A letter from the President of the United States

Twelve year old blogging phenom and now former sixth grader Oliver Mannion received a letter from George Bush last night.

A letter from George Bush wouldn't normally impress the kid.  He's a good and loyal Democrat and burgeoning Progressive.  He donated some of his allowance money to Hillary Clinton's campaign and he easily switched his support to Barack Obama and plans to donate to his campaign too.  Oliver's ambition these days is to be an historian and he already has an historian's sense of irony---he finds it kind of interesting that he is here to witness the worst Presidency in history.

But we've talked about how sometimes the man we call the President isn't in fact the man.  He's the embodiment of the office and the physical form the office needs in order to perform its functions and one of those functions is to represent the People of the United States at official functions and when performing certain duties, such as attending state funerals, greeting foreign dignataries, pinning medals on national heroes, thowing out the first pitch at the start of the baseball season, welcoming the World Series and Super Bowl winners to the White House, refereeing the White House Easter Egg Hunt, and writing letters like the one Oliver was handed last night.

The letter begins:

Congratulations on receiving the President's Education Award.

The principal delivered it at the graduation ceremony.  (Oliver's elementary school includes grades K-6; junior high comprises only the 7th and 8th grades.)  There are two levels of President's Education Award.  Silver and Gold.

The Silver Awardees were handed their letters with their "certificates of advancement"---what the school calls what is essentially their diploma because it's kind of silly for twelve year olds to be receiving diplomas for being booted out of grade school---but the Gold Awardees were called up on stage separately for special recognition.

Oliver earned a Gold.  He was one of 14 in a graduating class of 110.

I should also mention he got a citizenship award and an award for "excellent attendance," which is an award for having received all your vaccines when you were little and attending a school skipped by any flu epidemics.

When I was his age, I missed 44 days of school and I was proud of it.

But this isn't about me.  It really isn't about him, and I'm done bragging.

Pop and Mom Mannion were there last night and they and the blonde and I all noticed the same thing as we beamed proudly up at the stage where Oliver stood with the other Gold Award Recipients.

Eight of the fourteen were boys.

All of us have gotten used to seeing girls dominating in academic achievement from grade school on up through college now.

Or maybe we're just used to being told that's the case.

Not going to get into the supposed War on Boys here, except to note that I've noted before that if there is such a war it's not being waged by schools and teachers; it's being waged by the over-indulgent parents of boys, who are prouder of a C student who hits home runs than they are of A students who receive letters from the President of the United States, and by boys themselves who make it clear to each other that studying and working hard in school are things only nerds do, as in:

Oliver wore a jacket and tie to the ceremony.  One of his classmates came up to him and said, "Oliver, you look like even more of a nerd than usual."

Oliver happens to be proud of being a nerd.  But he was glad when the principal as part of her valediction speech read "Bill Gates'" eleven rules of getting through life, of which number 11 is: "Be nice to the nerds.  Chances are you're going to be working for one someday."

(By the way, the reason for the quotation marks around "Bill Gates" up there is that Bill Gates didn't come up with that list.  For some reason it was attributed to him and it stuck.)

At any rate, the gender breakdown of the Gold Awardees distracted us from the real significant fact about them.  Eight of fourteen may have been boys, but ten out of the fourteen all had the same teacher for fourth grade.

And the same teacher for fifth grade.

And the same social studies teacher in sixth grade.

I'm am not talking about three excellent teachers.

I'm talking about one exceptional person.

Mrs D. is retiring from teaching this year, after nearly 30 years in the classroom.  She was thinking of retiring after Oliver's fourth grade year, but she enjoyed his class so much she decided to stay on another year and move up with them to fifth grade.  She thought about retiring at the end of last year too, but she decided she wanted to see this group of kids into middle school, so she took extra training over the summer and returned to teach sixth grade social studies.  Now they're done with grade school and she's done with teaching.

Ten of the fourteen were hers!

She's the one who should have gotten a letter from the President.

The principal and the faculty and the students turned the graduation ceremony into a surprise good-bye party for Mrs D. 

I have never seen a teacher get hugged by so many students, not even the most beloved kindergarten teacher.  Boys hugged her.  And not just Oliver and his fellow proud nerds.  Mrs D is on the shortish, slenderish side and many of these twelve year old boys, and not a few of the girls, are bigger than her now.

Last night was graduation but today was the last day of school.  Mom Mannion went over to pick Oliver up and he made sure his grandmother got to meet Mrs D.  In the crush of things after the ceremony last night, he hadn't had the chance to introduce them.  Mrs D hugged Mom Mannion and she hugged Oliver again and then she hurried away wiping tears from her eyes.  On the way home, Mom Mannion talked to Oliver about special teachers and how there are always four or five you remember long after you leave school.

Oliver said that no matter how many good teachers he's had, and he's had several, and how many he will have, Mrs D will always be his very favorite and "I will remember her forever."

Comments

[Queequeg]

Ah, Lance ...
We're all gonna reminisce about our favorite teachers.
I'll merely name names of my third through fifth grade teachers, plus a high school journalism/English teacher:
Mrs. Watson
Mrs. Hughart
Mr. Johnson
Gene Thompson

I love 'em all, especially the late Miz T. Damn, I miss her. And you know what? Not once, during college or after, did I visit or call her to show her that I turned out OK and I was succeeding in the journalism field and I appreciated her immensely. Too late now.

[cebm]

Wow. The statistics tell the story. Lucky kids who had Mrs. D.

Mrs. Weisner will never be forgotten.

[Linkmeister]

I had several teachers like that in high school. I wrote about one of them here, and damned if he didn't Google himself and write me a thank-you note a year or so later.

There's a nice ode to teachers in that post, too.

Congratulations to the newly-graduated and certificated!

[Campaspe]

Warmest congratulations to Oliver and his proud parents!

[Ken Muldrew]

So what makes a great teacher?

The social aspect is pretty important; someone that the kids love to be around. In fact, thinking back to a particularly good teacher that my youngest daughter had in grade 5, the parents loved talking to him just as much as the students, during parent-teacher interviews and other school functions. If a kid loves to be around someone, and they are primarily learning while they're around that person, then perhaps the kid develops a love of learning.

A basic level of competence is necessary, but I don't think a high level of competence is very important, even at the higher levels. It earns respect from the kids who are at the top of the class, but it doesn't really add to a teacher's status as a "teacher". After all, those kids can usually figure out where to find supplemental information on their own. If the teacher can spark an interest in something that is not part of the curriculum, and guide the student in learning about that topic, then they get credit for being a great teacher (here I'm thinking of a teacher in high school who helped me to learn how to program in APL, back in the 70s, when computers weren't that common).

Competence at the lower levels is pretty much a given, at least for a sane curriculum, and probably irrelevent for an insane curriculum. I'm pretty sure that my grade 3 teacher had no idea as to why she was teaching us the basics of set theory and I'm equally sure that it would have made no difference even if she did. Nobody is going to be able to explain the Bourbaki philosophy to grade 3 kids.

Does a good teacher lay a clever trap for the student? Is there some element of leading the kid through some circuitous path, where every step seems natural and unthreatening (and even enjoyable), only to end up at a location that would have been unthinkable to the student had they known at the beginning where all this was leading? A teacher who goads and shames a student to do something that the student doesn't want to do is easily recognizable as a poor teacher. Yet a good teacher also leads students to read books that they were intent on rejecting, to tackle problems that they formerly found abhorent, and to learn things that they were sure they didn't want to learn. Is a good teacher like a good cross-examiner, but leading with benevolence rather than malice?

Is there a difference between a great teacher where we have a formal pedagogy (such as can be taught to a class) and situations where we don't really know how an expert practitioner becomes an expert (so teaching is done through a master-apprentice relationship). Here a high level of competence is a given (at least the practitioners have a diploma to certify their competence) but there are still substantial differences between good and bad teachers. One also sees, at least on occasion, a pairing of student and teacher that prods them both to learn much more than they would otherwise (here I'm thinking primarily about profs and grad students, but maybe this occurs in the trades and other apprentice-based learning programs as well).

Finally, can we teach someone to be a great teacher? Personally I think we should make their apprenticeship much longer, and be more selective about who gets to serve as master, but that's mainly because I don't know what it is that makes a great teacher (and so hubris compels me to think that other people don't know either, and therefore that it can't be formally taught to classes of education students).

[Tom C]

Your son and his classmates were very lucky. I had my own Mrs. D. in fourth grade -- well, actually, "Mrs. E." to be more precise -- and at the end of the year, she announced she'd be leaving fourth grade...to teach us in fifth grade. I'm not sure if it was that she liked us so much or that they were just moving around some teachers. Either way, our whole class went nuts.

[hysperia]

What a lovely post. The teachers who come to my mind were my sons'. Mrs. Donohue, Grade 8 for son the elder; Rahini, History teacher to the younger, who called him "Little Brother". Difficult to know who loved her more, my son, or me.

My younger son had his nose in a book from the minute he could read. He used to accompany me on walks to the grocery store to help me carry bags. He would hold onto my sleeve so that he could walk while reading. Wow, he was sure great company! He called my rule about no reading at the dinner table "draconian". When he was eight. And holy wow, was he ever a nerd. Perhaps his self-image was strengthened by the fact that he played baseball and hockey rather well. But you couldn't tell that when he was coming home on the bus. By the time he got to high school, he told me that he couldn't read on the bus anymore because he was afraid of being beaten up.

What the hell is THAT all about?

[Ken Muldrew]

Hysperia, you could give him Al Swearengen's pep talk, "Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back."

Or you could just suggest that he go to the library and read for half and hour and take a later bus where he can continue his book in peace.

[Apostate]

Wow! Congratulations to Oliver and you/The Blonde. That's really something to be proud of. Good kids are such a treat. And good for him for not letting peer pressure dictate to him.

8 out of 14 is not a statistically significant difference re boys vs. girls, but I suspect you know that.

[Molly, NYC]

You are forwarding this post to Mrs. D., right?

[Kevin Wolf]

Teachers are never appreciated as much as they should be. Well, usually. You've done a fine job of it here.

Congrats to Oliver and Mrs D.

[xpurg8d]

Robert Blevins, 8th grade 1958/59.
Irma B. Wilson, freshman English 1959/60.
Raymond Chavira, sophomore English and Spanish 1960/61.

These people had more positive influence on my life than any other people on earth. I'll be 62 years old in a few weeks and I still remember every minute I spent with them.

Oliver will never forget the name or the face or the voice or the words of Mrs. D. Teachers like that become ingrained in your plasma forever. He's a lucky kid to have known her.

[Claire]

Congratulations Oliver! He's lucky to have a teacher like Mrs. D for so long!

[hamletta]

You'll cherish Mrs. D forever yourself.

My mom's house was squashed by a tree last fall, and it was finally pulled down last week. When I talked to Mom about the final destruction, her biggest worry was that she hadn't found a particularly lovely note from my 6th grade teacher.