Lemonade from Lemons
We are called upon to share the story of a teacher who changed our lives.
Growing up and watching my Grandma Cicotello's former students return to her at various times over the years left a huge impression on me. Even when I headed to grad school to become a teacher myself, the head of the education department realized with great pride that my Grandma taught his son in elementary school. Growing up, though, I was always the outcast. I was the awkward, weird, poor, fat and tall girl who was always picked last for everything. When the school bullies were told to "pick on someone their own size," well, that usually fell on my shoulders. This left my self esteem in some very low places. For all of the teachers who impacted my life, perhaps the most profound was my high school social studies teacher, Mr. Rich Wilcox. My family scraped together money for me to go on the all-school retreat my senior year. I spent four days trying to boost my self esteem and work on issues. During the retreat, female students hurled themselves at Mr. Wilcox, as he was a young, good-looking, charming, intelligent and funny guy. On the final day of the retreat, we handed off a shirt to another person in the group. During Mr. Wilcox's turn, he told the group a beautiful story of one student who made a profound impact on his life, despite what other teachers had said about this student being weird or hard-to-handle, he'd found this student a joy to be around. Many of the female students were crying, wondering if they would get Mr. Wilcox's shirt, when he closed with, "And if you ever want to go see Rocky Horror Picture Show with someone, Laurie is the person to go with, so I'm giving my shirt to her." Yeah, it took a while for the stink eye to clear the room, but the upshot was that in that one moment, I was suddenly not the outcast, the troublemaker, the weirdo, the fat girl, the tall girl ... in that moment, I was valued, honored and respected. That particular memory kept me alive and kicking in some of my darkest hours over the years since.My interaction with Mr. Wilcox was a lesson I took with me when I went into classrooms both in Hawaii and Nebraska. Teachers often tried to "warn" me about certain students, but I preferred to find out for myself. Most of the time, those certain students were like me, outcasts for a number of reasons and floundering because even the staff had turned on them. I loved those kids so much more. Kids who were awkward, who were "unique," who were too tall, too short, too thin, too fat ... I remembered how Mr. Wilcox treated me and passed that along to my students again and again. My students have gone on to do some extraordinary things in recent years, as you might expect.But you won't find me in a classroom. The one year I spent teaching on Lana'i was a year spent fighting with the Hawaii Department of Education and constantly watching the backslide in the aftermath of the 2001 strikes. Infamously, our calendar was calculated incorrectly that year and we had to add in several teacher in-service days. This threw the parents on Lana'i into a major tizzy over babysitting and other issues. I know firsthand how destructive it is to suddenly have instructional days sucked out from under your feet. It is very sad watching this debaucle play out because when I moved back to Hawaii in 2007 to work in Gov. Lingle's office, I realized I could be making $10K more as a teacher, but was glad to hear we finally had a governor who appreciated my educator friends and the needs of students. Now, I don't think that is so true. From what I understand, school administrators are taking their furlough days during school breaks. I always thought teachers were paid during those breaks as well. Why not just reduce their salaries by whatever percent and say the furloughs begin the day schools let out for the summer?And, no, I'm not advocating teacher pay cuts on any level. It's not like Hawaii pays great wages to their state employees as it stands. There just needs to be another place for the money to come. Raise our taxes, raise our fees, raise whatever you have to, but leave students and teachers alone. Malama pono!
