November 8th 1996:
The year previous, I had a wonderful teacher, Ms. Kelty (if I remember her spelling correctly). She was great for many reasons in my book. She was young, I'm assuming that she was a fairly new teacher, and I guess that I even had a bit of a crush on her. She was well trained, and most important of all, she was encouraging. When I was in 4th grade, I was reading at a much higher level then most kids. In fact, I loved to read. I guess that caused me to be a bit of an introvert, but I wouldn't trade being extroverted for the knowledge and the literacy that it helped me aquire.
It's a little difficult to describe Mr. Carsley. When he was my teacher, I guess that he was sort of a not-quite-as-funny Danny DeVito kind-of-guy, but taller. He was well regarded by the kids in the class, and many parents. We used to be in almost a competition with other classes, and as some times we actually were in direct competition with these other classes. An example: We had that year for our P.E. an event called "Walk Around America," or maybe it was "Walk Across America," or something like that. It was an ongoing event where we would first get people in the community to donate money for every mile walked (on an individual student basis, they wouldn't be expected to pay for every student mile.) I wasn't too enthusiastic about that for some reason or another, so I didn't walk that much. Also, because I lived in the country, I couldn't get many people to sign up. Because of this, I wasn't able to make as much money as most of the other kids. There were some in the same boat as me, but I never felt like it. You know, kids. Several times I even boycotted the event using the ever popular "stomach ache" excuse. Needless to say, the class won, even without my help. You might be thinking right about now, "so what, he had kids compete against other kids." But he didn't treat it that way. He took these inter-class competitions very seriously. If you didn't do well, you were a loser, which is entirely the wrong way to encourage kids. I was used to being in the winner catagory. My parents certainly encouraged me, especially when I took a big interest in reading. To them I was a winner, to my previous teachers I was a winner, and even for myself, I was a winner. But now, I had this teacher, who was highly respected and well liked telling me in no uncertain terms that I was a loser.
Needless to say, I'm not slow. When I took my SATs (which I did NOT study for by-the-way) I got a resonable 1190, which isn't genius-class, but higher then many people. Why am I venting like this? Maybe it's because it took 11 years and 6 summers as a Camp Meriwether staffer to wipe out that jerk's negative reinforcement. I never did really well in school again until I started in community college and the University of Oregon. In fact I didn't have enough confidence to enter into a "Real" university until after I stumbled around at a community college for 4 years (two of which I nearly wasted trying to "find" myself and to regain my confidence) I think it's safe to say that even though I'm usually very even-tempered, I still have anger directed toward some events and people. I'm sure that he wasn't intentionally trying to fuck me up, but that's what it feels like now. In retrospect, I think that it either was intentional and he didn't like me, or he was really just a popular idiot. I'd be interested to hear anyone else's stories of teachers or "role-models" from hell. I know that none of you reading had a perfect primary and secondary school experience so E-mail me at paranoid@gladstone.uoregon.edu with your stories and I'll make special pages for them on. my site
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As I said a couple days ago, found pictures play an important part in
my work. I was looking through my boxes of miscellaneous crap and stumbled
upon my 5th grade class photo. Thinking back, this was only a short 14 years
ago, but even so, the memories are very distant but distinct to me. I'm
not saying that I've had a tremendous amount of experience in the intervening
time, as it has only been about a decade and a half, but in all honesty,
the memories of grade school seem cloudy, not as distinct as many of my
friends see their past. But, however, 5th grade had a special importance
to me. It was definately a year of transition.
Anyway, she encouraged me to read a whole lot, and I did (mainly fiction).
That summer was great. Then, school started again, and I had the "lucky"
privilege of being in Mr. Carsley's class. He was a popular teacher
among students, and it was indeed an honor to be in his class. He was the
teacher that was both tough and funny. Even I was excited.
These kind of events and activities occured all year. As you might expect,
my grades dipped. When I had normally been an "S" (I think it
meant Super) I would get other lower letters. Naturally, my parents were
concerned. When my mom attended a parent-teacher conference,one of two a
year I think,with Mr. Carsley, my mother asked him why he I was doing so
poorly in class (because, after all, I was doing well in the previous grades).
The response shocked my mom to the point that she'll still be able to quote
you word-for word today. He said "Darin is slow. He will always
be slow."