A POPULAR TEACHER
During my 43-years of
teaching at a boys’ high school, I worked with dozens of teachers. Each teacher
had their own characteristics. Some were strict and scary; and others gentle
and tender-hearted, but Mr. S, a mathematics teacher, was the gentlest and the
most tender-hearted.
He was a tall slender
man with glasses, and was about seven years older than I. Since our desks were
often close to each other, we often talked a lot with each other during
recesses and after school. Thus, I came to know many things about him.
He rarely scolded his
students. Even if he scolded them severely, he was not scary because his way of
speaking was slow with some countryside accent. Since his scolding sounded
funny, many students mocked him behind his back.
His class was usually
noisy. I suppose the noisy students were a nuisance to those who wanted to
study math seriously. Once he said to me, “I don’t want the principal to loiter
along the corridor, looking into classrooms. He will get a bad impression of me
because my class is noisy.” One day when a science teacher was teaching, his
neighboring classroom was so noisy that he went there, opened the door, and
shouted, “Quiet!” but he saw Mr. S teaching.
His desk in the
teachers’ room was usually surrounded by several students at lunch breaks. They
visited him not to ask math questions, but just to talk with him. One day he
said to me, “K is a bad boy. He pulled out my leg hair. It still hurts.” It
seems that not only K but also other students regarded him not as a teacher but
as their classmate.
Besides these headaches,
he had another. His homeroom students did not clean the classroom after school.
How many times Mr. S scolded them for not cleaning, they ran away immediately
after the last class finished. Therefore, Mr. S himself had to clean the classroom.
He had to move 45 desks and 45 chairs to clean the floor and return them to
their original positions every day. He complained to me, “These days my legs
hurt.”
On top of his
complaints about his students, he had much more complaints about his wife. I
still remember what he said to me one day when we were eating lunch at a
restaurant.
“I am angry with my
wife,” he said. “She has reckless spending habits. She buys a lot of expensive cosmetics
and clothes, and unnecessary things. I always have to return them to the shop. Last
week, when I returned an electric appliance (I forgot what it was) together
with the coupons, the shop owner said, ‘Mister, you don’t have to return the
coupons. Please keep them.’” Besides her bad habits, she was an idle wife. She
did not clean their house nor cook meals. She always went out to meet with her
friends. He told me that he was thinking of divorcing her. (Actually, he
divorced a few years after retiring from school.)
Thus, he seems to have had hard time at home
as well as at school. Today, however, he is a happy 80-year-old man because his
middle-aged ex-students, about a dozen in number, have been holding a dinner three
times a year for him for the past 15 or so years. I have also been invited to
the feasts in recent years. Mr. S seemed to be a poor teacher at school, but
today he is not. He looks happy surrounded by his middle aged ex-students. He has
been and will be loved by them for the coming years. I have attended a lot of my
ex-students’ alumni reunions, but I do not know a more popular teacher than Mr.
S. COMMENTS
This was a very nice and heartwarming story. It was great to read a memoir
about a teacher who found a lot of joy and happiness after his career was over.
I enjoyed reading this one very much.
I could really feel your connection to this story. Your good and strong
relationship as well as your admiration for him was very apparent in this work.
I think that is why it came across as so sincere.I really liked the style. It was very different from a traditional memoir in that the story focused on the life and career of your co-worker rather than directly on your own.
I’m not sure you need to include the information about your co-worker’s divorce and ex-wife in this memoir. The story is mainly about his relationship with his students and I think you should focus on that instead.
