...And Gladly Teach

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Here in New England, students went back to school for the first time this past Thursday or Friday. (I continue to maintain starting the year at the very end of August, near Labor Day, is the True and Right way to do it, but I acknowledge this is a the minority view in the US.) 

Colleges and Universities are back in the swing; I taught my first class of the semester on Wednesday.  This is my second September without one of my kids in school (Youngest graduated in May, '22) and it still feels weird to be off the great solstice of the parental year after a quarter century. Of course, Youngest is now talking about grad school, so...

 Kindergarten through MBAs and Medical degrees, one constant figure is the teacher. I've had many in my life. My mother got a masters in education and supported her children for several years as a single mom after her divorce. Many of you know my late husband was a special ed teacher. But I want to call out some of my own teachers who helped shape who I am today.

 

Suzanne Ovitt: my first teacher after I arrived back in the US after almost four years living abroad. My parents were divorcing, I was off a military base for the first time in my life, and I was a wreck. Her gentle, supportive, caring presence got me restarted in my new life.

 

Al Marshall: I can't recall if Mr. Marshall taught me English in 6th, 7th or 8th grade. I do recall his enthusiasm for my writing. He took a poem of mine and tacked it up in the teachers' lounge with a note: Don't tell me kids in our school aren't creative. (I know this because my mom was a long term sub there.) He was the first teacher to lay the foundation for my belief I could be a writer.

 

Miss Sutton: I never knew my senior English teacher's first name - our small group of very bright smart-alecks called her Sutton Hoo.  She was actually an adjunct of Syracuse University; we were getting college credit for her class and boy did she make us work for it. Each Monday we were assigned a current affairs topic. On Friday, we had to turn in a well-reasoned Baconian essay on it - five paragraphs, each with five sentences, the whole structured around topic, three arguments in order of strength, and conclusion. Typos, poor grammar and spelling errors were unacceptable. Miss Sutton prepared me for law school eight years before I thought about going.  

Robert Ryan and John "Jack" Pavia: Professors Ryan and Pavia weren't just amazing teachers of history at Ithaca College, they also opened their hearts and homes to students. Prof. Ryan had regular dinners for the history majors, where he would produce gourmet meals that left his small kitchen looking like a food bomb had exploded. Prof. Pavia took us sailing on Lake Cayuga, and along with a great deal of information about Japanese history and literature, he imparted a piece of wisdom I have always remembered: A boat should be big enough for a cooler full of drinks."

I had started with the goal of a BFA in acting, but when I realized I was loving my history classes SO much more than those in voice and movement, I changed majors. 

 

Finally,  not my own teacher, but my kids': Nancy Ouellette. Mrs. Ouellette had all three of my children in her second grade class at St. Patrick's School and lived to tell the tale. She was a funny, compassionate teacher who handled loose teeth with aplomb (so many loose teeth!) and had a creative curriculum that blended science, mathematics and writing together in a way that kept her students engaged and interested in learning. She was Maine's Catholic School Teacher of the Year in '17, and rightly so. Mrs. Ouellette, I hope you're enjoyed a well-earned retirement.

 

How about you, dear readers? Who were the teachers who left their mark on your lives?

Mentoring Eighth Graders: What Would You Say?

LUCY BURDETTE: One of my fabulous sisters-in-law, Lisa Leonard, is a fifth/sixth grade French teacher in Maine. She was visiting last summer and somehow we got onto the subject of the six things she was attempting to impress upon/teach a dozen eighth grade students that she was responsible for mentoring. 

I don’t remember much from 8^th grade aside from supreme social angst, and hiding GONE WITH THE WIND in my textbook because I had to see what happened. So I imagine I would have loved smart tips from a teacher like her.  These were her six important tips on life:

Shake hands—firmly, while looking the person in the eye.

Learn how to hold a conversation—it’s like ping-pong, back and forth, not all about you.

Life is going to have bumps—you have to ride them out.

And three were driving safety related:

Wear your seatbelt.

Do NOT text and drive or ride with someone who’s texting while driving.

Do not drive while drinking or with someone who’s been drinking.

Now it's your turn. Supposing you were charged with mentoring 8th graders (I know, eek!), what are six or fewer things you'd want them to hear?

My Favorite Teacher

INGRID THOFT

Pencils and notebooks and binders.  That's what I recently stumbled upon in the "seasonal" aisle of my local Target.  Is it really back-to-school season already?  I imagine it can't come soon enough for some parents, but it was a walk down memory lane for me rather than a not-too-distant goal!  I thought about my school days:  dissecting a fetal pig in science class; pieces of pizza that resembled floor tiles; field hockey drills wearing pinnies; and my favorite teacher.

Her name is Mrs. Harder, and I don't think that it's a coincidence that my favorite teacher was my English teacher.  Kind, thoughtful, and energetic, Mrs. Harder was the highlight of my academic day, and she will always be bonded in my mind with Edith Wharton and Shakespeare.  She fed my love of reading, and she taught how to write, which has clearly served me well.  More than that, in her classroom there were always lively discussions about bigger, more complex issues, which suggested she thought we were up for the challenge of beginning to tackle the adult world.  She taught us about values and integrity and the power we all have to choose the kind of people we want to be.  Grammar, punctuation, imagery, and ethics:  It was all on the agenda in Mrs. Harder's classroom.

These days, she insists I call her Joanne, which I still can't quite get used to, and she's one of my most enthusiastic and loyal fans.  She attends my Boston-area events, and last fall, invited me back to speak to the student body at my alma mater.  I feel enormously grateful that she was my teacher all those years ago, but I'm also thrilled that these days she's my friend.

How about you, Reds?  Who was your favorite teacher?  Were you in touch after your school days?

LUCY BURDETTE: Ingrid, you are so lucky to have your favorite teacher morph to fan and friend! Probably like the rest of you, I adored school and going back to school. I think my fave was Mrs. Covey in fifth grade. She was warm and interesting and made school fun. The details are fuzzy, and here's a story that tells more about me than her. Report cards came out and I had nothing but A's. Except for one B, which must have been given by the gym teacher. But my best friend Lynn had an A in gym. I went sobbing to Mrs. Covey, and she changed it to an A:). 

In high school, we had the most wonderful drama and choral music teachers, Mr. Schneider and Mr. Dorhout. I had very modest (almost minimal) talent in both of those subjects, but I was in love with the community they built and the seriousness with which they taught us and their great good humor and dedication. I still remember the alto harmonies from the choral pieces we sang...such a gift!

HALLIE EPHRON: My favorite teacher was in sixth grade, Barbara Ann Schenkel at El Rodeo school in Beverly Hills. She was lively, interesting, and she encouraged me to think for myself and say what I thought. Maybe it was because of her that I decided to go to Barnard College (she was an alum) and become a teacher. Sadly, by the time I tried to reach out to her (I'd moved to the East coast, was teaching education courses at the college level, had started a family...) it was too late. She'd died of breast cancer.

So my advice to everyone about your favorite teachers, if you want to reach out and tell them so, don't wait.

JENN MCKINLAY: I did not love school. In fact, if it weren't for my English teacher, Mr. Taylor, my science teacher, Mr. Meehan, and my favorite teacher, Mrs. Bodwell, I probably would have cut school a heck of a lot more than I did. Mrs. B was the choir teacher at East Lyme High School in CT, and I was lucky enough to be in choir, select choir, and her specially chosen group of eight for a small ensemble choir, where we were invited to perform as backup singers for a Broadway recording and in a gospel church in New London to name just a few of Mrs. B's field trips. Pretty much any cool gig she could throw us into, she did, and it was awesome. She was an amazingly talented woman who performed as a soprano in operas at the Met, but what I remember most about her was that she always wore four inch heels (she was on the small side of petite), kept her blonde hair in a neat bob, and had the biggest grin when she was conducting us from the podium. The woman was a live wire, and it was contagious!

We recently reconnected through social media. She's retired and living in Vermont, while I am in AZ. She still sings, I do not, but we both have a passion for knitting. We've been sharing our knitting adventures, and it's like rediscovering our friendship all over again. During my turbulent teen years, she was definitely one of the few teachers who saw past my tough exterior to the creativity inside of me, looking for an outlet. She taught me to be poised and confident, to pursue my passion wholeheartedly, and to push through failure and try, try, and try again until I got it right. I owe her so very much.

RHYS BOWEN: Like Jenn I did not adore school! I was very smart, always at the top of my class, but I was at an all girls school, and most of my teachers were close to retirement age--mean-spirited old spinsters who loved to criticize and inflict punishments. In sewing class, the teacher would walk around with a ruler and if our hands moved to the wrong position beside the sewing machine THWACK came the ruler over our knuckles!  I did like my music teacher and was also in the choir. We had a lovely young history teacher, but she got married and left. Great weeping and wailing. I didn't particularly like my sixth form English teacher, Miss Willis, but she helped to make me the writer I am. She challenged. She also mocked, I'm afraid, but she set creative assignments and a friend and I took those challenges, which resulted in my winning the English prize, editing the school magazine and being invited to tea with Arnot Robertson, a famous novelist, when she visited the school.

Oh, but college was a different matter.  I had some wonderful professors, especially for my thesis. She never taught. She would throw out seemingly unrelated questions, and then suddenly light would dawn, and we'd see the connection and go "Oh!". She wanted me to stay on and do my PhD, but I got lured away by the BBC. 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Have you ever heard of a high school where the English teacher created a club, called The Hastings Club, and encouraged all his students to wear black armbands on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings to mourn the defeat of the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans? I am thrilled to have a chance to once again honor the name of the fabulous Thomas Thornburg. I was just at my high school's 50th reunion, as you know, and every single person there mentioned how much Mr. Thornburg had changed their life. (He probably would have mentioned that my pronouns do not agree in the previous sentence.)

He was hilarious, and, hoping he doesn't read this, so incredibly cute, and brilliant--and I mean brilliant. He let us all love Shakespeare and Spenser and F Scott Fitzgerald and writing and poetry and the power of our own language and imagination. 

He was incredibly tough grading papers. He had a rubber stamp with the word GUG on it, which he would stamp on our papers when something was so indescribably terrible that he couldn't even manage to explain why it was so terrible.

I would not be where I am today (wherever that is) without him, and I have to say that so many people at the reunion said just the same thing.
The good news is he lives in Montana, and his wife and I are Facebook friends, and how cool is that? (I still imagine him looking just like this photo. And that's me and good pal Susan Palmer in the Hastings Club yearbook photo.)
I have used his name as a character in several of my books, just in honor of him...the books would not exist without him, you know?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: School was not a great experience for me once I hit middle-school, although I did have a very good and encouraging English teacher in tenth grade. But in elementary school, my best friend and I had the same teacher in third and sixth grade, Miss Schwann. I can't imagine what either of us would be like today without her. She was a wonderful teacher, kind and demanding and funny. She always let you know she had expectations, and you had better live up to them. She loved reading, and the half hour when she would read aloud to us was the high point at the end of every day. In sixth grade, she read us A WRINKLE IN TIME, and it was such an experience it has stuck with me ever since. I was a good reader before her classes, and a great (and addicted) reader after.

Here's the "Wrinkle" cover from my youth.  It cost $1.25!  

Tell us readers, who were your favorite teachers?  Do you stay in touch with them?

A Tale of Two Kids, a guest blog by Tim O'Mara

                          -WINNERS-WINNERS-WINNERS-

Through the Evil Days ARC: Dotty Ryan, Lynda, Pat D.    Chance of a Ghost OR The Thrill of the Haunt: Bev Fontaine    Her Last Breath: Lora.  Please contact julia at juliaspencerfleming dot com with your info to collect your free book!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I first came across Tim O'Mara's work when I bought his debut, SACRIFICE FLY, for my husband, a special ed teacher.  Tim's protagonist, like Tim himself, is a teacher specializing in hard-to-reach, at-risk kids, and I knew Ross would find it interesting. He did; so much so that he thrust it into my hands and said, "You're going to want to read this." Tim has just released the second Raymond Donne mystery, CROOKED NUMBERS; readers, consider that I've thrust it into your hands. You're going to want to read this.

 R’s had a tough life. He came to our school last year as a sixth grader, and during our very first discussion about the rules in my Math class, he gave “the look.” The look that pretty much says: You are not going to tell me what to do.

I gave him one back, I’m sure he had no idea had to interpret. This was a look I had not given a student in almost a decade. My look said, You are going to Camp.

“Camp” is where I got my start as an educator. I was kinda directionless the summer

before graduating from SUNY–New Paltz, and my girlfriend was heading off to work with special-needs kids at Camp. Having nothing much on my calendar and eager to earn a few hundred dollars for four weeks of fourteen-hour days, I followed. I eventually lost the girlfriend, but found a new love: working with kids.

I’m still involved with Ramapo For Children Camp—our seventh graders go there every year for their spring trip—and I try to incorporate what I learned from my five summers there into my job as a Special Education/Math teacher at NYC’s The Computer School. R is just the kind of kid I learned from. And after knowing him for all of half an hour, I knew he needed Camp.

I spoke with his foster mom—the kind of woman who makes you feel optimistic about basic human kindness—and she told me R had previously been thrown out of two camps due to behavioral issues. I told her I knew one camp he would not get thrown out of and after months of confusing paperwork and games of phone‐tag, R went off to Camp. At the end of the session, I went to pick him up—foster mom was expecting a baby any hour—and found that he’d been a superstar for the past three weeks.

“He’s read more books than any other kid here,” his bunk counselor told me.

I didn’t know he was that into reading. When we got back to school in September, he told me that his foster mother wanted to read my book, Sacrifice Fly, whose hero, Raymond Donne, is a special education teacher who used to be a cop. The next day, I brought in a signed copy for her celebrating the birth of her son. R held it in his hands, turned it over like it was an undiscovered treasure, and I knew he’d be reading it before mom. Cool.

That was a Friday. On the following Monday, he came in and informed me he had read the entire book over the weekend.

“What’d you think?” I asked.

He got a strange look on his face and shrugged.

“What? You didn’t like it?” I didn’t even try to hide my feelings. This book was nominated for a Barry Award, and this kid was going to criticize it?

He gave me a rare humble look, squinted, and said, “I wanted more.”

The heck with the Barry nomination. R can blurb my next book and any that follow. And he’s going back to Camp next summer. We’re gonna start the paperwork earlier this year.

T is another tough kid.

Hard to reach, hard to teach, with a wall around him that would make the Chinese envious. He was in another of my math classes last year, and butting heads with him became an almost daily exercise. There were the occasional days where he let me glimpse over that wall, and what I saw was a kid who wanted to be brilliant but didn’t want the pressure that came with it. Another kid I could learn from.

Two weeks ago, T earned a one-day suspension for creative use of a belt. He spent an entire Thursday in the principal’s office. At the end of the day, the principal approached me and said that T was thinking of going to my Crooked Numbers book signing at the local Barnes & Noble. Having never said a word to me about my writing, it turned out he was perfectly comfortable telling my principal he was impressed.

“Maybe you can use that,” my boss suggested.

Maybe.

The next day, I worked with T and had a very positive—wait for the intended Math pun—session with him on adding and subtracting integers. Afterwards, I took him into the hallway and presented him with a signed copy of my book referencing a brief talk we had had the day he was suspended.

To T,
This book has a lot to do with the choices people make — including the author’s.

He looked at the book and held it in a slightly different manner as R. Almost like he was afraid to break it. He didn’t say thank you—that’s not who he is. He put it in his book bag, and we both went off to lunch.

That was a week ago. He has not said a word to me about the book since. My fantasy is that T reads it, understands the hero’s motivations and wants, and becomes a more positive, confident student. I want him to show up at tonight’s reading and sit there in the audience with a look on his face that says, “That’s my teacher, man!” I want that wall to start coming down.

In reality, I’ll settle for a small crack. 

Do you have a teacher who made a difference in your life, dear readers? Let us know, and one lucky commentor will win a copy of CROOKED NUMBERS!

Tim O'Mara teaches math and special education in the New York City public schools. His debut mystery, SACRIFICE FLY was a Barry Award nominee. The novel introduces Raymond Donne, a former cop turned Brooklyn public schoolteacher. His second book, CROOKED NUMBERS, was just published. You can find out more about Tim and his books at his website, friend him on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter as @TimOMaraAuthor.

 

Captain, My Captain, a guest blog by Megan Abbott

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Thrillers are books involving two-fisted he-men saving the world (and a few women at the same time) right?  Well, sure, if you're Clive Cussler. Not to diss Dirk, but here on Jungle Red Writers, we like smart, subtle crime fiction that keeps us awake at night while slicing us with human insight and razor-fine writing. In other words, we like Megan Abbott.

Megan is an Edgar-Award-winning (and everything-else-nominated)  author whose fiction routinely makes it onto Best Book of the Year Lists. Whether she's writing neo-noir novels like Die A Little and Bury Me Deep, or intensely literary psychological thrillers, like The End of Everything or the upcoming Dare Me, Megan puts women's lives and their relationships with one another at the center of her work. Today, she's going to shed some personal light on the relationship between mentor and  protegee; teacher and student.

 

When I was in eighth grade, I was obsessed with the movie The Breakfast Club, which seemed to speak to my life in deep, resonant ways. I must have conveyed these feelings with great intensity to my beloved Advanced English teacher, Mrs. B, because somehow it came to pass that she spent one of her Sunday afternoons taking me to see the movie with her—a first viewing for her, a second for me. (It was rated R, so this was a particular coup).

I remember the experience powerfully, remember feeling so flattered by all of it. I guess I’ll never know what made her suggest it. It was not something I’d ever heard of any other teacher doing for a student. It stuck with me. It felt like I had been singled out, was special.

A few years later, while absorbed in all the mysteries and terrors of high school (far more harrowing than The Breakfast Club had warned), I learned that Mrs. B had died from breast cancer. It turned out she had been sick for several years, including when I was in her class, when we went to the movies that day. It seemed impossible—she was very young (my mom tells me now that she was only in her late thirties)—and unspeakably sad.

I vividly remember my parents telling me the news because it was during that same conversation that my dad confided that Mrs. B’s husband had died a few years before. “She’d been unhappy,” he said, probably trying to make me feel better, “for a long time.”

The surprise I felt was acute. Mrs. B was unhappy? I’d never really thought about teachers being unhappy. About grown women’s unhappiness. And I certainly never imagined any of their private struggles. Mrs. B was cool, lively, loved books and paid attention to me. That was all I’d cared about, apparently. What an awful feeling, to realize how self-absorbed you were, or are.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Mrs. B. My novel, Dare Me, is in large part about the complexities of female mentor-protégée relationship and I guess I’ve been trying to figure out why that subject has always interested me so much, even as far back as age eleven, when I was enraptured by Lois Duncan’s Daughters of Eve (a book whose twisty attitudes towards feminism you could spend a lifetime unraveling), and leading up to Dare Me, which centers on a high school cheerleading squad and their charismatic new coach

All the girls in Dare Me are fascinated by Coach, especially the main character, Addy, who idolizes her. “She was the one who showed me all the dark wonders of life,” says Addy. “Did I ever feel anything at all until she showed me what feeling meant? Pushing at the corners of her cramped world with curled fists, the fists of a little girl, she showed me what it meant to live.”

To Addy, Coach, who is young and pretty but also demanding and aloof, is a mystery she wants to unlock. She wants to be like her, wants to be her. It’s a powerful yearning, almost like a crush—maybe stronger because it’s safer. You never think you’ll get your heart broken. And you never, ever really know her life.

At age 12 or 13, I was too young (at least in the ways that matter) to think of Mrs. B as anything other than this person who gave me books, who encouraged me, who took me to see The Breakfast Club that time. There’s an inherent selfishness, greediness of the protégée, which is, I guess, about being young. Everything is about you: she’s taking me to the movies, she’s interested in me, me, me. And I never thought twice about what her life might really be like, her pains and sorrows and heartache.

But these mentors, they matter so much, don’t they? It’s the way we figure out ourselves, by imagining their lives, imagining ourselves in their lives. And then, eventually, realizing that their lives are not what we pictured, that life isn’t.

A painful revelation, usually. Because it’s one of the moments you first realize how complicated life is, how hard. But we need those moments, like we need these women (and they need us, they need to see us believing in them). It’s how we become ourselves. 

Tell us about your mentor-protegee relationship, and you may be one of two lucky commenters to win an Advance Readers Copy of Dare Me!

You can find out more about Megan Abbott and read excerpts of her books at her website. She also blogs with Sara Gran at the Abbott Gran Old Tyme Medicine Show. You can friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter as @MeganEAbbott.