TeachersTeachersI cannot remember all of them. Here is the list that I do remember.
I do not remember my teacher here. It was an all day kindergarten. The school was at the end of the block around the left corner on the right side.
I do not remember this teacher either other than it was a woman. The kindergarten was in a church basement.
This school is so old that I cannot even find it in the Brighton Historical Museum picture gallery. It was next to the Catholic Church. I also do not remember my teacher here other than is was a woman who accepted the idea that I brought my sister for show and tell.
I had 3 teachers. In those days student tracking was the norm. It is regrettable that tracking was stopped. Teaching to the lowest common denominator is grossly unfair to those above that level. It is certainly unfair to the lowest level. I was moved from the top track to the lowest track because I could not write my name or other things. I am slightly dyslexic and that was not treated in those days. I was also left-handed and they did not know how to teach to a left-handed person in those days. Maybe not even today.
They threatened to move me back to first unless I improved. My mother fought that and I remained in second grade. I do not remember any teachers’ names.
She was Greek. Reasonable: Ypsilanti is/was a Greek city. If you have a good encyclopedia you know this. Otherwise, Ypsilanti is just the home of Eastern Michigan University -- the Normal School when I lived there.
I remember Miss Driscoll did not like my penmanship. Neither did anyone else. I had real problems in this grade. She taught lies and this was a problem for me. I have a problem with untruths. For example, she said that 3 times 4 was the same as 4 times 3 since they both give 12. This is obviously not true. Let me explain. If you have 4 boys each with 3 apples you have 12 total apples and 4 boys. How do you explain to the boys mother when you 'math' her son away with 3 boys each having 4 apples? You exchanged an apple for her child? I left the class and went home. My mother dragged me back to school as if I were at fault. It got worse. I had no idea how she multiplied numbers. I learned how to do it myself except my process was different than hers. She marked mine wrong. My father taught me the multiplication tables after dinner every night for the entire year. He taught me other things too. Since I started getting the correct answers and she knew I was getting help, she no longer marked me down. We never understood each other's method of multiplication. I also had a speech defect that got me out of class once a week. I had a lisp that was soon corrected but somebody could have told me about it sooner.
I remember nothing about fourth grade other than she was tall with dark hair.
She was a wonderful teacher. She got married toward the end of the year but I do not remember her married name. It turns out that Ypsilanti was far ahead of Wauwatosa. For example, our spelling book had the 5th grade cover but had the same content as my 4th grade book. There was nothing new to learn. The math was behind. They had no dictionaries. I mean in second grade we were issued our own personal dictionary (at cost), which we kept. We had classes in using it at Estabrook. The kids did not have their own dictionary at Webster and had not had classes. I sat in the row next to the windows. With the home made telescopes I could see the railroad bridge across Capital and the Briggs & Stratton plant at 124th and Burleigh. Miss McDermott was very tolerant. A rotten duck egg I brought for show and tell smelled really badly and its insides looked like car grease. Another time, the live bird flew around the room most of the day. I was permitted to read the encyclopedia during class since I already knew the materials. Between 5th and 6th grades, I read most of the 20-volume World Books. M and S were my favorites.
My first man teacher. He was tall, thin, and much more into discipline than my previous teachers (except for maybe Miss Driscoll). He wanted me to pay attention more than Miss McDermott. I actually embarrassed him when he wanted me to repeat how to divide fractions when I was reading my books. My method reversed the order from his and he then had to explain to the class that the process order was not critical. He let me read my books after that. A couple years later I ran into Mr. Schaffer at the high school when he moved into administration. I have met other people who also respect him.
The school was brand new -- we were the first class. I do not remember my teachers by name. Maybe later -- and I can insert them.
He was a good teacher. He put my Civil War books on display for the school. I was proud of the books my Grandfather gave me. The personal memoirs of Ulysses S Grant (with the surrender letter duplicate - really rare) and Robert E Lee amongst many others. My father later stole them and gave me $35 (which he took back). Mr. Shauer was the media arts manager, which meant he often got called out of class to help someone untangle a video reel. One the final exam, he left the room. I asked my friend Steve to explain a question. I am honest. I would have never asked for an answer. Asking the teacher to explain a question was legitimate -- but he was not there. He came in while I asked Steve. He told me to put a 0 on my paper, complete the test, and turn it in. He did not even mark off. I learned it was not enough to be honest: you must avoid the appearance of impropriety. I never forgot that lesson or Mr. Shauer.
I do not remember him much. I do remember the class windows faced the girls PE area. I would watch Janice (and others). Algebra was so easy that I could do it in my sleep. Algebra is the logical extension of arithmetic. Calculus is the logical extension of Algebra as applied to Physics.
I do not remember her name. She taught Spanish Spanish and had no tolerance for Mexican Spanish.
The first of many English/Literature teachers with no concept whatever of either the language or the written entities in the language. The only such products read in this class was our required subscription of Reader's Digest. The primary result was a lifelong disgust of Reader's Digest and its associated 'books'. For those of you who have not been there, reading a story in RD is like watching a movie on network TV: you get the highpoints but have no idea what the author intended or what story he has told. If the intent were to teach appreciation of literature, Mrs. Young succeeded by using the negative example. On the other hand, RD is the only stuff we were permitted to read in school with a large quantity of jokes.
He was my first inspiring science teacher although he did not like my concept of Sonar. I placed the transmitter at the front of the boat and the receiver at the back and used Doppler effect to locate the target. His method put the transmitter and receiver at the same location and could only measure echo. I learned that my vision was great but Tom Jensen's was better.
I do not remember her name. She was a nice lady. I had homeroom just before science. I sat in the left-most row away from the door about in the middle. I was often picked on by almost anyone. As mentioned before, defending myself was a trait totally removed by years of abuse. I was an easy target. Roger Mente, weighing about twice my weight walked by my desk one day, picked my pencil out of my hand, broke it in two. This was my last pencil. I had a policy of never taking home homework. I worked during lunch. Homeroom was my primary time for doing homework and it was due next hour. This was too much. I stood up. I picked up Roger and threw him against the far wall. This is across four rows of desks. Most of the class ran to see if Roger was still alive. My teacher ran up to me and asked me to sit down before I burst a blood vessel. Roger never bothered me again. I sharpened the stub of my pencil and had my homework done. I think I had something related to manic. This sudden anger where someone got seriously hurt happened multiple times during these years.
I do not remember his name. There was a situation similar to Homeroom. I was sitting in a row of other students not actively participating in the current activity. This was on the berm next to the tennis courts. Not to far from my Algebra class windows. One of the class, a tough guy, Tom Drury, walked up and started beating on me. Amongst other reasons, I did not fight back because fighting in PE was one of the easiest ways to draw detentions. Finally he went beyond just hitting and I was afraid he would cause real damage. I stood up, beat the shit out of him, and walked back to my place and sat down. I heard the PE teacher who had studiously ignored us tell the tattletale that it was about time I defended myself. But Tom would not let things be. He got back up and pulled a knife on me, to my back, just as I was sitting down. I turned around took his knife, broke it in half, and gave it back to him. I never had trouble with Tom again. He was subtler: he pretended to be my friend.
Remember back to grade school when the teacher had you exchange papers with your neighbor to correct the homework? Ma Striegl did this. Then she had you read your grade to her and then she collected the homework by having you pass it up to the front. To me this was so wrong. Ma Striegl was also the sponsor of the Mu Alpha Theta – the Math club. And she was my homeroom teacher: room 211. My locker was just outside the door. I kept a case of Pepsi in my locker. There was no rule against this and I liked warm Pepsi. The problem was the wooden case – it was just too big. She had pi printed in big letters around the room above the blackboard. She had a filing cabinet against the wall next to the windows that overlooked the street in the back of the building where the school buses lined up. I remember grey hair but that may just be because any 16-year-old thinks everyone over thirty is old. Ten years later when I got off of a plane in Milwaukee, I heard my name called: Mr. Kelly. I turned around and saw Mrs. Striegl. I asked her if she remembered the names of all of her students. She replied: “no”.
Why did she remember me? For the same reason I remember her. I disagreed strongly with her methods of informing the class of the embarrassing mishaps of all of her students. I had standards and she was beneath them. Or maybe I was. I was one of the best students in the school and I knew it and I did not qualify for her math club. In homeroom, I did my homework instead of listening to her code of conduct lessons. In algebra class, I resented her homework rules. How many problems each person got wrong was nobody’s business but their own. I refused to turn in my homework. It was my paper, my pencil, my time, and my homework. She told me that she would give me a zero because I did not do my homework. Ellen Gregg hated me. She was one of the fast crowd. I was a nerd. I told Mrs. Striegl that she had just called Ellen a liar. Ellen turned red. Mrs. Striegl turned red. If I had not done my homework, then my grade that I had just called in that Ellen had given me would have been a zero. Mrs. Striegl took an alternate approach.
After school every day, I was required to take a special quiz. The quiz was the homework. I could rattle this off from memory and turn it in. She made a point of not examining it until the buses left. Then she would tell me that I could leave. She did not know about the deal I had made with the bus driver to wait in the front of the building if I were not there. He would not wait long but I did not take long. A few times I had to run home. I would match the bus and so my mother never knew I missed the bus.
I upped the ante. English and Math do not mix well. She would give us problems in English that could be interpreted. I would always take an adverse interpretation. For example: Given 300 feet of fence, what is the largest area to be enclosed with a river on one side? She expected a square fence, 100 feet on a side, along the riverside. 10,000 square feet. She taught us about squares and rectangles. The actual maximum area is a semi-circle bordering the river. The full circle would have a circumference of 600 feet. This is Pi*D. D is 600/pi. R is 300/pi. The fenced area is: Pi*(300)*(300)/(Pi*Pi)/2. In short form: 45000/Pi or about 14,000 square feet. She hated this but she worded the problem. She had to explain to the class what had happened. She had not taught circles. This happened frequently.
I also worked in the school cafeteria. Once a month we had ice cream. Solid Carbonic. I loved it. We cafeteria workers would play with the dry ice. It came in 1/2 –inch slabs the size of the box. This was about the size of a piece of paper. I would bring a slab to class wrapped in brown paper. I would place this with my books on the floor next to me desk. These were the one-piece, made-for-right-handers, bolted-to-the-floor steel-and-wooden desks. Most of the class would not immediately notice. But Mrs. Striegl did. Ellen did. I white cloud would start growing around my feet. It would grow until it was a couple of feet high. Just around me. Ellen could see it. She could feel it: it was cold. I would pay attention to the teacher. The teacher would pay attention to the growing cloud. I would also have a few chunks that I would put into my mouth. I breathed smoke. Do not do this unless you know how or you can crack your teeth or seriously damage your tongue. When Mrs. Striegl would ask me to empty my mouth, there would be nothing there. Once she required me to put the slab in her filing cabinet to be picked up after school. I told her that it would be stolen. She made a point of locking the cabinet. This caused her two problems that made her never do this again. First, I removed the wrapping paper when I put it in the metal cabinet. It squealed all during the class making a distraction she had trouble overcoming. Second, when I came to pick it up, it was gone. She never stole another piece of dry ice. I stopped bringing it.
I also wrote a letter and a reply from a fictitious student and the devil commenting on the devil’s local advocate, a teacher in room 211. These got passed around the school until it was confiscated. At the same time, I put posters at all of the school entrances announcing a meeting with the devil in room 211 after school. This coincided with the Mu Alpha Theta meeting. The posters did not last long. A lot of sightseers should up at the door that afternoon. Nothing happened.
In these days only parents were permitted at the school open houses. This is as it should be. Parents got to see the teachers. My parents always went to open houses. There was one exception to the exclusion of students: cafeteria workers. We workers served coffee and donuts at the end of the program. In the meantime we had the run of the building. I stood outside the door of 211 while my parents were there because I wanted to know what kind of beating I would get. At the end of Mrs. Striegl’s spiel, my dad noticed that the 100% papers on the wall did not include any of mine. He asked her about it. When he told her his name, Mrs. Striegl went into hysterics. Real hysterics. He and my mother ran out of the door leaving the remaining parents wondering if they had assaulted her. On his way by, my father told me that whatever I had done to the woman I had better undo if I wanted to pass the course. I stopped. I made projects for Mrs. Striegl for her math club. My grade went from 88 (B-) to 94 (A).
He was worse than Mrs. Striegl and had my anger up. He had no interest in my schoolwork. Parents chose courses in those days. I never knew what I had until the first day of school when given my class schedule. Mr. Olson would interview students one at a time during the year. Close to the end of the semester – about the same time as the open house, I got my call. He asked the standard questions and wrote down the answers. “How much homework do you have every night?” “None”. He went ballistic. I was on the honor track. I must have homework. I had a standing rule since first grade: no books go home. Ever. I had one homeroom and one study hall each day. I also arrived at school an hour early. This was 2 and 1//2 hours of time to do homework. Two hours was considered standard. There was no need to take anything home. He polled my teachers: homework was done. He called my parents: no books were taken home. No work was done there. He asked my teachers to check my work. It was done well. He asked them to increase my workload. I refused to do anything not assigned to the entire class.
The workload increased even with my protests. I quit my jog in the cafeteria and moved into the counseling office wait area and did homework at lunchtime. He could see me working here even though it was against the rules. Mrs. Kramer saw me as she went to the Administration offices. Mrs. Kramer was the district cafeteria manager. She knew me because I had worked in the kitchen since grade school. She asked why I was not in the kitchen and I told her the Mr. Olson had increased my schoolwork load so high that I no longer had time for lunch. She flew into the principal’s office and ripped him a new hole. It was illegal to deprive a student of lunch. Mr. Olson and I were called in immediately. We agreed that I would sell milk in the lunchroom, eat a quick lunch, and return to Mr. Olson’s office to continue my schoolwork.
This lasted about a week. A student stole some milk and I beat him up. The Vice-principal suspended the other student and let me off with a warning at Mr. Olson’s request. No more extra work. My job was restored in the kitchen.
That was not the end of Mr. Olson. A couple years later, I worked at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (The hyphen is optional). I helped other students with administrative problems although my job was primarily as a draftsman. One friend, Pam, had had a bout with fever and had dropped from one of the other universities and wanted to enroll at UWM. She was late. She asked for help. I asked the Registrar, Peter Chinetti, and he would accept her if she could immediately produce a high school transcript. I called the high Scholl. Yes – Wauwatosa. I said I would show up about noon to pick it up. When I arrived, Mr. Olson was waiting for me. He refused to let an ex-student have access to a transcript. Period. I had Peter talk to him. Mr. Olson agreed to release the transcript in a sealed/signed envelop only on the grounds that Peter call him on its arrival certifying the seal was still in place. I returned to UWM. The call was made. Pam got her classes. I loved Pam. She married a dentist, Bill Davis. Her personality could light up an entire room.
Joe Cyrncovich (Spelling wrong). Physics teacher, Wauwatosa High school. You each have a favorite teacher, one who helped you through something. Crazy Joe (after the famous teacher from the movies?) inspired a love for science and logic. He taught me that even people who had diametrically opposed opinions could respect and help each other. He taught me that it is more important to understand the Heisenberg principle that the value of Plank's constant. One is understanding, the other is read from a book.
In the school we tended to befriend those in our neighborhood. Among these are Chuck Krueger, Scott and Candy Jordan, Scott and Janice Towle, Jeff Cleary, Tommy LaGotta. There were the kids from Hampton Heights: Danny Deuster, John ..., Jimmy Lowmueller. I remember John Cushman and Bob Bennett. But mostly the neighborhood.
Candy
Candy was the neighborhood blond. Everyone liked Candy. I liked Candy a lot but I was too shy to compete with the crowd. I know she knew it. She and Janice were close friends. In any case, everyone knew Candy's locker combination. I arrived at school very early as my father delivered me there on his way to work. This was my primary homework time. In any case, one day I put a grass snake on the top shelf of Candy's locker. How was I to know that someone just the day before had put Candy into hysterics by placing a dead mouse in her locker? She opened the door and, with the boy gaggle watching, picked up the snake and said "what a pretty snake. Nobody was going to fool Candy two days in a row. Ooops. It crawled up the sleeve of her dress. Up the hall in hysterics again. It took me a while to own up to the fact that it was my snake. I think I would have been expelled. Candy might forgive me. The Principal never would. Candy was a sport.