I should probably, at this point, note that it was actually Gloria who identified what was the high point of my educational career.
It happened in the same year as, and actually must have been only days before, I got fired. I suppose I need to start by talking about English.
I hate English. Not the English language; I love the English language. How can you not love a language that has a vocabulary so much greater than any other? The ability to delineate shades and variations of meaning has no comparison in any other language. I even love the fact that English is a difficult language to learn, and to spell, because it is a bastard hybridization of a variety of other languages. And if English doesn't have a word for it, we will steal one, or make one up. I love English, I love tracing some of the origins of English words, I love knowing the Latin and Greek roots of English terms, I love the subtle variations, and the ability to make puns in English. I love English, and Gloria loved English just as much as I do: possibly even more.
But I hate the way that English is taught. I have hated every English course I ever took. It didn't matter what it was called: language, spelling, writing, creative writing, humanities, English. Whatever it was called, I hated it. It was taught in such a subjective and superficial manner. I hated every English course there was in primary school, I hated every English course there was in the elementary grades, I hated every English course in high school. I hated English 101, which was the last English course that I was required to take in university. I hated them all.
So, I suppose that it's a little bit ironic that I turned out to be a writer.
In any case while, I was an elementary school teacher I had to teach English. I had to teach the various parts of English. I had to teach spelling.
Despite my hatred of the English courses that I had been forced to take, and possibly even because of that hatred, I don't think that I did a bad job in the courses that I had to teach. I always made sure that any assignments had very objective marking and fulfillment criteria. This was not hard to accomplish in the area of spelling. After all, you had a list of words, and there were certain ways that those words were correctly spelled, and of course the variety of ways that they could be incorrectly spelled. We went through drills, we went through practices, we went through various rules that might help in ensuring that one could spell English words correctly, and knew how English words were traditionally spelled, and any rules that might assist in understanding how the words were to be correctly spelled, and then we had a test every Friday. There was a speller; a book listing words appropriate to the grade level of the students being taught. Spelling was not difficult to teach. And spelling was not difficult to mark: we had the test every Friday and students generally marked each other's work. I had a chart, pinned to a cork board on the wall, and recorded the marks that everybody got each week. Anybody who got 100% got a star, instead of just the number.
Week by week the number of stars increased. Not just the total number but the number recorded in each week. As the year went on, students studied harder and harder to ensure that they would pass the spelling test on Friday and that they would get a star. The columns of the grid got more and more stars on them as the weeks went by. Eventually there were more stars than numbers being recorded. Eventually, around about February or March, everybody had had a star, and was regularly getting stars on the weekly spelling test. All except two.
Eventually it was happening that 100% spelling tests on the Friday was the norm. Except for two students. And an interesting thing happened in the class. The students took it upon themselves to help their two fellows. There were apparently homework sessions that were being held outside of class time. Students who were good at spelling were drilling these two students who still had not been able to achieve 100% spelling tests during the year. During the in-class practice time students would surround these two desks and give tips and pointers and drill these two students, helping them to improve their spelling. And then it was down to one.
That last week, with one student yet to get a perfect score in spelling, the entire class rallied around him. In spare moments they quizzed him on spelling. As previously, they did homework with him, practicing spelling, outside of school hours. And, on Friday, when we marked the tests, you could feel the tension in the class as student after student recorded 100% correct spelling test scores. Including that one last student.
As it happens, he was the smallest student in the class. I broke the cardinal rule of modern-day teaching: don't touch the students! I picked him up, gave him the star, lifted him up, and let him put it on the board himself. The entire class cheered.
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