamics.

And when students realized that I had grown to the point where I was willing to share in their euphoria, or would try to lend a hand when there was a need, they reciprocated.

I’ll bet each of you knows someone who’s had a tough time swallowing a daily dose of education. Somewhere along the line, I realized the teachers whom I had come to value knew that.

“A spoonful sugar makes the medicine go down.” Those folks prescribed adequate doses of humor, reality and a bit of theatrics, and threw a ton of energy into the presentation of their lessons. The kids and I had more fun, learned more and felt better about our time together when my efforts matched the efforts of those bygone masters.

You have to be saying, “This guy thinks he’s a fountain of educational wisdom.” That simply isn’t the case.

My career path is littered with mistaken calls and less-than-perfect educational moments. But I know people prefer to remember good times, and in the case of a teacher, the word “fair” plays a huge part in that memory. So for me it’s enough to find that in a single moment, on a given day, I did it right for one of “my kids.”