A First Year That Never Ended
By Bobby Ezell
Today I work with young teachers at a university preparing them for the students they will someday teach. I have a voice from my first year of teaching that helps me with the task.
The place was Aldine Junior High School, the un-air-conditioned learning edifice for 700 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students in 1966. That year the AJH administration offered me my first teaching job. I was 22.
My teaching schedule included three sections of seventh grade English. This was the time in our educational history when all students were academically grouped with overt titles identifying each class section. The smart kids were in section 7-1; the slower ones in 7-15 with all others stuck somewhere in between. The counselors denied that the numbers referred to academic ability, but the teachers knew, and so did the students.
I taught sections 7-3, 7-7, and 7-8. There were 35 plus fourteen year old boys and girls in each section. Each daily class meeting was two hours long. I was responsible for teaching two subjects during the two hours, English and reading. At the end of each six weeks grading period, I was responsible for giving each student a grade in each of the subjects. My grades were kept in my brown-covered Steck Class Record Book. Students ‘names and grades were entered in long-hand.
Kathleen was in section 7-8, a group of kids almost exactly identified as being in the middle of the academic range. She was a skinny kid with long, stringy, dish-water blonde hair. Her sparkly brown eyes were a part of her smile.
I liked the kid. She was zany; she obviously liked school, was a little boy crazy, and often giggled when she addressed me. I remember well how she would ask a question in class and would intentionally mis-pronounce my name. Her question would go, “Mr. Eschell, what do you think about…?” The question would be followed with the mouth and eyes combo smile.
Her grades were fairly good. I heard from other teachers that her home life was difficult. I noted that her parents did not attend open house, but I never got involved enough to learn more about her home life.
Kathleen continued coming to class throughout the year along with her section 7-8 classmates, and each six weeks, I wrote down two grades on Kathleen’s report card that I dutifully sent home. Those two grades were copied from the averages I kept by Kathleen’s name in my Steck Class Record Book.
My first year of teaching ended and the second began. I heard that Kathleen during her eighth grade year was dating a boy who had dropped out of high school. At mid-term a teacher mentioned to me that Kathleen had herself dropped out of school and married.
I didn’t think too much again about Kathleen until May of my third year of teaching. It was then that I read in a Houston paper about a young sixteen year old suicide victim who during a quarrel with her young husband had killed herself. The victim’s name was Kathleen.
I was outraged. I was not prepared for this mean, hateful, sad event to be a part of my teaching experience. I thought that my role as a teacher was to teach students to appreciate short stories and poetry and to write their reactions to literary pieces. When I decided to become a teacher, I never dreamed that one of my former sixteen year old students would commit suicide. I never thought when I was preparing as a teacher that such a horrendous deed would create the need for me to re-access all that I was doing and the way I was doing it.
After Kathleen’s death, I thought back so many, many times about the year she spent with me in seventh grade English. I asked myself again and again, “When she was in my class, did I do anything that made her feel she was important? Did I speak to her when I saw her in the hallway?” After her death when I looked at her grades in the grade book, I asked, “Were these numbers that I wrote down in my grade book and gave to Kathleen each six weeks the only message that I sent to her indicating what I felt she was as a person?”
Today, I’m beginning my forty-fourth year as a teacher. I still have that grade book with Kathleen’s name in it along with her grades.
The students who were in section 7-8 are today fifty-five years old. Many of them are probably grandparents. In reflective times, I still think about Kathleen, and when I do, I never see her as older. She is always a fourteen year old seventh grader with stringy blonde hair and shiny brown eyes that complement her smile. And in my reflection she admonishes me as I work with the future teachers in my classroom, “Mr. Eschell, teach these young teachers that they must make their students know that they care about them. Teach these young teachers that what the student needs to remember about a teacher’s class should be so much more than the number that will be taken from the teacher’s grade book and placed on each student’s report card. You, teach them that Mr. Eschell, OK?”
By Bobby Ezell
Today I work with young teachers at a university preparing them for the students they will someday teach. I have a voice from my first year of teaching that helps me with the task.
The place was Aldine Junior High School, the un-air-conditioned learning edifice for 700 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students in 1966. That year the AJH administration offered me my first teaching job. I was 22.
My teaching schedule included three sections of seventh grade English. This was the time in our educational history when all students were academically grouped with overt titles identifying each class section. The smart kids were in section 7-1; the slower ones in 7-15 with all others stuck somewhere in between. The counselors denied that the numbers referred to academic ability, but the teachers knew, and so did the students.
I taught sections 7-3, 7-7, and 7-8. There were 35 plus fourteen year old boys and girls in each section. Each daily class meeting was two hours long. I was responsible for teaching two subjects during the two hours, English and reading. At the end of each six weeks grading period, I was responsible for giving each student a grade in each of the subjects. My grades were kept in my brown-covered Steck Class Record Book. Students ‘names and grades were entered in long-hand.
Kathleen was in section 7-8, a group of kids almost exactly identified as being in the middle of the academic range. She was a skinny kid with long, stringy, dish-water blonde hair. Her sparkly brown eyes were a part of her smile.
I liked the kid. She was zany; she obviously liked school, was a little boy crazy, and often giggled when she addressed me. I remember well how she would ask a question in class and would intentionally mis-pronounce my name. Her question would go, “Mr. Eschell, what do you think about…?” The question would be followed with the mouth and eyes combo smile.
Her grades were fairly good. I heard from other teachers that her home life was difficult. I noted that her parents did not attend open house, but I never got involved enough to learn more about her home life.
Kathleen continued coming to class throughout the year along with her section 7-8 classmates, and each six weeks, I wrote down two grades on Kathleen’s report card that I dutifully sent home. Those two grades were copied from the averages I kept by Kathleen’s name in my Steck Class Record Book.
My first year of teaching ended and the second began. I heard that Kathleen during her eighth grade year was dating a boy who had dropped out of high school. At mid-term a teacher mentioned to me that Kathleen had herself dropped out of school and married.
I didn’t think too much again about Kathleen until May of my third year of teaching. It was then that I read in a Houston paper about a young sixteen year old suicide victim who during a quarrel with her young husband had killed herself. The victim’s name was Kathleen.
I was outraged. I was not prepared for this mean, hateful, sad event to be a part of my teaching experience. I thought that my role as a teacher was to teach students to appreciate short stories and poetry and to write their reactions to literary pieces. When I decided to become a teacher, I never dreamed that one of my former sixteen year old students would commit suicide. I never thought when I was preparing as a teacher that such a horrendous deed would create the need for me to re-access all that I was doing and the way I was doing it.
After Kathleen’s death, I thought back so many, many times about the year she spent with me in seventh grade English. I asked myself again and again, “When she was in my class, did I do anything that made her feel she was important? Did I speak to her when I saw her in the hallway?” After her death when I looked at her grades in the grade book, I asked, “Were these numbers that I wrote down in my grade book and gave to Kathleen each six weeks the only message that I sent to her indicating what I felt she was as a person?”
Today, I’m beginning my forty-fourth year as a teacher. I still have that grade book with Kathleen’s name in it along with her grades.
The students who were in section 7-8 are today fifty-five years old. Many of them are probably grandparents. In reflective times, I still think about Kathleen, and when I do, I never see her as older. She is always a fourteen year old seventh grader with stringy blonde hair and shiny brown eyes that complement her smile. And in my reflection she admonishes me as I work with the future teachers in my classroom, “Mr. Eschell, teach these young teachers that they must make their students know that they care about them. Teach these young teachers that what the student needs to remember about a teacher’s class should be so much more than the number that will be taken from the teacher’s grade book and placed on each student’s report card. You, teach them that Mr. Eschell, OK?”