This much is true: Teachers are underpaid in comparison to accountants. They are not underpaid in comparison to healthcare workers, excepting RNs and docs. But money aside, it is undeniable that teachers are very important. Bad teachers, whether they reach bad from burnout or natural inclination, do a lot of harm. Good teachers, well, they do a lot of good.
In my travels through 12 years of Catholic school and then four-and-a-half years of ostensibly higher education and two degrees - one from a city college, the other from the University of Cincinnati - I've had my share of both. Class, let's review.
My first-grade teacher was a tall, bespectacled lady named Sister Mary Hyacinth. Back in the day that was my day, a Catholic could not eat on a Communion Day until after he or she took the sacrament at Mass. My first-grade classroom was right next to the school bakery, a place where hairnetted old gals made the best cinnamon rolls I've ever tasted.
During a practice run before our First Communion, Sister M.H. asked the class what they looked forward to most about making their initial Communion. My classmates regurgitated Baltimore Catechism answers about loving God. Taught to tell the truth and still, at the age of 6, believing in such an animal unswervingly, I said, "I want to go to Communion so I get one of those yummy pastries." Sister went ballistic, screaming at me until I cried and calling my parents. Bitterly frustrated folk should not be allowed near little kids. Brides of Christ don't often know how to treat no regular human babies.
Miss Robb was my fourth-grade teacher. To put a fine point on it, she was disturbed. She was a short, round little lady, about 60, who looked an awful lot like the German hausfrau-witch who invited Hansel and Gretel in and then attempted to bake them.
Miss Robb lived in a trailer right behind the school grounds with her 80-something mother. She told a bunch of us fourth-graders one day that her dining room table had a handprint burned into its top. "Jesus visited us while we slept and did it," she said.
What happened next is not something I am proud of decades later. A rowdy bunch of us snuck up to the trailer one evening just before dark - the time we all had to be in - and began beating on the sides with baseball bats. "It's Satan, come for your table," we screamed. Miss Robb missed a week of school. Now that I am older, and understand pain and suffering firsthand, my part in the Devil Takes Miss Robb caper is one of my saddest memories. I am sorry, poor lady, wherever you may be.
Sister Jean Clare was a hard woman. Teaching eighth-grade boys and girls, maybe she felt she couldn't be soft. But I suspect, looking back, that she liked being mean. Unlike the aforementioned Sister Mary Hyacinth, who I think, in retrospect, was an unhappy middle-aged lady, Sister Jean Clare was a self-righteously hardened soul. I'll never forget the day she caught the Coppage sisters, Alicia and Jeannette, smoking behind the school.
Every boy in the eighth grade, except maybe Johnny Kummer, who everyone knew was going to be a priest, was in love with the Coppages. They wore eyeshadow and lipstick, and they were the first two girls in our class to have noticeable breasts. When Sister Jean Clare brought them in front of the class and dramatically accused them of smoking and being "fast" in other ways, they both started crying. She then called them whited sepulchers whose crying wouldn't get them off God's hook.
I wanted to get up and pull that rat-faced bully off my two fantasy babes. But I sat, trembling with rage and cowardice, while the "good" sister abused my babies. I regret not jumping up and bringing myself to the Coppages' attention, especially Alicia, almost as much as I regret bugging poor old Miss Robb, she of the Holy Trailer.
Frank McGee taught bookkeeping at Roger Bacon High School. I took his class in my junior year as an easy way to pick up an extra credit. Since I have never been good at numbers, I can't even imagine what I was thinking about. Mr. McGee didn't help me with bookkeeping, but he did expose me to a good case of old-fashioned American paranoia.
It started one afternoon toward the end of class. I was talking to my friend Gerry Stern, who later went to Vietnam, about sneaking a smoke after last bell, before the schoolbus came, when Mr. McGee, protruding ears beet-red, erupted. Tears in his eyes, he accused me of talking about him, mocking him and planning to do something (unspoken) dastardly to him. I was stunned. I never thought of him at all. He was nothing to me but a sixth-period, 45-minute waste of time. A little skinny guy in a sportcoat who lived with his mother.
The false accusations became a daily occurrence, and then McGee actually came calling to tell my father about my imaginary bad doin's. The old man usually sided with the teachers - after all, he knew me - but this one time he called the school and reported his concern for Mr. McGee's mental health. I flunked bookkeeping, which didn't matter since it was an extra-credit class, and not long after, Mr. McGee was hospitalized. I don't remember the outcome of his treatment, but I will never forget that feeling of being falsely accused.
It wasn't until college that I started pulling some good professors. Jon Hughes became a mentor. Wayne Miller was an interesting guy, and a good teacher when a student engaged him. I learned a lot from both of them about journalism, 20th-century literature and even life. Looking back, I think I deserved some positive payback for suffering a mixed bag of teachers my first 12 years. So thanks, Wayne and Jon.
Dennis Wilken's column appears periodically in the Capitol Hill Times. Reach him at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.[[In-content Ad]]
