I Loved To Teach

The lessons I brought home from this workshop were legion. I had learned that people work best when they know they are really appreciated. I soon discovered that teens would work even more brilliantly when they knew they were loved unconditionally for themselves and with no motive other than to create excellence together as a group. I firmly believe that people do not improve because they are told what they are doing that is wrong (maybe dancers are an exception—they thrive on corrections, if there is praise for improvement). The improvement comes when they are given ownership of their product and are encouraged and praised whenever they embellish the role which has become their own “creation.” And I learned a great deal about scenic construction because the scene builder was a gifted craftsman if not a specialist in set decoration.

So I had been able to teach that last year at Eastern Hancock High School with a fervor of dedication and open affection. And after the initial difficulties, I was also able to approach the drama at Southwestern with a joy that was to “give me wings.” But success did not come overnight.

*        *        *

The Southwestern Senior Class let me know from the start of the project that I was not going to please them. I gave them a list of four plays to choose from. Refusing to consider them, they argued with me. One said, “Why can’t we do the play they were going to do last year?” It was one of those things that are written for high schools, which have never gone through the honing process of a professional performance.

I said, “Don’t ask me to do something that is beneath me.” Ooh, did that ever strike a nerve with many of them. Then someone pointed out that the departed teacher had promised them Cheaper by the Dozen. “That’s a delightful play,” I countered. “Let’s do that.” And we did. They argued about tryout times. I gave in—even came at 6:30am for those who were unable to come other times, yet no one came. In fact, after the first day of tryouts, the popular kids put out the message that no one was to try out. I believe there were eighteen parts and that was exactly the number of people who tried out. By changing Jackie, the youngest boy, to Jackie, the youngest girl, I had enough to cast it without begging or cajoling.

Sometime later while I was working on the set, the Spanish teacher, Marcia Berner, stopped by the small stage at one end of the gym on her way to the parking area. “You’re lucky,” she stated pleasantly.

“I beg your pardon–”

“You’re lucky. When I was directing the senior play three years ago, I asked for permission to paint the scenery, and they said, ‘Certainly not! It has only been three years since that scenery was painted.’”

“I don’t know how much luck was involved.” I grimaced and chuckled, “Honestly, I just didn’t know I was supposed to ask.”

*        *        *

I not only painted that set, but I borrowed pieces I had accumulated at Eastern. I used the most elaborate and colorful stencil design I could come up with. Only two of the cast members were in my classes, none was overly dramatic, and some brought skateboards and Frisbees to the first rehearsal. Since no one had shown up to work on scenery the first session, I made them put up their toys and work on the set. I told them, quoting the Bard,”’The play has to be ‘the thing.’ You will have many chances to throw Frisbees and ride skateboards in the years to come, but for most of you, this will be the last chance to be in a play.” The next evening there were no boys at practice; the girls said they had all quit.

Thus I came to realize that we were not going to have one of my finest productions. What was most important was that we were going to do that play. They felt I was arrogant and told me so. I guess I had been too eager to do things my way. At school the next day, as I saw the boys in the hall, I said, as cheerfully as possible, “See you tonight!”

I had spent three lonely weeks after school and during my prep periods scraping and scrubbing wallpaper off the flats (units of scenery). Jamie, the boy who was assigned to play the father role, was so proud when he told me that his mother had volunteered to wallpaper the set. I may have shrieked at him, but I certainly had hoped never to see wallpaper on a set again. “If I wanted it papered, I’d do it myself. I am a professional paperhanger.” I shouldn’t have turned his offer aside so bluntly. I think I was still offended by their attitude that I had to be taught to do things the way they had always done (or not done) them.

Another boy had said, “You’ll never get the set to stand up.”

“To do what?” I queried, thinking I might have misunderstood.

“It won’t stand up. We tried everything last year. See that pipe up there? We even tried to wire it to that, but it didn’t work.”

“Well,” I explained, “it’s really pretty simple. You just build corners into the scene.”

Then I brought in an antique fireplace and an ornate newel post from a farm house that had been torn down and added a number of showy features, including the eight-color stencil. Once that scenery started to shape up, so did the actors. Robin, a hyperactive skateboard whiz, actually spent one whole evening with a paintbrush in his hand every possible moment when he wasn’t onstage, fascinated with the enlarged wallpaper pattern that was evolving as he worked. I have always maintained that “As the set goes, so goes the show.” Eventually the cast began to experience a feeling of accomplishment, but not before a few senior girls “tore me apart” in my first-period business English class one day.

In having a year to teach, believing it would be my last, I had let down many of the barriers which, as a young teacher, I had erected to protect myself and my actors. I felt I had made certain that other students in my classes could in no way discern any partiality toward these actors. If anything, I was harder on them than on others. Sometimes, outstanding freshman students had been accustomed to preferential treatment from teachers who loved their determination and brightness. These scholars found it hard to adjust to the manner of my treatment—I wanted to spare them the jealousy of classmates. A sensitive person can feel the resentment when one person gets too much praise. My praise for the gifted was subtle and personal (as was my criticism or condemnation of the others), whereas praise for the less motivated might have seemed lavish. I recall a situation in which an athletic boy who generally did quite well had a cheat sheet between his legs during a test. After I saw it, I strolled up another aisle and came down from behind, reached over and quietly wrote on his paper, “I can see that.” I waited until I was grading to put the “F” on the paper.

Later, years later, I was to teach for seventeen years with his brother. I never regretted that I had not made a public example of that boy and caused him to suffer humiliation.

I had also determined to avoid deeply personal relationships with students. I’m sure it saved me many hassles. But in 1974, after a summer at a drama workshop program in which we students did all the production work for an established Crawfordsville, Indiana, theater group’s seven plays in seven weeks, I was a changed man. The staff at Wabash College had been at times cruel and very impersonal. It fortifies the opinion that there are often negative change factors.

It was the first summer for this program that was funded by Eli Lilly, and, after seven successful productions from which I learned a great deal, they had a final session in which they asked for feedback. We let them have it, remembering that four participants (we were all teachers who directed high school plays) had exited the first week in disappointment and frustration, and if I was any measure of judgment, most of us were homesick.

On the second day I had been sent above the stage (three stories up a spiral staircase in the stage-right wing, walking precariously on rafters to reach a rope on the other side of the stage. I was to release some needed prop suspended there for storage. As I reached the rope, the professor waiting onstage explained that he had a phone call and left me up there in the staggering heat from the lights below for about twenty minutes. I felt quite faint and really feared falling. On the third day I was sent alone to the experimental theater in which the “house” consisted of bleachers on three sides. This arena was used on alternate weeks for shows such as Butterflies Are Free. Many of the pins used to adjust height were missing from the bleacher legs (I think they could only have been removed on purpose to give me this miserable job.) Again and again I lifted the weight of the bleachers above with my back while I replaced the missing pin. My strained muscles bothered me for a week. Each evening I served as stage manager for the first production, Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd.

Anyway, at the evaluation session they explained their strategy for putting us “in our places.” One of the young profs said they had decided to “make them eat shit.” I, on the other hand, had, after my initiation, been put in a leadership position as the teacher with the most theatrical experience, and I found most of my colleagues eager to work and able to excel. I lavished praise on them.

Before the first mainstage rehearsal for the final show, Carnival, I sensed that the scenery had hit a snag and was at a standstill. At midnight of that rehearsal, I placed myself in the row above the scenery guru, feet at the level of his shoulders. The auditorium had deep stadium seating so that I had a clear view of his clipboard. I could see that the designs were incomplete. That was all I needed. I really wanted to get to the library for children’s books, but there wasn’t time. (No internet yet, alas)  I looked through the West Lafayette Sunday newspaper ads and found a Circus of Values full-page ad. I began to sketch and adapt the circus wagon to “Cirque de Paris” for Carnival. I had made it a point to help the very fine artist who was responsible for producing the great set-ups for the lobby. She worked alone, unheralded, in the basement room below the stage. I knew she would help me if I asked. Then I approached the man-in-charge about where we would start when the cast left the stage. He said something like, “Do you have any ideas?”

I said I thought I had a couple of good ideas for the front circus wagon and the advertising banners. He said, “Be my guest.” That day I worked alone on the front wagon, painting the wheels and laying out the lettering, just getting it started. The next morning I beat the others up and hit the library for lettering styles appropriate to “Siamese Twins,” “the Strong Man,” “Harem Girls,” and “the Sword Swallower.” I showed the choices to Mary, the artist downstairs who said, “Let’s go for it!”  In return, I helped her set up the lobby that week.

I had cut the heavy canvas and penciled in the letters, and in less than ten minutes each, she had figures sketched. I stapled the canvases to the scenery frame that passed through the floor stage left as you moved it up and down.  I mixed the paint and asked for volunteers to paint these while I worked on the wagon. They worked so carefully that even I was surprised at the manner with which they brought the canvases to life. I lavished praise on them, and work began to be fun—often so much fun that we worked until 3a.m. As these things progressed, the second wagon floundered. It was ugly. Then I was approached with, “I think the style of the two wagons really has to match. Could you do the wheels on the other wagon too?”

“Certainly. And what about the figure of Marco, the Magnificent? Wouldn’t it be great to have the face of our Marco there?”

“Go for it!” I got a wallet photo, and Mary went for it—she sketched, I painted. Portraits were easy for her. But she insisted upon doing her sketching when no one else could see that she was the artist because she was stepping beyond her responsibilities. Maintaining secrecy working on the banners had been easy—I had taken them briefly to her basement workroom. This was more difficult; we had to work onstage during a lunch break. But when the face was added to the poorly formed body of Marco, it became recognizable and passable.

I wish I knew how to put this all together in a foolproof system. I know I was far from the ideal teacher. Sometimes my anger and immaturity amazed me. But I have never been afraid to let a classroom or a student see my anger or my tears, which lets them know I am being honest with them and that I do not pretend to be superhuman or above making mistakes.

O CHILDREN OF MEN!

Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust?
That no one should exalt himself over the other.
Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created.
Since We have created you all from the same substance
it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet,
eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land,
that from your inmostbeing, by your deeds and actions,
the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest…
from The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh

My daughter Lori, in the days before I became ensconced at Greenfield-Central, brought home a paper written for Academic English 10 which had only one correction—“sentence fragment.” There was no sentence fragment. I wrote in the margin “Nominative absolute” and told her to show the paper to her teacher. His comment, after “Oh, it’s not, is it?” was that he had not deducted anything from her grade for that and left the grade a “B+”. I was probably foolish to let her English teacher know that her father was a grammarian. On her next paper there were no errors or helpful comments, only the explanation, “I’m sorry, I just can’t give you an “A” on this.” Am I wrong, or is there an educational weakness in that statement that would discourage a student and not give any hint of ways to improve?

*        *        *

(I’m not sure why this comes next—it’s random thought, and memories that delight me come randomly.)

At Greenfield-Central, Charlie Pasco (now deceased), owner of Pasco’s Funeral Home, approached me after a play. His statement, “I want to thank you on behalf of the Greenfield community for giving us this strong, solid program to be proud of. I don’t think you realize that after a couple of years in which athletic teams failed to rise to prominence, people have begun to notice and feel pride about the successes you have given them.” (Words to that effect.)

“Mr. Pasco, I can’t take the credit for this program. A lot of … “

He interrupted me, “Are you the producer-director of this play or not?”

“Well, yes, I am, but…”

“Then you’re the man I need to say this to.”

At Greenfield-Central there was a terrible lack of unity in the art department at one time, and Sandy Hall became, I felt, a victim. When the principal called her in and dealt the blow that made her jump at the chance to teach at the junior high (where she has been an enormous blessing), I went in to Mr. Albano’s office and protested. What I tried to tell him was this: “That woman, whom , I understand, you must support as she is the department chair, will not be here very long. She has ambitions and is using this school as a step to somewhere else. Sandy Hall is a blessing to every student in her classroom. She has our students at heart and will stay here for them through thick and through thin—and she is a professional artist and is fantastic with stage painting. If you don’t also give her some encouragement and support, I feel sure you will regret it.”

And that prophecy came true at the end of that school year when the chairperson left, took the second art teacher with her, and Sandy went to the junior high. Fortunately, I was able to continue to use her services to drama, and Jeff Weiland, carpenter, 3-D artist, etc., became a second blessing as he and Sandy worked together in children’s theater.  I had learned so much from Gail Sturm and continued to learn from the associations with the other wonderful teachers who worked with Hancock County Children’s Theater, the organization that took over that north wing of Greenfield-Central High during the month of June each year.  During my ten years, we did some wonderful shows ranging from Peter Pan, Finean’s Rainbow, Wizard of Oz and Hello, Dolly to shows like Hooray for Hollywood (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Davy Crocket) and an original historical pageant, Sing Out, America, attended by the Governor of Indiana and recipient of a state proclamation, thanks largely to the work of Linda Quick.

*        *        *

When word of the first opening in art was out, a former gifted student whose father was my surgeon and whose younger brother Jon was to become valedictorian and, as Cornelius Hackl in Hello Dolly!, be a pure gift of delight to me, applied for the job. When she was passed over, I objected. In the office they asked, “Are you sure you want her father in here every week about something or other?”

“I have no differences with Doc. What do you mean?”

“I mean he was in here constantly about Jon’s playing time on the basketball floor.” (I believe Jon was the only member of that team who played college ball.)

When Beth Gabrielsen was passed over for the second art opening that summer, she called about a recommendation for Indianapolis Tech High School. I asked her about her interview at G-C, and she mentioned that she had told them of her intention to go back to school for a doctorate in a year or two.

“Don’t mention that in your Tech interview. In the first place, you don’t know what the future holds. In the second place (even though the person they hire might be released by them in a year) they are looking for someone who will stay their whole lifetime. Act as if your dedication to that job would consume your greatest passion, and you’d be there forever.” I wrote her a somewhat florid letter of praise, and she gave them five years of youthful dedication, during which her wonderful parents were an enormous blessing of support to drama in that school. Margaret and I had the joy of seeing her final gift to them of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. From there she went to do mission work in the Soviet Republic, and recently married, moved to Africa, where she will serve God wonderfully in some capacity, I am sure.

One of the plays I selected for the small Southwestern stage was the daring, seldom performed Mrs. McThing, which is a comedy by Mary Chase, author of Harvey. This play was written expressly to be performed for children for a limited engagement with Helen Hayes in the leading female role. To everyone’s surprise, the play appealed to the ‘child’ in everyone in the audience, and it moved directly to Broadway, where it enjoyed a successful run. Its difficult scene changes are very demanding. Also the leading roles are exceedingly challenging, as are all the whimsical parts. Mike Yonts, short with curly hair, played the dual role of a bratty boy and the “stick” (robotic android) with perfect manners, which a witch put in his place. I thought it was great fun to see the farce unroll. The real child was placed with a gang of chaotic (Three Stooges?) crooks who were portrayed, as were all the characters, as if a child might just have ‘made them up.’

At one performance of this play Mrs. Nay entered with a small group of family and friends and took a conspicuous seat near the front. Not only did they not stay for the entire performance but waited through the intermission until all had returned to their places before getting up and parading out as if offended somehow by the play. I’m sure she had no idea how my hard-working actors and their families would take this slight. At first in class she told them that she felt it was a really dumb play. I believe they knew there was no “child” inside their teacher for the play to speak warmly to. Then, when she realized how deeply they were offended, she explained that there had been a crisis in her family. 

Just before having tryouts for my second “senior” play, I had asked her—she was the senior class sponsor—if I should give the bills for expenses incurred to the class treasurer or directly to her. Her curt reply had been, “There’ll be no bills!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There’ll be no bills. How much money did you make on your last play?”

“Mr. Wade made it clear to me that money was not to be the object. There hadn’t been a play for three years, and he wanted me to deliver a play.  Uh… we made $200.” (I’ll touch upon that play later.)

“Well, I never directed a play that made less than $300!”

I think I am rarely rude to anyone, but I’m afraid I was rude to her then. “Do you want to direct this play?” I shot at her as I walked straight toward the principal’s office. Young principal Bob Yoder looked askance at me when I told him I could not work with that woman.

“But, Jack…. What are you going to do?”

“Well, I’d like to start a drama club, open to students in all four grades, to do one play and one musical each year.”

“Let’s do it.” And we did. No principal could ever have been more supportive!

I was always aware when I attended high school plays at other schools that there could be someone in the audience who would recognize me, and thus, my actions and reactions would reflect on my school as well as myself. And I never NEVER left in the middle of a performance, however bad it might be, especially when I had students with me who had done the same show very well and wished to leave . Now that courtesy did not extend to movies and professional theater.

Let me hasten to add a word of praise, however. The woman who sometimes gave me misery had dedicated her life to that school and its students. I was there for five years and left because I felt my “mission” at the school that required a 45-minute drive each morning and evening (I fully anticipated dying on twisted, narrow Highway 9 some exhausted midnight) had ended and opportunity awaited two minutes from my home. There is certainly something positive to be said for those teachers who have absolute rule in their classrooms. There is a learning atmosphere for the gifted in those rooms—it just never worked for me as a student. Inside my head there was a roar of protest that drowned out much of their instruction, and I had to make up for that on my own outside the classroom.  I truly believe that a great school should have representatives of both types of instruction areas, warm and cool.  Students need to learn coping skills!

On one occasion I was working onstage with student volunteers who just wanted to get out of study hall during my prep period. They were talking to each other about how much one teacher picked on them. When I challenged that statement to defend my colleague, the girls replied, “She hates us. She sits in the dining room and talks about us every day at lunch.”

“I think you have over-active imaginations, “ I countered. “What you say just could not be.”

“Well, it is. Just ask anyone.”

So sometime later I asked one of the teachers who ate at the teachers’ table during that lunch period if she had ever heard the accused teacher talk about those two girls. “Oh,” she offered, “she talks about them every day.”

Teachers! Wake up! You can’t fool them. Even if you are eating in another room, you should not stoop to backbite about your students. If you discuss their problems with another teacher, it should be in private and with the spirit of trying to help someone in need of help. Teenagers have so many problems. Why should having a teacher who dislikes them be one of their biggest ones? They cannot avoid you legally. The system has thrown you together. Treat them as you wish to be treated.

*        *        *

After my first drama club production, I received a letter of commendation from the superintendent which praised every aspect of the play and used the word “professional” very kindly about Karen Gravely, who was my leading lady.  I dislike directing by “parroting”, but at one rehearsal, I fed Karen a line.  She became very energized and exclaimed, “Say that line again—I want to say it exactly like that.”  Talk about winning ways!   I was a bit nervous as I took that envelope with the return address of the office of the superintendent from my mailbox and equally excited when I saw its contents. I slipped down to the library to show the librarian, who was one of the supportive teachers who had rushed backstage after the performance, announcing, “We never had a scene change before.”.

Let me explain that Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker was the farce upon which Hello, Dolly! was based. The scenic demands were much like the musical, but it includes a fourth act that was omitted from the musical—one with a few delightful new characters and a great drunk scene for the innocent Minnie Fay from the hat shop. After the curtain opened for the brightly colored second scene there was a super response from that audience that had watched plays with sets that had remained the same dull color for four years or more.

When the second act ended, all heads in that gymnasium were lowered to the level of the space between the curtain and the stage and heads began to nod as if to say, “They’re changing it again,” perhaps thinking we were going back to the first set. Instead, after intermission we visited the plush set of the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, where an incredible talent named Vincent Matthews as Horace Vandergelder, joined Karen—two eventual valedictorians.  Nearly the entire basketball team was in that show, and they were superb athletes.

The set for that fourth final scene had been made possible by a phone call from one of the elementary principals at a school that had once been one of three high schools (eighteen years before) that were consolidated.  He called to inform me that they had on their stage a full set of professionally built scenery that was in their way. It no longer had canvas on any of the pieces, but it was all there—would I be interested? Would I ever! And thus it happened that scene four was able to display an alcove across the back that the audience could see into through painted frames shorn of their fabric.

After the final curtain the applause was prolonged, and six or seven of the faculty members that were truly interested in plays rushed backstage, as much to see me as to see the fine actors who had come to understand farce so well. It was an amazing cast.

Anyway, I showed Mrs. Johnson my letter. Another teacher looked over her shoulder and enthused, “Frame it, Jack. Believe me. No one ever got one before.”  (I remind you now that for three years before my arrival, there had been no plays, always cancelled by conflicts or insufficient interest.)

At this moment Mrs. Nay walked up, snatched the letter and reddened as she read.

Her comment, one I heard often in my career, was this: “Well, I never had that much talent to work with,” as she handed the paper back to me.

My reply was not subtle—“I consider it my job to reach the most-talented students and help them develop their talent.” Oh, well. I never got around to framing it. It’s in a file somewhere, as is the one from Bob Albano, principal at GCHS.

*        *        *

Going to the church for that funeral service with my entire cast was difficult and emotionally taxing. The organist played the toddler’s favorite tunes, and folks wept openly when she played “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” (O, bring back my Bonnie to me.) I was unable to console anyone, but I had schooled my young people to care about each other and to show it in actions as well as words. I always told them that drama club was a family–had to be. They were incredible! They spread warmth and affection in a way that uplifted everyone. Late that evening the teenage brother slipped into the final rehearsal in the middle of the final song in which the Von Trapp family singers were huddled together in a cemetery, squeezing each other in fear of being seen. He was able to slip into character as they climbed the mountain holding onto each other, and we knew he would be able to perform with us the next day.

I don’t mean to take credit for everything our group accomplished. One year at the drama club awards banquet, we had the seniors stand on the concrete edge of the main stage, which became a wide gray line when the elevator brought the thrust stage to the top where it was level with the main stage. This was a tradition started before I arrived on the scene, and I continued it. Although it was a bit maudlin, perhaps, I sometimes read a poem I had written at Southwestern for a wonderful group of seniors I knew I would miss terribly. It goes like this:

AT GRADUATION

I dreamed I drove along a lonely road
And came upon an upturned car
From which the single occupant had been thrown.
Climbing down, I ran to find
The one I knew was just beyond a little hill
But I knew not it was a life that had touched mine.

There only was a moment of relief in trusting eyes
When, reaching out to touch me, pleading silently,
The life was gone.Grief welled up into a pool of nausea;
Moments of shared laughter flashed by,
But tears would not come.

Disconsolate and irresolute,
I kneltAnd gripped a pulseless wrist,
And I would not let go!
It was as if, by hanging on,
I felt I could give life
To something I could not allow to die.
And that was all the dream!

It lingered, in the form of dread, for days,
Growing daily more intense,
But from the moment I awoke,
I could not remember who it was
That haunted with a moment’s silent love.

Something more tormenting than the dream
Was dread of dreaming it again,
And I did, repeatedly.In every dream,
I realized, the face was changed,
Though not the look, the death, the pain.
And every new awakening erased the memory of the face.

Soon I surveyed on every side
Students and friends in a startling light,
Trying to put them into the dream to know who was to die.
Then I knew it was not a dream of death
But of parting, having just discovered love
And having shared but a moment of knowing it.

When I knew this, the dreaming stopped.
But looking up familiar rows on this last day,
I know again the pain I knew
When I dreamed of you… and you… and you… and you…
Nothing is the same–no lonely road, no wreck, no hill,
And only this is here: I know I cannot let you go,
And that I must and will.

Anyway, with all the senior members on the line, I led the rest of the officers and the parents in going down the line giving congratulations and hugs. When I reached the end of the line and stood off to one side, Rob Eagleston’s father John, a Mormon bishop, was headed right for me. John’s older daughter, Laura was my mainstay onstage that year. But John was thinking of Rob, his small, quiet next-in-line (the rabbi’s son in Fiddler) when he said, “This is the man I want to hug. You took my son, put him on the stage and got him to sing and dance, and I don’t believe anyone else on earth could have gotten him to do it.”

“John,” I said, “I didn’t do that.”

Let me rephrase my statement then. “You created an environment in which he knew it would be safe for him to sing and dance onstage.”

“I’ll take that,” I replied as I took his bear hug—took it and shall always cherish that kind gesture. I doubt that he could have known how much I loved his children.

*        *        *

There were only a few years, and those at Southwestern, when I taught seventh grade—an age group for which I have little talent. One day I was very disappointed with a boy who was the smallest child in class. I took him out of the room and down to the office. We found the principal out and the office virtually empty. In the outer office, I got down, almost sitting on my heels, till my eyes were level with his and focused intently on them. I began by expressing why I was so angry with him, then I mellowed and began to tell him what I expected of him, asking often, “Do you understand that?” Then I stood and patted him gently on the shoulder, looked up and saw that the office had soundlessly filled with spectators and so had the hallway beyond the wall of windows. I said, “Excuse us,” and as we were leaving, I heard someone comment, “That was the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen.” I don’t see anything remarkable about it unless it was my affection showing through my dissipating anger or that I expressed myself to him as I would have to an adult, an equal.

*        *        *

Just after our third child, Tammy, was born, things had been in a furor at Eastern because of opposition to their building project.  My wife Margaret had taken a year’s leave of absence, Lapel was nearer to Muncie where I was completing my MA degree, and they were offering $1,000 more in salary (a lot of money in 1967).  When I signed to teach at Lapel High School in a small town twenty-five minutes to the north of Greenfield, things had already been scheduled for the year ahead, so I took what was offered in the vacancy—eighth- and ninth-grade English. No speech. No duties with drama. However, Mr. Roudebush, the principal, promised me that the following year I would have older kids in English and would teach the speech and direct the plays. That didn’t happen. And in spite of the fact that those junior high kids were the brightest, most educable kids, I felt I needed to be with older ones. In my one year there, Jeannine Terhune, whom I had taught at Carthage while Margaret had taught her piano, and I decided to schedule Brigadoon, and I loved directing it with her.  Incidentally, she has carried on the program of musical theater with so much more musical talent than I ever had and brought it to incredible heights.

When contract time came the next year, I was offered the same class schedule, unaltered. Eastern Hancock was proceeding with a fine building program with an auditorium that I had fought to have included, while Lapel would continue to hold its plays in the gymnasium. The teacher who had replaced me at Eastern was not returning. I lost no time seeking an interview and signed a contract on the spot. When I returned to Lapel for classes on Monday, Mr. Roudebush sent for me. From the grapevine I had learned that the band director, who was also president of the Lapel Classroom Teachers’ Association, had resigned after twelve successful years. Asked what they could do to change his mind, he replied, “Find out what it takes to keep Jack Rhoades and get him back!” That, I suppose, was the reason things had been rearranged so that the promises that had been made to me could be kept. I thanked him kindly, but explained that I had signed with Eastern Hancock the Saturday before.

“There is nothing to force you to keep that contract, Mr. Rhoades,” he ventured.

“I understand that, Mr. Roudebush, but I gave my word.”

“Well,” he countered, “we got to have you for one year, anyway.”

Those words were to give me great comfort years later when a really vicious student started a smear campaign during my first year at Greenfield-Central. One of his rumors was that I had been fired from every teaching job I ever had. There is a spiritual principle involved in cases like this that assures Bahá’ís that they need not defend themselves against false accusations. When a person, any person, tries to create enmity against another human being, the negative energy generated is inevitably turned against the person himself. Leave it in the hands of God. If you get in there and muck up the works, the spiritual solution is weakened. One has to recognize that problems are never in and of themselves with solutions you have to formulate. You must see beyond the problem to the spiritual nature of the event for hope and courage, although that’s a really difficult test.

The Lapel fall play was a senior play with which I had nothing to do beyond creating the most elaborate scenery their audiences had seen, designed to include all the set pieces needed for Brigadoon in the spring. The seniors called upon the director to present him a gift. Mild applause here (the play was not outstanding). Then they called me up to acknowledge my efforts and present me with a gift. Here the applause was prolonged so as to be embarrassing.

During the final week of Brigadoon rehearsals, we rented a spotlight and placed it on a scaffold on the gymnasium floor. I had difficulty understanding why there was insistence from the music department that the spotlight be on the stage left side of the house. I carried the directing responsibilities, but the production belonged to the music department. I argued without success that the stage lighting would not be adequate from that vantage point (as if one spotlight could really suffice, anyway.) On opening night when the conductor came through the curtain at stage right and bowed at center stage before descending to the orchestra level, I knew immediately that lighting him had been more important than lighting the actors—to someone.

*         *        *

But wait! This chapter is about discipline. At Southwestern where the paddle was sometimes the measure of a teacher’s effectiveness, I was once asked into the principal’s office to witness a spanking by the male guidance director. The child was told to empty out his hip pockets and grab his ankles. He complied. Because he was a small boy and the swing of the paddle was swift, he was lifted off the floor and his head hit the wall. He was already crying hard, yet this was repeated twice before he was dismissed, sobbing and alternately rubbing the top of his head and the spot I am sure the paddle had left bruised. I was livid, but all I said was, “Don’t EVER ask me to be a witness again.”

I had received very high evaluation marks my first, difficult year, but on the second-year’s evaluation there was a comment indicating that I needed to use the paddle more frequently. (I hadn’t used it at all.) When, in my third year I used the paddle on one occasion, my evaluation improved. That was the year I heard a young female teacher being told by an older female teacher that the very best method of gaining control in the classroom was intimidation by humiliation, “Figure out what that student is most sensitive about and hit him with your best shot.” I stood to leave to get away from the discussion and remarked at the door, “My advice would be that a teacher NEVER humiliate a student.”

The next day working on scenery after school, Mike Yonts, the eventual valedictorian of the senior class, said that the older teacher had told his English class, “Anyone who says ‘Don’t humiliate the students’ just doesn’t know anything about teaching.” As this teacher got her pick of the best classes and students, I would guess that using this method of discipline had been considered successful for her.  I also realized that her antipathy towards me was growing.

In the English/drama/speech classroom, the shelves around three sides of the room are deemed absolutely essential. A dictionary must be on the desk or within easy reach, and many books (yes, real books) of great poetry, short stories, humor, and novels should be available for student use. The poetry of Robert Frost, in his complete works, is introduced with an invitation, in “The Pasture,” to join him on his own turf, saying, “I sha’n’t be gone long,—You come too.”

Now you might pretend that this writer is a poet, inviting you to go on a little stroll because he means for you to share the intimate moments of what he feels makes teaching high school students in America the happiest profession.

POETRY MUSE

Sense suffocating loneliness, gloom,
Silent as the violin on the wall of our fireside room,
Strung, but out-of-tune,
Out-of-reach, untouched, a boon,
Yearning, like the bow,
Neatly slanted a few inches below.

Feel the tremors within it moaning,
“Take me down! I will not consent to being ornamental,
An embellishment, a turn, a grace note merely–NO!
Tighten a turn or two the horsehair bow,
And render into tune each string;
Rosin generously and let me sing!

“Caress cold ebony of my chin piece–bright,
Black curves reflecting a bold fire’s light.
Grip me closely, pressed against your shoulder.
Release soft melodies which soon grow bolder
As resonance fills the chambers of my chest
And the music of the muses swells your breast.

“O, stir my strings with nimble, tremulous touch.
Vibrate into life silent pages with passion such
As only prayer and poetry can proffer–
Pain and happiness your fleeting memory must offer.
Place your cares like logs upon the fire across the room
And warble sacred mem’ries from your journey to the tomb.”

Replace the bow with care upon the wall when done–
In the probable event another such a one
Stops here for warmth with sagging soul so coldly grand.
Loosen its strings and leave the rosin close at hand,
And, just as you might close your fondest book,
Hang the fiddle quickly back upon the hook.
It is not soundless, though muted now like a melancholy word
Upon an unturned page, awaiting reader, lonely, and unheard.