The stories I tell from my own classroom are true. Some of the others may or may not be apocryphal. Also, many of the lists about grammar and writing (e.g. "How to Write Good") I picked up along the way, but I have no idea who actually wrote them and am unable to find out. I hope this doesn’t constitute plagiarism.
Oops! Please Pull up Your Pants!
Needed: A Girls’ Basketball Couch.
Imagine This: I Taught English for 36 Years!
If Henry VIII had Six Wives, Why Wasn’t He Henry VI?!
Are You Sure You Want to Be a Teacher?
Where Are Your Yonkers?
Ever since I began teaching at Granada, the school has put out a daily sheet of information for students, entitled, "El Aviso Del Dia." One September sheet had the following message: "There are now three applicants for the position of girls’ basketball couch. Is anyone else interested in the position?" How about that for an offer? The editing improved after that day!
About midway through Act Three of Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the character, Mary says to her husband, James, "It must be much more cheerful in the barrooms uptown, where there are people you can talk and joke with."
A female student of mine, reading the part of Mary and apparently reading too fast, said, "It must be much more cheerful in the barrooms uptown, where there are people you can jock and toke with." My response was, "Sounds like more fun than talking and joking!"
Arlin Billingsley was a Social Science teacher for many years at Granada. He was a brilliant man and a fine teacher, but he was known to give extremely difficult tests. His quizzes, on the other hand, were not so difficult.
One day, at the start of class, he said, "Okay, kiddies, today we’re going to have a little quizzy." As it turned out, the quiz was anything but easy. Near the end of the class, a female student approached him and said, "Gee, Mr. Billingsley, if that was one of your quizzies, I’d sure hate to see one of your testies!" For maybe the only time in his life, Billingsley was speechless!
For years, I taught my students the Robert Bolt play, A Man for All Seasons. I would always preface the play by talking about sixteenth century England: the Reformation, the Inquisition, Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, etc.
Early on in the lecture, I would ask who was a famous king of the time. The answer, of course, was Henry VIII. I would then ask what he was famous for, and someone would always come up with the fact that he had so many wives and had some of them executed. I would then ask how many wives he had. Some student would eventually say, "six."
One year, a girl then shouted out, "Mr. Willis, how many wives did he have?" I said, "six." She responded, "Six! Well then, why wasn’t he Henry VI?" I then tried to give an answer even she could understand.
I have two more stories about that same student. Near the end of Scene Two in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley, seeing some letters in Blanche’s trunk asks, "What in hell are they." Blanche responds, "Poems a dead boy wrote." You guessed it! My "Henry VI" girl asks, "How could a dead boy write poems?" I explained that he probably wrote them BEFORE he died. Her response was, "Oh!"
One last story about this memorable student: in Act One of Arthur Miller’s classic, Death of a Salesman, Happy asks his traveling salesman dad, Willy Loman, "What brought you back tonight?" Willy responds, "I got an awful scare, Nearly hit a kid in Yonkers."
Oh no. You can probably guess whose hand went up, right? She asked me the following, "Where are your yonkers?" I then had to explain that Yonkers was a geographical location, a city in New York, not an anatomical body part. I was actually sorry when she graduated!
(This story is at least R rated)
A Streetcar Named Desire ends with an interesting line. A very minor character, Steve, says, "This game is seven-card stud." The main character, Blanche, had just been "carted off" to a mental institution, and the line basically means, "So there’s tragedy in the world; so the Blanches of the world go crazy; so what? We have to get back to the game of life, back to the card game."
The male student who was reading Steve obviously had plenty of time to look ahead, as he only had one other line in the last 90 minutes of the play. He recited the final line, "This game is for seven-inch studs!"
After getting the class back under control, I asked what the final line meant. Of course, I meant Williams’ final line. A girl in the back of the room raised her hand and said, "Well, I guess it means only the BIG BOYS can play!"
In the narration at the beginning of Act Three of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, there is the statement, "From a lighthouse beyond the harbor’s mouth, a foghorn is heard at regular intervals, moaning like a mournful whale in labor"
I made the mistake one time of saying to the class, "Can you imagine giving birth to a whale?" By the way, at the time, I weighed considerably more than 200 pounds. A student, in fact my oldest son, Robert, answered from the back of the room, "No, but I’ll go ask my grandma!" We had a soul-to-soul conversation that night. I just don’t know from whom he got his sick humor.
In early June of 2002, I was discussing some "crucial" topic with my Sophomore Honors' English class. Standing near the podium (thank God!), I thrust my arms up into the air to emphasize some point. Now, you need to know that I had lost 40 pounds in the few preceding months as I was battling with cancer, and so my pants were a "tad" too large for me. As my arms shot OUT, my pants shot DOWN - all the way to the floor.
I leapt behind the podium, bent over, pulled my coverings back up, and then put my head down on the podium and absolutely shook with laughter. The class, of course, was in a total uproar.About a minute or so later, I looked up at the students, and they informed me afterwards that I was beet red, including my entire bald head. One girl then said, "Mr. Willis, I just definitely saw more than I ever needed to!"
The word quickly spread around the school, and I was beseiged with questions like "Boxers or Briefs?" My response was "Pink Speedo!"
About two weeks later, at the end-of-the-year, faculty luncheon, Granada's VP, Jeanne Rogers, was presenting awards. She said, "We have had a new dress code this year, and there have been many student violations. However, the worst violation was by a member of the staff. Jim Willis, can you possibly explain yourself?" Of course, I then had to retell the story to the entire faculty. Jeanne presented me with a certificate, stating,
In approximately the summer of 1976, I received a call from a mother, asking if her son could take Latin from me in the Fall. I replied, "Of course. Have him sign up like any other student." She said, "Well, this situation is a little unusual. John Patrick is seven!" In my dumbfounded state, I stupidly inquired, "As in years old?" "Yes." I asked if I could have a few days to think it over.
In the meantime, the head of the local GATE program (Gifted And Talented Students - the acronym should have been GATS, or, in my ever increasing forgetfulness, I can’t recall what the "E" represented) called me to suggest I take John as a student. He was in the third grade at Sonoma Elementary, was totally bored, had already read a great share of the classics, was "into" Calculus in his spare time, and his parents refused to have him keep skipping grades, as that would only make him more of a social misfit. So, of course, being the kind, dedicated teacher I am, I said, "Let’s do it."
So John Patrick Hunt was one of the 25 or so students in my Latin 1 class in September of 1976. The majority of the others were very bright freshmen, plus there were a few upper classmen who had previously taken an English class from me.
At first, the class reaction to John Patrick was very positive. The girls, especially, thought he was so cute, and they sort of mothered in. But when this little human being was obviously the best student in the class, that created problems. I called his mother about the third day, for instance, and suggested that she discuss with John the fact that maybe it would be better if he didn’t wave his hand demonstratively on every question. I also told her that a sensed an antagonism quickly building up against him. Her heart-to-heart with her son seemed to be effective.
Here are some memorable incidents with John.
We translated a story about the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. I asked the class if they could think of any English words derived from her name. A few hands went up. I had developed the habit of NOT calling on John if other hands were raised, but this one I just had to hear from the seven-year-old.
"Yes, John, what word?" His reply was "aphrodisiac." I then queried, "Very good. "What’s an aphrodisiac?" His answer still echoes in my ears 26 years later.
"An aphrodisiac is a substance purported to induce sensual pleasure." A large senior football player in the back of the room said, "Huh? Does he mean a Spanish Fly?" By the way, I think that is the only time in my now 34 years of teaching that I have ever heard anyone use the verb, "purported."
We came across the word, "somnus," meaning sleep. I then asked the class the following question: "Can anyone combine that Latin noun with a Latin verb we have learned previously to form an English compound noun?
I’m not sure that anyone understood the question more or less knew the answer. The ONLY hand, you guessed it, to go up was little John’s. He said, "somnambulist."
"Correct. What’s a somnambulist, John."
"A sleepwalker." I then explained that the "ambulist" suffix comes from "ambulare," Latin for "to walk." The class then discussed the meanings of "amble," "ambulatory," "non-ambulatory," "ambulance," "insomnia," "Sominex," "somniferous," etc.
After class I asked John how he happened to know such a word. His reply spoke volumes. "I don’t know. I read it somewhere."
We were reading a story with references to the Trojan War. I asked if anyone had read an account of the war. John said he had read Homer’s Iliad twice. "Have you also read The Odyssey? "Of course I have." My next questions proves I have a little bit of a jerk in me
"John, you have surely then read The Aeneid!
"Is that by Vergil, Mr. Willis? No I haven’t. I’m sorry."
I turned to a student near me and said, "Gee whiz! The kid’s pushing eight years old, and he hasn’t read The Aeneid yet. I am shocked!"
The next day, while taking roll, I noticed John wasn’t very attentive. I walked back by his desk, and he was on about page 100 of Vergil’s classic, Boy, did I feel like a jerk! I learned later that he was upset that he had disappointed me. As brilliant as he was, he needed to learn the subtleties of my "humor." I still feel guilty about that story.
Daily, John would ride his little bike from Sonoma Elementary the three or so blocks to Granada High School. He asked me if he could keep his bike in my room, as he feared someone would steal it. I really doubted that, but I agreed.
One day, he arrived while I was distracted, and Steve Kehl, the football player mentioned earlier and the one student who treated John the best, grabbed his bike and hung it from the hooks at the top of the blackboard. Many of us "mature" males tend to show that we like others by crude remarks or sometimes cruel actions. Steve was only picking on John in a way that said, "I’m your buddy."
Again, John needed to learn the subtleties of such "humor." I turned around just in time to hear John say, "Cease and desist, you big lummox!" Steve headed directly for the dictionary!
In 1987, John was again in my class - this time as a senior in my English Lit. class. It was a little intimidating for me to have a student who was so much smarter than I. (At least I said "I" instead of "me." I hope you’re impressed!). I found myself looking out of the corner of my eye whenever I made a statement I was less than 100% sure of. Only once did he challenge me, and he did it very politely. He said, "Mr. Willis, you just said that that passage included a reference to "da-da-da." I think it’s really a reference to "dee-dee-dee."
I replied, "Maybe you are right, John, but I don’t think so. That night, after an hour or so of research, I was able to prove that he was RIGHT, not I. I guess this only substantiates my slight level of imperfection!
One final John Patrick Hunt story! His senior year (1987), he was one of a handful of high school students named to a Bay Area Academic All Star Team. As part of the award, there was a recognition dinner held in a prestigious San Francisco hotel.
Each of the honorees was asked to tell his college of choice and to write about the most influential teacher in his life. Of course, in all false humility, I assumed John would write about me. Wrong! He wrote the following letter:
<I’m still hunting down this clipping>
Invited to the dinner were the honorees and their parents, as well as the "favorite" teachers.
Mrs. Hunt told me years later that the tension at their table was palpable. She, her husband, and John were okay until the M.C. said, "I have good news. We DO have time for each of our fine students to read their letter about their "favorite" teacher. Mr. "Billingsley" smugly awaited his turn at glory. The Hunts were looking for the nearest hole to crawl into.
But, remember, John is a genius. He somehow induced an upset stomach, had to leave the dinner, and thus didn’t have the opportunity to present his "tribute." Arlin, of course, was disappointed.
However, the next morning’s paper had pictures and bios of the winners, and it printed the letters. I cut it out, and when I went to Billingsley’s teacher’s box to put the article in it, his box was stuffed with probably a score of similar clippings. Arlin wasn’t very visible around campus for the next few weeks!
CLICK ON THE BUTTERFLY TO CONTINUE