“You’re mean, “ James said , as he sat with me after school one spring afternoon trying to finish up a yearbook deadline he had been procrastinating on for weeks.
I was shocked as I had never had a student call me mean. Some may have thought it, but it was never verbalized. Wanting a confirmation that I was not a bad teacher, I turned to Kim who was typing up some copy so she could make her deadline. “Kim….am I mean?”
“No, Mrs. Ramseyer, you’re not mean. You just expect us to follow through and meet our deadlines.”
I knew James was close to tears. I was in the next to last year of my teaching career and I had been through so many students I had had to badger to get their yearbook pages finished or newspaper articles written that I wasn’t very empathetic. I was a type A person when it came to meeting deadlines.
I was frustrated with myself that I had ever let James take my publications’ class. He was a student who meant well, but was never quite able to get through his work without more prodding than I felt I needed to give to a junior in high school. However I had let him in the class as I felt he needed something in his life that would give him some confidence. I had been mistaken that the class would help him, but it was past time for regret. James was miserable and making me feel miserable.
I went to his desk to see what was troubling him and knew that raising my voice would only make things worse. Somehow he got through part of it and I told him to go home and finish the rest the next day. I had a knot in my stomach and knew that no matter how frustrating a student could be, it was my job to make them feel they were worthwhile and gently guide them to do better. I hadn’t done that with James and I had enough experience to know better.
Between the beginning of my career to the end of it, I learned many lessons from my students. I also learned what teaching techniques worked and what gave me stress. I tried to follow my educational philosophy of what I called the four F’s. I first wanted to be firm and fair and then I could have fun and be friendly. For the most part, the philosophy worked.
Fresh out of MSU in 1968 I started my career at the old railroad town of Durand, Michigan. My husband and I lived in Lansing and I drove one half hour to work. I usually car pooled with other teachers who also lived in Lansing. My first months in the classroom were scary as I tried to find my way. I was teaching 10th grade English and was the yearbook advisor. The yearbook was done with students after school. I could have passed for one of the students and did as I paid student lunch prices for a couple of months until I realized the difference.
One day during my first year I had a boy who threw a piece of paper on the floor. This young man wore his hair greased back like Fonzie in Happy Days. He hadn’t been a troublemaker, but was a little sullen and didn’t really care for English. I looked at him and said very firmly, “Please pick up that piece of paper and put it in the waste basket.”
In the back of my mind I suddenly had a scary thought, what if he doesn't pick it up?” I breathed a sigh of relief when he got out of his desk, picked it up and did what I asked him to do. I had a new sense of the power a teacher can have.
In my first two years of teaching high school at Durand I learned that teaching was hard work and there could be no trying to get out of it. To come to school unprepared was the kiss of death. I also learned in my second year that the vibrancy of youth can be snuffed out in a second. My yearbook editor, Deb, was killed in a car accident as was a wonderful student I had taught the year before,John. John's father was a teacher at the high school. A student by the name of Peter I had in my home room committed suicide. It was also the year my mother died.
After two years of teaching we moved to Oceana County, where I had grown up. I took a year off to have our daughter and then found a job again at a small rural school teaching English to 7th & 8th graders and music to the younger students. I continued to learn lessons, both big and small.
I taught in the years when it was up to each teacher to form their own curriculum and I often wondered if I was doing the right thing in my classroom as there were no dictates from the state or any other source. There was a trust that teachers knew what was best for their students and had the intelligence to teach them well.
In 1978 I was able to move up from teaching junior high classes to teaching at Hart High School. One of my favorite classes to teach was 11th grade American Literature. Studying American Lit in college was a pleasure. I always felt enthusiastic about the material. One year after we had studied Thoreau and civil disobedience I realized that sometimes students don’t forget the lessons of the classroom.
During basketball season that year a student had done something at a game that upset the principal and the student was banned from further home basketball games. A student from my class organized an act of civil disobedience. He thought the boy who was being banned was being treated unfairly by the principal. He talked most of the student body into staging a sit in.after lunch one day. A few students trickled into my room including my daughter and I waited for the rest of the class..
After the bell rang and the hall was full of sitting students I thought...this might be my fault since I taught them what civil disobedience is. Suddenly over the PA the principal’s terse voice said, “All students are to return to class. Anyone who doesn’t return to class will be suspended.” There was a scurry of footsteps as students hurried to get themselves out of the hallway and into their classrooms. I had to chuckle as I knew we basically had a high school full of good kids who really didn’t want to get into trouble, but were enjoying what they had been able to pull off.
Seeing the funny side of situations was always part of my philosophy about teaching. However there were days when I could feel something happening in class that was getting my dander up, It could be anything from too much noise to students who hadn’t done the assignment which usually included reading a bit of literature. One day I could feel my buttons being pushed. I shouted, “You guys are really getting my goat!”
The following week in our local paper there was an ad which read: LOST: ONE GOAT. IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO ROOM 18. I had to appreciate the humor of my students and bless them for keeping me on an even keel.
I learned that grades did not have to be set in stone. I had a student who was very intelligent and was hovering between a B+ and A- for the marking period. I always showed the students what they would be getting for the marking period so they wouldn’t have any surprises. When I showed this young man he was getting a B+ I could tell he was upset. Later he came in to talk to me about it and wondered if he might not have done enough for an A-.and if not, could he do some extra work. I was usually firm in my decisions. But in this instance I thought about the boy's background and how he and his brother and sister were being raised by their grandmother. All these children were hard workers and smart. I knew that reading essays could be a subjective thing. I changed his grade. This young man is now an award winning English teacher on the other side of the state.
I learned that just straight book work did not make a good class. So I tried to tie in things that would be relevant to what the students were reading. In the fall after reading Thoreau’s Walden Pond I took my students to Gales Pond….a short bus ride from school. There they walked trails and wrote in their journals. It was always a beautiful time of year with the color reflecting off the water. In the spring we walked to the Hart Cemetery to read headstones and find historical tidbits. We did that after reading Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology, a series of poems that were epitaphs of fictional people.
The last few years of my teaching career I taught a creative writing class. Those students each wrote a children’s book. We went to the elementary school where they read their books to first and second graders. One spring day when I wanted them to write about their childhood we went outside to play the games they remembered from their younger years like Ring around the Rosie, Duck Duck Goose and Red Rover. I came close to injuring myself on that one.
One important tool I used and learned tons from was letting my students critique my class. I asked them to write on three topics. #1: Critique your writing. What was good about it and how can you improve? #2: Critique the class. Did you learn anything? Why or why not? #3 Critique yourself. Did you work hard and give it your best effort?
I taught twenty two years at Hart High School and through all of that time I only kept one critique that I received. It was written by a boy named Joe who was in my 11th grade American Lit class at the time. I do not remember the year. I am going to share it exactly as he wrote it.
1. I think basically I do well because I get all the major stuff but I have a tendency to miss simple things like spelling too or to and run-on sentences. I also think I have a tendency to be extreme in how I write. I either don’t put in enough detail or I put in way to much. I think that I have problems with writing too complexly in that I put in things that don’t need to be there and just make it hard to read. I also know that I write too big and sometimes too much.
2. I think this class is a rare thing at Hart High because in most of my classes the people are in three different divisions. People who understand and do well in the class, people who try to understand and do okay, and people who couldn’t care less whether they failed or not. In this class I saw something I couldn’t believe. People who were in the last category in my other classes were asking questions and actually wanting and trying to learn. At the same time I’m learning a lot more than I usually would. Normally I get an A in English without learning much but I got a B+ and I learned a lot more with the B+ than the A.
3. I think that I could do better but I’m very happy with a B+. It surprised me that I got it but I feel I earned it instead of just doing nothing for an A. I think I’m learning more than ever in this class and it’s fun too. In my past English classes the Scarlet Letter essay test we took would’ve got me an A which just goes to show you the difference.
No one can go through a life and not learn valuable things, but teachers are expected to teach the lessons. However I learned that most students could be pushed and prodded to do better than they thought they were capable of doing. I learned that reading their writing could sometimes bring me to tears. I learned that giving an essay test was much more revealing of what they knew even though I spent many a Sunday afternoon grading papers. I learned that I needed to be prepared on a daily basis and that I had to reread material every year I was teaching it. Only now in retirement am I able to just pick up a modern novel and have time to read it.
I learned that respect and humor go a long way. There are students that stand out in my mind because they had a need to be heard and there are students who have faded in my memory because they chose not to be seen or if in not choosing that, couldn’t make themselves be as visible as others. I learned that if I could have done something else with my life other than be a singer or writer, I would not have chosen anything else. I wouldn't be who I am today without the lessons I learned from the students I had from 1968-2000.
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My yearbook staff at Durand High School in 1960-70. The amazing thing is
these former students would be in their early 60's now. |
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Caught by surprise by my yearbook photographer at Durand H.S. in
1970. I was twenty three years old. |
