I Loved To Teach

One of the major differences between my first year of teaching at Southport High School, just outside Indianapolis, where I met with failure, and the little school at Carthage, Indiana, where I enjoyed success, was that my activities at Carthage put me in contact with my students’ parents.  At Southport I had classes full of students that had been sorted out by their lack of achievement—all low ability classes, and I learned to love them.  Many were athletes.  At Carthage there were so few students that almost every one of them had to fill many roles.  The most important thing, perhaps, that Margaret and I learned during our two years there was that if you love your students, their parents will, in return, love you, or at least treat you with respect.

We still lived there in September of 1961 when we returned from a quick trip to Harlem, Montana, to show off the tiny, beautiful little one to Margaret’s parents and friends there, and when we started to teach down the road in Charlottesville.  The folks in the hamlet didn’t seem angry with us for moving on.  We had met with ingratitude, broken promises and unreasonable demands after two completely selfless years—a promise of pay for creating a yearbook, mostly done at night and a great deal of it in our home was to net me $25 for the next year; a promise that being librarian would be temporary (one year) became a demand for another thankless summer at Ball State University taking courses that would aim my life permanently down that path.  No one had thought to hold a baby shower for Margaret, and then, after seven short days, we were out of town.  We were not prepared mentally for the outpouring of affection that came in the form of a steady line of visitors with gifts that made Lori the best-dressed baby we had ever seen.  For two weeks they came, and then we left them, sort of.

One way to get to know parents, we found, was to go to church locally, although this didn’t please parents of other religious persuasions.  So we visited around while we were choosing a church home. Later, when I taught in Lapel, Indiana, and drove a half-hour to school each day, I drove there with Margaret on Thursday nights for choir practice and on Sunday mornings when lots of parents were at church.  Our third child, Tammy, was born on Labor Day, the day before school started, and by her third week, Margaret was back in the classroom at Charlottesville, cutting short her year’s leave-of-absence due to the demand for an overflow second-grade classroom, meeting in the local volunteer firefighters’ large building.

By the time I had twenty-some odd years of teaching experience and was ensconced at Greenfield-Central High School, I had learned that theater should not be the job of a single adult.  I had been alone in buildings with groups of teens many nights, building scenery after school, sewing with Margaret on costumes many nights, trying to teach choreography, which I knew nothing about, and direct choral music for which I had no aptitude.  I certainly knew I could use some help by the time Carolyn Cash—Christina’s mother—asked about forming a parental support group.  “The band has one.  The chorus has one.  The athletic department has several.  Why can’t the parents of kids who choose drama have a group that lends a hand?”

And so it was done.  Soon the music department joined in putting on the musicals and parents helped in every aspect of a show.  Children’s Theater became a reality, with its heavy dependence on mothers and the music and art departments, and our efforts became a tour de force.  We opened the doors to parents and never looked back.
We soon needed eight to ten officers.  We held a kick-off party in September after several planning sessions.  We had a huge table of food and drinks, tables across the front of the thrust stage for officers to sign up students who were interested in their particular function, collected modest dues, danced under theatrical lights, and then got down to business.

The next night the officers met to address envelopes to the parent(s) of every child who attending containing a letter from the president of drama club inviting them to an organizational meeting the following Monday.  At that meeting, each officer got up and told his area of obligation and asked for a volunteer to assist and encourage other parents.
By the end of the evening, we had qualified persons from the community to assist with the programs (just for an example) and deal with printers, etc.  Advertising was assured, not being left up to one individual (or me).  Seamstresses were ready to create, staple guns, saws, hammers, etc., appeared in the hands of able men who could do carpentering better than I ever dreamed of.  And all of these people helped create a dream.

At rehearsals, one mother came up with the idea of taking everyone’s picture and creating badges (at her expense) that said, “My kid is in ‘Oklahoma’” or some such thing—both advertising and keepsakes.  We had sweatshirts and T-shirts (your choice), miniature posters that were delivered to every pizza place in town to go on every pizza that went out—one pizza parlor called to ask, “Why didn’t we get flyers?”  It grew and grew.  Parents felt free to come to see me during my prep period.  One parent became my directing assistant with drama class, which made it possible to use more that one short play and practice in two locations at once.  (Thanks Sarah Davis).  Parents arranged to sell flowers inexpensively in the lobby and have them delivered backstage.  We also sold fifty-cent telegrams.  Once for a period play, a mother brought all her beauticians in to do fancy coifs in the dressing room—they even worked on some of the males.  Another beautician, a male, once had the leads come in to his shop where he did their hair with no charge.

I think you get the picture.  At rehearsals parents were reluctant to approach me as the play developed, but I no longer had to fit costumes or ask that a pair of pants be shortened to fit—those things happened magically.  I recently heard of a school that had to ban hugging in the halls due to over-indulgence.  I never saw inappropriate hugs, but I told my students this:  “Society is such that it is not permissible for me to hug you—but you may hug me anytime!” 

I once got up on the runway for Hello, Dolly!  and told the cast that they didn’t appreciate the people who made this show possible.  “It’s so easy to do, and it doesn’t cost you anything.  Let me show you how.”  And I called my wife from the piano.  When she stepped up on the thrust, I hugged her, and called for Gail at the other piano.  When I had hugged her, I called for the band director, and Jerry Bell stepped up and got his hug.  After that I saw kids hug their parents, parents hug their kids.  Jamie Broome called out at rehearsal after curtain call, “Everyone needs to hug five people before they leave!”  And I think most of them did.  Was it lascivious?  It was not.  Did morale soar?  It certainly did.

There was a lady who sat on the aisle in the back row all week during dress rehearsals.  After I had stood on the arms of one plush seat and got the male chorus to increase their volume at least three-fold, I got too excited and used the word ‘damn’, which was hardly even in my vocabulary.  Then I worried about the lady I didn’t know in the back, so I went back and asked who she was.  This was her reply, “My niece is playing Minnie Fay and she asked me to help her with her costumes.  You can’t imagine how much I wish this week would never end!  I am a teacher, and I have learned more about teaching in one week than I had learned in seventeen years of teaching.”

Wow!  I wondered what she had learned.  I hoped it was that parents and kids could become more loving if they worked on a project together—that if the project was successful, it was a shared success in which everyone had a part.  I used to encourage students to paint something on the set so that when they looked at the scenery they could say to a friend, “See that!  I painted it.”  Or I built it, or I helped in some way.

Dr. Felker used to bring his table saw on all-day Saturday “finish the set” day.  Once the sets got done too soon, and I needed busy kids.  I always said that I designed scenery in three layers—the first was if I dropped dead, the show could go on; the second was finesse; and the third was ‘impossible additions.’  So I had the students cover the thrust with canvas, roll on a gray stone layer of paint, and sketch a Greek key design around the front edge—a big project.  Then using string from a vantage point, I had them mark off squares in perspective.  I mixed paint, selected a brush for each tone, and painted about one foot of the Greek key.  During rehearsal I saw Laura Chou’s mother painting, fascinated was my guess.  As action moved, she moved to the other side.  When I realized she was finishing what I had thought would take days, I asked her if she was a painter.  She laughed and replied, “Mr. Rhoades, I am Dr. Chou.  I work at Eli Lilly.  This has been a wonderful diversion for me.”  Wow, again!  Who could have predicted that.

I urge anyone who teaches to USE THE PARENTS!