I Loved To Teach

I remember three things from those years with Miss Murphy. First, she had five school dresses—a Monday dress, a Tuesday dress, a Wednesday dress, etc. It was long enough after the depression and after World War II that we would notice and think it eccentric.

Secondly, she had us put all the problems from the assignment on the board. I made sure I did the assignment and understood its concepts, but I did not do the first five or six problems. They were usually the easiest, and I had figured out how not to have to put one of them on the board. I simply volunteered for each of the first five problems. On the next one, I waved my arm up and down as if desperate to get that one. On the seventh one, I did not raise my hand—ever. And I was always called to do the seventh problem, which of course, is where my preparation had begun. I learned to manipulate people fairly early, especially brilliant people like my brother Danny, with whom I was only occasionally successful.

The last incident was more important. Because I despised study hall, I skipped out to work on scenery as soon as play practice began. For two to three weeks, I would skip my math homework, doing just enough to know I could do the others on the board if I got called. Miss Murphy soon realized what I was doing and that it was my dedication to drama that stood in the way of doing her thing. What do you think? In trig my senior year she suddenly began to take up homework. I think she watched to see if I had done it.

I had A’s on all my tests, but when the six-weeks grades came out, I had a ‘D’. I laughed as I handed her my card, saying, “I think there’s been a mistake.”

Very crisp was her reply, “Oh, do you THINK so? Look here in my gradebook. You have a zero in homework. Not an ‘F’—a zero. That ‘D’ is a gift. I could have averaged it out to an ‘F’. You are a leach, Mr. Rhoades. Any questions?”

Well, of course, I did my homework every day from then on, and I raised my final grade average to a ‘B’. However, when the next play began, I did not let my homework slide. After having done it every day for so long, I knew that if I only appeared without it one day, that would be the only day she would take grades and I would again have a zero in homework. Tough lady. I didn’t mess with her after that.

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My sophomore year I had a semester of English under Mr. Barach. A large portion of that time was spent on speech. Now, I could act. I could be someone else on the stage, but I found it very difficult to project myself before a classroom full of my peers. Mr. Barach did a number of things I have spent a lifetime avoiding. He left each of us believing each and every day that he would be the next speaker. I was always prepared on the first day, and on every assignment he left my speech till last on the last day. The effect was that I suffered anxiety twenty-five to thirty times needlessly every week. Tremendous relief when another name was called, then the voice inside began to say, “Brace yourself, kid. You’re gonna be next. Here it comes. Get down. Hide behind the kid in front of you. Whew. That was close. You’re so lucky it wasn’t your time. Just relax, now. Look out! He is on his conclusion. You’ll surely be next….” You get the point. Only I never was next.

The result of this in my speech classes was that one week before any speech began, on the day the speech type was thoroughly examined and expectations spelled out, we formulated a speakers’ list. Each student got a copy, and each day when students arrived, the speakers’ names were on the board. Anyone who felt too traumatized or just wasn’t quite ready could draw a line through his name. That, at first, carried no penalty. But the name went to the top of the list for the next day. Usually the first day was filled easily with volunteers. This gave a lot of sample speeches for less accomplished speakers to pattern after. At first, I did exercises on days when there were not enough speeches to fill the class period. And in these exercises I made sure that anyone who had crossed out his/her name got to get up in front of the class briefly under some pretext or other. I made it fun—usually humorous and always insisted that everything be followed with applause—a generally accepted sign of success.

Another treatment I came to expect was that Mr. Barach would stop me several times. “Pull your shoulders back. Stand up straight and look us in the eyes. Now this time speak loudly and distinctly.” Honestly, I was never to finish one single speech in that room. But on one assignment, a radio speech, we went out into the hall and spoke into a microphone. Here I was in my element. I could be someone else. And I was Mario Lanza singing “Be My Love”; I was a sports announcer at a baseball game; I was the sound of changing stations; I was a news broadcaster; I was the Lone Ranger and Tonto. And I used the full three minutes I was allotted. When I came back into the room to hearty applause, Mr. Barach said, “I can’t believe that was you! I just really can’t grasp it.” He said the same thing to me in the hallway after he had seen me in a play, and I told him again, “It’s very easy for me to be anyone but me.”

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