Change

Change

This evening my daughter was in the car after I picked her up at driving school. It was one of those crisp late spring evenings that visit Roanoke every now and then. The air was fresh, the mountains crystal clear, and the sweet smell of grass rode the gentle breeze through the open windows of our car. The sun had recently set leaving behind a maroon afterglow that cast dreamy illumination on the mountains and valley.

As we were going past the cemetery at Hollins University (College), my daughter broke our peaceful silence and said, “You know this year is really going by fast.”

I paused contemplating what she had said and replied with, “Well you know they only get faster as you get older.”

“That’s because nothing ever changes for you.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I could only nod my head in agreement. Nothing ever changes for me.

In my profession, I’m now an old-timer. Half of all educators quit within five years. Most of the rest are gone by twenty years. Somehow, I’ve managed to keep myself in the game for twenty-five years. However, if you were to visit my fourth grade classroom twenty-three years ago, you may have had doubts that I’d ever make through the year. That year was a time of one of my most challenging professional confrontations.

Back in those days, I was responsible for teaching many subjects to my 28 children. I had three reading groups-one high, one average, and one low. When I worked with one group, the rest of the children were broken out into two areas: seat work at their desks and thematic centers at one of the tables in my room. Each group rotated through each section every day. In addition to Reading, I was also responsible for English, Handwriting, Writing, Mathematics, Social Studies (my favorite), Science, and Health.

It was all I could do to juggle these eleven preparations each day, and I began to learn certain shortcuts that were not of sound pedagogy. One such trick was to short-change Health instruction. Back then there were no standards to guide you and no county curriculum. The text book was horribly boring and each year teachers tended just cover “The Human Body.” It was the same, year in and year out; never changing.

That year, however, as the third nine weeks was ending I hadn’t even cracked the Health text book the whole nine weeks. Grades were due within a couple of weeks and I knew that if I had no grades, I couldn’t legitimately give a grade. So feeling pressure, I came up with the hair-brained idea of assigning a Health project on “Safety.” Kids would have to do some research on some aspect of “Safety” and create a report and poster for a test grade.

With idea in hand, I began to pitch this idea to the kids. One of my special talents is being able to sell kids on new ideas. They always get excited about my projects. This group was no different. So in the end, I felt that I would be able to give a grade and most likely no one would be mad because this was just about the world’s easiest project ever. That’s what I thought. Reality was different however, and that never changes.

Selina (real name used on purpose) was a cute little “A” student in my class. She had dark brown eyes and long straight brown hair. Selina always dressed in traditional Brethren fashion, long hand-stitched dress with brown ankle shoes. Her mother, Frances, was one of a group of sisters who were prominent around the school. I never had met her father, but always assumed that he was a hard working man.

Our school guidance counselor had warned me about the family though. She told me that they came from up near Haneytown and Mutton Hollow and were sort of wild people. I really didn’t know what she meant by that. Later I learned that back in the 1920’s and 30’s, families were displaced from their family farms on the mountains around Greene County, Virginia to make room for Governor Byrd and FDR’s Shenandoah National Park. These people were moved off the mountain to the flat land down below. Haneytown was one of several resettlement villages that resembled what you might think of as a company coal town. Selina and her family were of that stock.

In the classroom, Selina was a bit wild-eyed. She looked so innocent, but I would catch her doing some really unlady-like things to the other girls. She’d boss them and bully them. Yet she always seemed clever enough to weasel out of the worst trouble. Whenever I tried to bring these matters up with her mother, I was never able to get her to acknowledge the problem and pledge to help me straighten her daughter out.

Despite her faults, Selina was a very smart student. She read well and was in my high reading group. Her work was always done on time and generally done acceptably well ...until that Health assignment.

When the due date came for the Health project, all of the kids except for Aaron and Selina had turned in their poster and reports. Aaron was no surprise. That kid was nothing but trouble in the classroom. He simply could not find a way to sit still and stay away from shenanigans. He really got under my skin; so much so that I permanently moved him to the back corner of the classroom. I really had no clue how to handle the boy.

Selina not turning her project in, however, was a real surprise. I remember I called both of them to my desk and told them that I’d give them one more day to get it turned in without a penalty and then if it was still late, I’d have to take off a letter grade per day.

The next day, Aaron came to school with something that resembled a poster and report, but Selina came with nothing but a taunting smile.

She played this game with me for four days which by my reckoning meant that she had earned an “F.” This seemed to have no impact on her at the time. She was smart enough, I thought, to understand that this was serious business. With the nine weeks about to end and no other grades on the horizon. That grade would have to stand for her nine weeks grade. So without hesitation or realization of the consequences, I put the grade down on her report card for Health.

It didn’t take long for the fireworks to begin. Some things never change. When an “A” student without any advance warning gets an “F” on a report card, even the most mild-mannered parent will blow. I was so green back then that I didn’t understand this basic truth.

Immediately after school on the afternoon that I gave out the report cards, I received a telephone call from Frances. At first, she was restrained when she asked me how her lovely daughter had received an “F” in Health. I sensed though that all was not well for me as the conversation went on for some time, quiet pauses and tense phrases. I tried to explain to her why I had given her daughter that grade, but she would not back down from asserting (rightly so) that it wasn’t fair.

That’s when this whole story took a huge twist. As we were talking, I began hearing a loud voice in the background. The voice seemed angry and irrational. Immediately, I realized that it must be Selina’s father. He was obviously enraged and most likely drunker than a skunk. His screaming grew louder and louder as Frances tried hard to get him to calm down, but he would have none of that. Suddenly he ripped the phone out of her hands and began screaming at me, “BOY. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING GIVING MY GIRL AN ‘F’. WHERE DO YOU LIVE BOY? ‘CAUSE I’M GONNA COME OVER THERE AND KILL YOU. WHERE DO YOU LIVE? I SAID… WHERE DO YOU LIVE? CAUSE YOU’RE DEAD!...

That’s about when I decided it would be in my best interest not to share my address with Selina's father, and it would be wise to simply replace the telephone receiver on the hook. Frances called back some time later to apologize for her husband, but she was still adamant that the grade would not stand. That night, and for many nights after that, I locked my door.

The next morning, I was greeted by the school principal, Mr. Phillips. Don was one of the best principals with whom I’ve ever worked, and he’s a fine person to boot. It was a few years later that Don finally had had enough of parents climbing all over his back and kids being sent to the office. He got out of the profession and opened his own video rental store with his wife. They grew that business from 1985 until they sold their stores a few years ago.

Anyway, Don calmly came up to me and explained that he had a conversation with Frances the previous evening on the telephone, and she was quite upset about a grade I gave in Health. Then he listened to my justification without comment, nodding his head at appropriate times. After a moment of reflection he pronounced his subtle form of judgment upon me, “Man oh man, you know, this is a real situation you got yourself in. You really don’t want to be messing with this family, you know.”

“I know.” I interrupted.

“I think that what you’ve got to do is change that grade. I can’t make you do it, but I think your life will go a lot better if you change it. Shoot why don’t you just give her an “Incomplete” and then give her the grade she earns when she turns the project in to you? Yeah, you got to change that grade. You know?”

What he said to me at that moment clicked on a light bulb in my head. I think I must have looked like the Grinch looked when his heart began to grow. Realizations swirled around me like a morning mist. “Don’s right. Why am I doing this? It’s just a stupid Health grade that counts for almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. Plus, I really shouldn’t have been giving any grade at all.” Right there at that moment, I decided to take Don’s advice. I decided to change.

Later that morning, I called Selina to my desk. She was still flashing that smirky “I just got you screwed” smile at me, and I informed her that I was changing her grade to an “Incomplete.” Then I explained in some detail what that meant. I told her that an “I” would go on her report card and the “F” would be whited-out. Then whenever she finished the project, I’d grade it and change the “I” into the grade she earned. I explained that whenever the project was finished, I’d grade it; whether it got turned in tomorrow, the next day, the next month, the next year, or fifty years from that day. I told her (stealing a passage from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five) that “…one day fifty years from then I might be sitting inside my house and the doorbell would ring. I’d grab my cane, shuffle to the door to find you standing there with a poster and report in your hand. You’d hold them out for me to take and say ‘Here Mr. Ryder. Here’s my Health project from fourth grade.’ You’d then sit while I graded the work and then you’d hand over your report card for me to cross out the ‘I’ and replace it with a real grade.”

That afternoon, I called Frances and explained my change of heart to her, too. She seemed calmer, perhaps because her husband wasn’t around. She seemed to accept my compromise. From then on, Selina and I didn’t have much to say to one another. I also did my level best to avoid Frances and her husband whenever I’d see them out and about at the county fair or at the local IGA grocery store.

It’s been twenty-three years since I learned my lesson about the importance of grades and how they can corrupt teachers and parents. I’ve been waiting twenty-three years for Selina to turn in her Health project.

Not discounting what I did that one time, nothing ever changes for me.

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