A POPULAR TEACHER, MR. S.

 

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.