My earliest recollection of school is as a second grader. I loved school and I loved Miss Jones too. I also took tap dancing lessons. I was very good, or so my Mother told me, but I took my dancing feet into the classroom. I couldn’t keep my feet still. Tap. Tap. Tap. Finally Miss Jones had me remove my shoes. I was mortified. But I learned to keep my feet still and I forgave her.
Throughout elementary school I was a good student. I went to grades two through eight at a private school in a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. My teachers were about half nuns and half lay teachers, all white and all Catholic, as were all the students. I remember only one male teacher. He taught math and coached all the boys’ athletic teams. The teachers maintained good order and did their best to make learning fun and interesting. We wore uniforms and went to Mass before class each morning. It was a very privileged, conservative, upper class school. The principal kept a paddle board to threaten bad boys, though I never heard that she actually used it. I was a member of the speech team. We went to tournaments throughout the Los Angeles area, competing with other Catholic school teams. I got straight A’s and pressured my parents to enroll me in the most elite high school in L. A. County.
This was a far different experience. From the beginning I felt inadequate. It was a Catholic school for boys, a college prep school catering to some of the richest families and brightest students in the county. The teachers were almost all men, about a third Jesuit priests or brothers. Jesuits have a reputation for being liberal, but I soon learned there are few absolutes in life or people. One of my Jesuit religion class teachers promised an A to students who would march in a demonstration in downtown Los Angeles, supporting an equal housing bill. Conversely, another priest, in history class, tried to indoctrinate us with ultra-conservative John Birch Society propaganda. Impressionable as I was, I followed that thread for a time. I also remember my English teacher, an older man who, I later learned, had taught English to my father-in-law many years before, probably in the same classroom. He threw chalk at badly behaved high school boys.
Each student at the school was left to his own devices. I was offered little counseling at a time in my life when I probably needed some counseling. I got a good education but struggled to maintain a B average. By my junior year I wished I had gone to a public high school instead. Afraid to tell my parents, I stayed in the prep school and graduated in the middle of the class.
I hoped to get into UCLA but my grades didn’t make the cut. So I enrolled at a state college instead. I did better there for a time but I was taking pre-med classes because my father wanted me to become a doctor. Predictably, I failed chemistry. When I lost my student deferment after my sophomore year, 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, I left school and enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve.
I honestly believe the Marine Corps helped me mature. I began to take responsibility for my own life. After boot camp the Marines sent me to basic electronics and telephone and teletype repair classes. I soon learned I had an aptitude for electronics and “aced” these classes. After nine months active duty I returned to civilian life. Thanks to my electronics training I got a great job in telecommunications. Years later, a married father of four, I decided to return to school to get my degree.
With my employer paying my way I earned first a Bachelor of Science and then an MBA in Telecommunications Management. I found most classes stimulating but not difficult. I am truly pleased that I was able to get my degrees which enabled me to enter into a teaching program years later.
As my children progressed through their school years I learned that all teachers are not the same and that their attitude, concern and action influenced my children greatly. I saw my oldest son, perhaps the brightest, loose interest and drop out of school. I also saw my second son take inspiration from a science teacher; my third son from German language and internet teachers; my daughter from a wrestling and sports medicine coach. It was at this time in my life that I began to think that I could have, indeed, should have been a teacher. But I was locked into a different career. Now with my children grown, my salary of less importance, I have seized the opportunity to become a teacher and make positive difference in children’s lives.
Education is a lifelong process. I look forward to finishing the K-8 Teacher Certification Program, entering the teaching profession, making a difference and continuing to learn for the rest of my life.
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