I Loved To Teach

I must warn the pragmatist who would scour these pages looking for meaning that my life has been transcendental in nature. I have lived amid muck and not felt a part of it, have loved the “muckers” without judging their particular stirrings. Students who have sat in my classroom endured an almost subconscious attempt to create together a cushion of surreal air to walk on above the trials of outside life—to make and share a place worth believing in. I can’t explain this—don’t want to, even; but it is tucked neatly in these pages which are told randomly from my memory because they are in some way memorable to me and tell of “that place.”

Not all students felt present in this “Twilight Zone.” They brought in books to read secretly in order to escape it, wrote notes to a lover or a cohort in the muck whom they could not brush off their feet at the door. They applied makeup for the “image”, unaware that the very act set them apart as non-participants in the journey. Some tried to make the journey all about themselves, and still the magic continued to happen all around them while they were unaware.

One such non-participant from whom I had been unable to pry one gram of effort and into whom I was unable to pump any discernible grain of knowledge and who would not take one sip of the cup of caring approached me, accompanied by his cohort in crimes, in the hall the following year to ask why I had “failed him”—although we both knew he did not deserve to pass. His parting shot gave me a glimmer of hope: “You know you liked us!”

Another girl, years after I taught her in a seventh-grade class that was out-of control when I arrived upon the scene, said haughtily, “I didn’t learn one thing in that class!” And it was obvious that for her life held no magic. I spoke to her pragmatic superiority when I asked, “Oh, you didn’t? I thought I gave you a spelling test every week.”

“Well, duh.”

“Didn’t I test you over every single story in your literature book?”

“Well, yes; I guess so.”

“Autobiography? Didn’t you write one? Journal—didn’t you keep one? Did you learn to recognize third person plural, present perfect passive tense, for example?”

“I hated that stuff.”

“But you passed it as I remember. Just what was it that you didn’t learn?”

. . . But, you see, she was in a different place than I was in that room, breathing air from another source of escapism, keeping a library book under her grammar text or lit book and reading in snatches about another place where she would rather have been. I’m sure she wouldn’t be one of those who sometimes say to my children in the town where I no longer live, “Your father was the best teacher I ever had.”

Once, my speech class was delivering researched speeches-to-convince on some very demanding subjects. After each I had exhausted myself to pull them into the reality of their subject as it existed within the confines of their daily lives, however sheltered that might be. One boy raised his hand and said, “Mr. Rhoades, why do you insist on talking between speeches? It’s so boring! I wish you’d just let us give our speeches without boring us to death.”

What had happened in that moment to me personally was that he had stripped the wires of my nervous system of their insulation and left me quivering from the shock. In a stunned manner, pale and perhaps shaking, I said, “How dare you say that to me? Don’t you realize how much trust it involved just now for me to bring my awareness of an abhorrent matter to your attention on such a personal level?” And, in spite of myself, my head went down on my desk at the back of the room in complete disillusionment.

The next day he came to me and begged, “Will you tell these people to just leave me alone! They won’t stop bugging me about what I said yesterday. I can’t help it if I think it’s boring.”

And I let them know in cloaked language that we were often at the mercy of those who chose to stay outside of the transformations I knew were taking place. Individuals who had seemed to have nothing in common, perhaps believed they disliked each other, and felt disassociated with each other were becoming a group of friendly faces, pulling for each other, working on projects together and looking forward to this hour each day. What they pressed upon us was allowable because it came from need and not from malice. It was not fair that we press upon them our displeasure because they were outside a window, looking another way.

A most commonplace conversation was with students from the previous semester who stopped by my room to say, “Mr. Rhoades, I miss your class. We all do. There’s something missing in every day.” I think that doesn’t last long as the new elements of magic begin to play in other classrooms.

Once, after the Rural Electric Membership Corporation (REMC) held its annual convention, its president, Fred Powers, whom I had taught at another school, stopped me outside the building. Fred was with Eli Lilly. The gist of what he said was that he felt speech had been his most important course in high school. “I don’t know how you did it, but we all got so we could stand up in front of people and not be nervous. I work with brilliant men with doctor’s degrees who can’t project an idea without projecting to a greater extent their own discomfiture. I’m so glad I don’t have that problem.

Mrs. Mary Parido, as head of the English department at Greenfield-Central once said, in voting to reject a course offering I had proposed, that she did not believe any course in her department should be fun. I was appalled. As luck would have it, the newspaper the next day carried an article in which an interviewer asked then-President George W. Bush what courses at Yale had been most beneficial to him. He named two—one was speech. He said that, first of all, it was fun. Secondly, it was valuable because he used it every day of his life. I highlighted “It was fun” and placed it in Mary’s mailbox unsigned. She never commented.

I can’t guess what anyone can read into my scattered memories. Know that I tailored with a fabric that might not be as enduring as it was beautiful. Be aware that I exposed students with many levels of brilliance to a kind of “pure air” because I believe with all my heart that purity is the greatest force of attraction between the souls and hearts of men.

I often wonder just what causes any individual to set out to write about himself and his life, as if the life of just an ordinary man would strike a responsive chord in ordinary men who might choose to read it. In everyone’s life there are mild moments of glory and memories that grow more aggrandized with time, and each man/woman holds onto these moments with fierce pride and satisfaction. When I was three, a lady walked up to our door and insisted that she somehow knew this was the place where she was to live. She talked my parents into letting her rent the largest upstairs bedroom and part of the hall for a kitchen. We called her Auntie, but her name was Florence Horton, and she carried herself with a gentility that I would not have known otherwise. She taught me much about manners and courtesy. And she had stories she loved to tell about her past. I loved the one about the day a lady walked up to her on the street and said, “Mrs. Horton, you don’t know me, but I just wondered if you know that you are considered the best-dressed woman in Henderson, Kentucky.”

And although we were poor in the post-depression, my mother, before society in general was aware of germs, was meticulous, fearing the ‘disgrace’ of any kind of bugs. I never saw a roach, and none of us ever had head lice. If any child at school had them, we all got treated for them at once. And even though our coal furnace that my dad had to stoke during the night put out a soot that settled over everything, there was hardly a trace of it. Walls had to be scrubbed, curtains washed, starched and stretched, and wallpaper cleaned with a pink clay-like ‘dough’ that turned gray and crumbled as you pulled it in downward strokes over every inch of wallpaper. Maybe this was because my father had a habit of inviting church folks for Sunday dinner upon a whim without asking her or telling her. He was so proud of the way she could put out a fine meal at the drop of a hat and of the fact that our house was always ready for company.

There are also moments of failure that shape lives. My entire lifetime was spent going to school—I never outgrew that, never stopped getting pleasure from it. Perhaps I never quite “grew up.” I know that there was something that set me apart from other men. It was not always that my determination was so very great or my dedication, either, although it often was. And there was not always a strong feeling of self-worth that I believe many other men have to a greater degree. But there was certainly a spiritual compass to my deeds, actions and thoughts.

As the youngest of seven children, I was over-protected and considered to be somewhat delicate. Even other children did not swear in my presence. I was allowed by my peers to be fragile, eccentric, confident and happy. I believe that no one picked on me because my brother Danny, nineteen months older than I, was a terrific athlete and a brilliant student. He was, for me, beyond competition, although I compared my efforts and found them wanting. He was also more handsome, sought-after, self-assured and stronger physically. And he had a strong moral compass. I knew I was from a poor family, but then so was Danny and it was all right. I wore hand-me-downs, but they had been Danny’s and it was all right. I didn’t question my lot until my early teens. I was happy-go-lucky. However, I was denied the opportunity to develop any of my talents very fully; so I became a Jack-of-all-trades, a man of too many talents to choose just one (although my burning desire for a few years was to be James Dean and bring great roles to life in a way that was unique.) I claimed I was saving my heart for Marilyn Monroe, but maybe I was afraid I might disappoint my dear mother as I had witnessed brothers doing on a few occasions. There was always a woman involved in what, to my mind, was inexcusable self-satisfying gratification that led to unwise marriages, regrets and divorce. “These things would not happen to me, “ I thought. And they did not.

I was almost always a kid with popular friends. I attended high school in the early 1950’s when most families had only one car. My father, an auto mechanic, purchased an old one and repaired it for me to drive, so I provided the transportation for the drama crowd and, therefore, was included in all their group activities, which, perhaps due to my presence, were never centered on the venturesome or the risqué. I had a young, beautiful, talented Christian girlfriend whom I protected and admired for three years.  She was the tie to South Bend, Indiana, and when that bond was broken, I was free to look at the world differently.

I steered away from aggressive women, and I fell in love when I met my soul mate, a young lady who had traveled by train from Harlem, Montana, to my part of the world.  Margaret Goldsmith did not know she was beautiful, nor did she know she was my soul mate. She was as determined as I to accomplish things before she married and to wait until marriage for sexual gratification. My life was also shaped by the presence of wonderful personages male and female who became truly my friends. There still is out there in the distance a wonderful man who as a college student protected me and returned my admiration and affection.  He was enough taller than I was that his arm rested easily on my shoulder as we walked about the small campus of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis). We were not very successful as roommates because, I think, the continuous proximity bred some contempt in each of us and caused us to focus on our very different idiosyncrasies. But otherwise we were happy lads, very funny as a comedy team, good as a musical team (usually within a quartet), and devoted as well to our own pursuits. I believe I could not be the person I am today without the acceptance of this young man and his wonderful large family. Three of his five siblings went to Indiana Central, and at some time or other I sang with each of them.

I never questioned who I was or where I was going until my parents put up a roadblock in my path to fame, or at least my focusing on the development of a career that would use many of my gifts. I suppose God put those stumbling blocks there because that was not the predestined path my joy-filled life, centered upon my wife, my children, and my students, was to take. My life has been devoted to the path I found myself trodding down with little concern for “The Road not Taken.”

There are many memories that have a tartness to them. It must be understood that this is in no way bitterness. I am so deeply indebted to my colleagues, even those who appeared to dislike me, because they helped to shape my days and bring them into focus, and they were nearly all days filled with joy and a zest for living. Almost every student who ever sat in my classroom knew me better than my colleagues because of my practice of making others reach out to me except in the classroom where it was my job to reach them. I always said that if their minds seemed to be unreachable, I taught their souls because I believed that the soul had the power to recognize truth instantly.

I believe that those of my colleagues who reached out to me over the years could understand that, even though I tell here stories that show dealing with jealousy or pettiness of a sort, I loved all of those people and wished for their happiness and success. When I think of them as I write, unless they never gave me a happy moment, I miss them.