Friends (Part 5 of 12)

This is part 5 of 12 in my attempt to catalog friends and people in my life that I am thankful for and why I am thankful for them.  Stay tuned each day for a new friend and a new story.

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My first "real" teaching gig started a year after I graduated college.  I was hired by a country 40 minutes east, at a school I had never attended, never even been to for competitions or anything.  I was unfamiliar with the layout, the people, the students, the culture.  Culture, it would turn out, mattered most of all.

My first year is a combination of hazy "how did I survive that?" memories coupled with very specific, jarring recollections of "wow so teaching's like that" moments.  I got to know my department fairly quickly.  My Principal too.  But I remember slowly becoming friends with a man training to be an administrator.

Bob Kerns struck me as an atypical leader.  He was very soft spoken, both in one-on-one conferences and larger meetings.  He had the physique of an admin (they tend to have to break up a lot of fights after all) but always seemed to reserve his comment of judgement.  Sometimes this worked to his advantage in that people couldn't dislike him for what he didn't state; something this didn't as others wanted him to act on a problem where his hands were tied.

One day, one situation specifically I remember.  I was in my last year or two there (although, I didn't know it then - I was about to transfer to the city and MUCH closer to home, thus less driving time) and in a parent conference.  The young lady in my class was struggling with some of the assessments related to our reading.  These were the days I taught Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (God, miss that book) and Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" to 11th graders.  Good stuff.

The meeting though consisted of the student, her mom, the special education teacher, Bob, and myself.  For those on the outside of the teaching profession looking in, a quick note: parent conferences are intimidating as hell for parents.  Here is a room full of professionals who are going to "tell" you about your kid.  With the right people, it can be wonderful, affirming experience of grownups coming together to ferry an adolescent through something particularly tough in their life.  Without them, it can be a nightmare clash of wills.  I've been in both.

The concerns the student and parent had were genuinely honest: how do we better prepare her for an assessment on her reading?  I was still relatively young so I didn't understand that the mom was basically aiming for more time on the quiz.  My daughter can do it, she was saying, but not as quickly as the other students in the room.  So without any real fore-thought I asked the special ed teacher a  quick question about the student's score on some diagnostic tests that had been conducted prior to the meeting.  These tests measure things like students reading level, test taking speed and stress, among others.  I asked what strengths had been identified from the diagnostic.  My thinking was: maybe we can use something in her strengths to help her succeed on these quizzes more.

The teacher looked at the printout before her and replied, "She had significant aptitude in reading comprehension and vocabulary."

And the room stopped.  I will never forget how slowly Bob's head came up, looked at me, looked at the student, looked at the special ed teacher and asked her to repeat the statement.  Sure enough, the girl was in the top quartile for reading and vocabulary.  (Again, for those unaccustomed to this, the translation: the girl read well above her grade level and had a vocabulary significantly above her peers.)  Just as slowly it dawned on me that I had asked the one question the exposed the student in a pseudo-lie.

The mom turned to her daughter and asked her what book she was reading for me currently.  The daughter stammered a title.  In a last ditch effort, the mom asked the special ed teacher for the readibility of the book (again, translation: what grade level is the vocabulary and content).  It was an 8th grade level.  (Another sidenote: Twain often comes out in readbility much lower than he does in maturity required to read him.  c.f.Huck Finn.)  The last thing of that meeting was the mother demanding of her daughter what was the big problem, and how could this really be hard, and was she really reading the damn book in the first place!

And then Bob impressed me, as he would on so many future occasions.  He sided with the student.  He offered suggestions: flashcards, study guides, peer groups.  Heck, just talk about the book with a friend.  (I think he knew the real issue was that the girl wasn't making time for the reading but he was giving her an out that she needed.)  The mom and daughter left feeling a little chastised but not alienated.  I would participate in enough future parent meetings to realize how rare it is to strike this particular chord.

After the student and parent left, I was gathering up the things I had brought (most of which proved unnecessary to the meeting but that was normal) when I caught Bob's eye.  He glanced from me to the special ed teacher and said, "And that's why I like having Aaron in parent conferences."  He smiled; she smiled.  I looked as confused as a baboon at the north pole.

It dawned on me later that night: in a way, I had arrived at what I wanted to do well.  I wanted to be a good teacher (definition pending) but I also wanted to be valuable.  To be important to the school and other people I worked with.  Not celebrated or crap like that.  But respected.  What we all want, I supposed.  But Bob Kerns said it first.  He made me feel like just maybe I had chosen the right profession and one day I might get a little good at it.

Friends (Part 4 of 12)

This is part 4 of 12 in my attempt to catalog friends and people in my life that I am thankful for and why I am thankful for them.  Stay tuned each day for a new friend and a new story.

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Jeff Raiola is my cousin on my mother's side once removed... or something.  When I was little I didn't so much understand that he was kin as much as I knew he was cool to play with.  He liked a lot of the toys I liked.  He taught me stuff about school and girls and life.  He was and still is my original definition of cool.

My favorite story to tell about Jeff involves a hot tub and an iguana.

Growing up in Florida, most of my friends had a pool in their backyard.  I did too.  I remember it being dug; I remember walking in it after the concrete was poured but before it was filled.  It might as well have been the Grand Canyon to six year old me.  But not many people owned a hot tub.  I suppose in Florida, really, what's the point?  You wanna be hot?  Step outside.  102 in the shade, son.  So what point did anyone have for a hot tub or Jacuzzi or anything like that.  There were kids in school I knew vaguely who had things like that at their houses.  But that seemed part of the ultra-wealthy lifestyle.

But Jeff wasn't ultra-wealthy.  In fact, part of what always impressed me about him was how content he was with what he had.  I don't want to make him sound poor, because I don't think he was.  But whenever we got together (he only liked like 30, 40 minutes from my house) I remember talking about what I didn't have and he would just comment about the toys he liked and how much he enjoyed them.  I learned this lesson fast: don't get whiny.  People will something else to do and somewhere else to be, fast.

Of those things Jeff counted as his was this hot tub, right out back of his house.  It was fantastic because unlike a pool, this thing had bubble jets!  Oh now!  See, swimming in a pool was calm, relaxing, individual.  Hot tubs are, by design, party machines.  The water is calm, probably air temperature.  Then: vroom!  The jets.  Suddenly you couldn't see the floor, you couldn't see your feet; hell, you couldn't see your waist.  Hot tubs were great playgrounds for kids with an imagination.

Once, when I was visiting, Jeff taught me a great trick.  He took a great gulp of air and went under the bubbles.  I followed and watched as he lined up on one of the jets.  He pursed his lips, exhaled through his nose and... I couldn't tell.  He was just hanging there.  Like he was kissing the side of the tub. I got a little uncomfortable, honestly.  But before I could decide to surface for air I saw him exhale again.  Wait... he had more air in his lungs?  I watched.  My own lungs were beginning to scream but I held myself down.  Sure enough, moments later, another breath exhaled.  Ok, what kind of demon trick was this?  I tapped his foot and popped up.

"How-" I started.

Jeff was shaking water out of his ear.  "What do you think the jets shoot out, dummy?"

It wasn't that I hadn't thought of the air they blasted.  I just never thought to breathe the stuff.  "But," I remember asking, "is it safe?  Isn't it like chemical or toxic or something?"

"Nope," he replied.  "Try it."

I thought about the posture he had adopted and sank down.  I lined up on a jet, exhaled, lined up my mouth and... received a huge gush of water into my lungs.  I surfaced, coughed like an chain smoker, and shook my head.  Jeff was sympathetic though.  He showed me the shape his twisted his mouth into.  I tried again.

I don't remember how long it took I just remember once I figured it out, it was AWESOME.  We just sat down there.  Breathing.  For a long time.  After one long bout we surfaced and I felt a little light headed but it was just too much fun.  We shouted for an adult to come out.  "Let's show them," we said.  And before the adult (who was it? his grandmother? someone else?  can't remember) could open the door to come out, we slide under the roiling bubbly surface.

We sank to the bottom and breathed the air bubbles.

As a parent today, I understand why after several long panicky minutes the adult reached under the water and yanked us both up.  They were frantic, an angry.  I couldn't understand it then.  This is cool!  Didn't we impress you?  

That wasn't the moment that solidified Jeff's coolness for me.  But it was definitely on the spectrum.

The last time I ever saw that hot tub I was a teenager but just barely.  13, 14?  I remember putting on my suit and heading to the sliding door our back.  "Hot tub!" I yelled.  But Jeff wasn't with me.  I yelled again for him.  "You coming?"

From down a hallway, he replied "no, but say hi to Bubba."  I stopped short.  Bubba?  He had another friend over? A relative?  Were there really people in this world named Bubba?

I opened the latch to the screened in porch containing the hot tub and stopped.  The whole thing was... like overgrown.  There were plants on the ledges and around the hot tub.  It was like it got an extreme makeover and someone went with the Amazon Rainforest theme.  Before I could close the door, I saw why.

I met Bubba.

Bubba was a four foot iguana who conveniently lived in the hot tub.  Like full time.  He slithered out of the water and took two steps toward me.  I suspect my screams were girlish but I also suspect I didn't care.  When I ran back in the house, Jeff was smiling.  "He's not bad.  He's just Bubba."

I've never been in a hot tub since.  I don't chalk that up to fear or iguanas; I think it's because the only hot tub that feels right is the one with a smiling, cool-ass cousin.

Friends (Part 3 of 12)

This is part 3 of 12 in my attempt to catalog friends and people in my life that I am thankful for and why I am thankful for them.  Stay tuned each day for a new friend and a new story.

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Only one person has ever said I would make an effective TV evangelist.  He said it when I was 15 and very impressionable.  My impression, after said accolade, was to assume this guy had no clue who I was, what I stood for, or who I wanted to be.  He would end up being my future supervisor.

When I met Rob Quel, he sported a business-man's mustache and a weird, weird sense of humor.  The moustache is different now (read: grayer) but the humor is the same.  Over time, I've come to understand it and even appreciate it.

When I first arrived in Lynchburg as a 15 year old city boy from a state that knew no winter I tunneled head-long into the E.C. Glass High School sophomore curriculum and landed in Mr. Quel's Writing Lab class first semester.  He was quirky; I liked that.  His jokes sometimes fell flat in class; I liked that too.  I already had my eye on probably being a teacher and I was sensitive to not just lessons that went off without a hitch but the ones that seemed to sputter as well.  I was intensely interested in how that happened to teachers.  (I was later to learn, as teachers all know, that there are many MANY things that can make an effective lesson go awry.)  The class was also unlike English classes I had taken in the past.

We didn't read literature really; we didn't act out plays.  We talked about essays and argument.  We also performed.  Not poems and plays but other stuff.  We created commercials.

It was one of these performances where the aforementioned comment was made.  We were tasked with selling an item; something mundane, everyday and run-of-the-mill.  I remember putting it off. I don't remember why.  But when it was my turn I grabbed the pen off my desk and went at it.  What did I say?  That is had extra qualities, James Bond stuff.  Need to vaporize the talkative kid in front of you?  Boom, laser beam.  Needed to call home?  Boom, a phone.  Needed something to eat?  Boom, a replicator.  These imaginary qualities probably say more about me as an adolescent than anything else.  Repressed anger?

Anyway, when I finished several peers conveyed how impressed they were, how much fun the bit was.  I was grateful.  Then Quel said, "You ever think about a career as a TV evangelist?"  I laughed, a few laughed with me.  But I thought: what the hell, dude?

It wouldn't be for almost 20 more years before I understood the compliment.  When I returned to my alma mater to teach, I found myself after a few years there reporting to him as my supervisor.  I was glad: he challenged me without making ridiculous demands.  It was after one particular class he observed when he stopped by to review my lesson that he said, "Well, one thing is certain: you could sell anyone anything."  I was brought back to my sophomore year.  And it made sense.  It wasn't the religion thing; it wasn't the capitalist thing; it was the persuasive thing - it was the ability to communicate and end up with people listening and liking what they listened to.

Quel isn't my supervisor anymore (I wear everyone out eventually) but here's what I love about him, what I wouldn't trade for the world.  On a random day in any given period of school, if he is in the building and passing by in the hall, he unceremoniously throws my door open and without excusing himself demands to know what I am subjecting my poor students to today.  Whatever my answer, he finds several reasons to lambast my choices and encourages my class to revolt, like French Revolution revolt.

He's Kramer to my Seinfeld.  And I'm not close to the genius of Seinfeld.  He throws that door open and slides into my room.  I put on my part of the show: impatience, frustration, are-you-done-yet?  But I know (and I think he knows) I love it.  I love every moment of it.  I love it when he looks at my new Forensics trophy cabinet and asks if it is The Shrine to Aaron.  When he goes through my end of the year student feedback looking just for the negative ones and getting frustrated when he can't find many.  I miss sitting in his office in the late afternoon talking about Forensics or English or whatever.

I'm not sure if I am as funny as he often was, or impact my students the way he impacted me.  But I know he continually provides me with a role model for where I am headed.  He might not ever join me Marlin fishing in the Caribbean but I know that he would listen to the stories I tell about it when I returned.

Friends (Part 2 of 12)

This is part 2 of 12 in my attempt to catalog friends and people in my life that I am thankful for and why I am thankful for them.  Stay tuned each day for a new friend and a new story.

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I met Derek Elmore about eight years ago.  Actually, I know exactly when I met him.  It was the fall of 2008.  I know it was before November 2008.  And the reason I know this so precisely is the same reason I thought after we first met that he would never talk to me again.

The last bell of the day for a high school teacher is not really an "end" in any traditional sense of the word.  We go off to our next thing: coaching, meetings, professional development, parent conferences, you name it.  Much of this we do willingly as it's important to our students and our school; some we do grudgingly.  In the early months of 2008, when I was still teaching on the second floor of my school, I was on my way to one of those grudging things.  How quickly might it end, I wondered.  How quickly could I get back to my team and the things I cared about more?

On my way I ran into Derek who was headed to the same meeting.  I didn't really know him; we had a mutual friend in Casey Wood and Casey spoke very highly of Derek.  The friend of my friend... So we chatted for the briefest of moments as we headed downstairs.  Somewhere in that stairwell on the center hallway, as we griped about the things in education that frustrate us, I made the passing comment, "Well, it'll all get better when we get a different President in office.  Preferably from the other party."  I practically tossed off a wink.

Derek threw a quick side glance at me and simply replied, "Yeah? Ya think?"  No sarcasm, no hostility, no judgement.  But in his words I realized.  Shit, I thought.  Shit, shit shit.  Aaron why do you blurt your politics out with complete strangers!?  I think I apologized while not losing face (in all likelihood I sounded like a moron - something I achieve on a fairly weekly basis).  And I remember as we walked into that meeting thinking clearly and definitely, well, someone else who won't like me.

I'm not sure when politics became a central part of who I am.  High school?  I remember giving speeches about liberalism.  College?  Did my readings reinforce what I was already thinking or did they open me to more reasons?  After?  When I started paying taxes and wondered why much of my money was going to weapons of war instead of feeding the poor?  (There I go again...)  Whatever the case, by the time I met Derek, I was definitely partisan although I tried to be good about listening to others and thinking before I spoke.  (Obviously something I failed at when I first met him.)

But the next day I ran into him again on hall duty, up on the glorious W hall, second floor.  He came and stood next to me and after the class change had settled, he commenced.  And it was simply a question related to the student our meeting had been about the day before.  I didn't know I was holding my breath until I released it.  So we talked.  About students and school and our experiences.  We compared notes on students we taught; we tried to keep the hallways clear (easier some days than others).  I learned from him.

I learned that not only could I get along with someone who saw the world in a pretty fundamentally different way but I could like him too.  Really like him.  Have his back if stuff went down, kind of way.  He doesn't need me to have his back, by the way.  He's taller, stronger, and would doubtlessly rescue me from any problems before I could ever help him.  Over the next year, two, and three as we talked more our conversations migrated from specific ("Have you been on the E hallway recently?") to generic ("Think Florida has education problems like we do?").  Gradually we even talked about our differences.

This is the real point I want to make: I got to a place where I wasn't uncomfortable when Derek talked about what he believes (free market, libertarianism kinds of things).  In fact, I welcomed it.  In time, I even needed it.  I reached a place where I needed his quid to my quo because I was worried I hadn't thought my ideas really through enough.  Or worse, I hadn't really had anyone push back against my ideas in a way that made me objectively check myself.  We talked about Ayn Rand and even as we came to different conclusions about her writing, we could still talk.  We could talk about taxes and guns and religious fervor and modern political crap... and it didn't end in anger or fisticuffs (can I use that word in 2015?).  Often, it ended in a bit more clarity.

I figured out, not really long ago, Derek and I don't talk about these things to try to change each others' minds.  I'm never going to get him to vote for Bernie Sanders and he's never going to convince me that Ron Paul has all the answers.  But we do it, I think, to make sure we haven't drifted too far off course.  At least, that's why I do it.  And I love talking to the man.  I love it when we agree on stuff; I love it more when he explains why something I think, with all due respect, is kind of batshit crazy.

I have a lot of conservative friends.  Some I get along with better than others but none are like Derek.  I value our friendship at a place that is individualistic and sincere.  I would probably take a bullet for the dude and, while I was dying, explain that this is why we need gun reform.

I'm just glad he talked to me again.

Friends (part 1 of 12)

This is part 1 of 12 in my attempt to catalog friends and people in my life that I am thankful for and why I am thankful for them.  Stay tuned each day for a new friend and a new story.

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I met Deborah Ketchum almost a decade ago.  I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't remember me from that moment because it wasn't for another that we became really good friends.

When I returned to teach at my alma mater in 2004, I immediately picked up the mantle of Forensics coach with gusto and enthusiasm.  And promptly realized I had no idea how to "manage" a team.  I could coach students; I could help them with interping skills and speech writing.  But the organizational aspect of coaching was completely new to me.

I took my newly formed team to one of the only invitational tournaments in the area I knew about.  It was east of us at a school I had been to only once before, a little single A school (old school VHSL designations) called Randolph Henry.  I had never met the coach; I knew my team was fairly green to compete.  We went anyway.

I brought enough judges with me that I wasn't needed most rounds.  During the start of the second one, I was walking one of the upper hallways, making sure my kids had made it to their correct rooms to compete, and I passed this woman in the hallway.  She was clearly in charge: she was checking on rooms, speaking quickly to a few judges here and there.  I greeted her and briefly considered asking if she needed any help with anything but I concluded quickly enough, and luckily enough for me, that whatever she might ask me to do tournament-wise I probably had no ability to do since I had no clue how to run a team, much less a tournament.

Needless to say, the experience was fantastic and none of my team broke into the final round.  This wasn't a surprise to me but as teenagers my kids were a bit chagrined.  And without realizing it some things were set in motion over the next decade.

Fast forward about three years.  E.C. Glass joined the local Forensics league, as a practice route to the harder VHSL circuit.  And I ran into Deborah again.  First, I simply knew her as one of the people who ran the tab room while I judged.  Tab people are funny: they are stressed about things that seem unimportant to others: four poetry kids in one room and six in the other, a missing kid who is not on the drop list, a room without a judge.  All I knew was that I had neither the nerves nor the resolve to be a tab room person.

But as I got to know more of the coaches in this wild and crazy world of Forensics, and I had more conversations with Deborah, I realized that it wasn't that she was so much different from me as she had just learned to "organize", to "manage".  So I learned from her.  I watched her interact with her team in brief spurts.  I especially watched her work with other Forensics coaches from other schools.  Pieces began to fall into place.

Years rolled and I found myself helping in that crazy, hair-pulling tab room.  And before I had gotten a sense of what was happening, I was suddenly in there with Deborah and Mark Ingerson and others helping RUN this crazy thing.  I was checking on rooms, fixing disasters, dealing with technical website stuff and people stuff.  I had learned in that most ordinary of ways: without realizing it.

About four years ago, I was brought back to that very first competition, way out at Deborah's school of Randolph Henry.  Back then, we had left that school and my team reassured themselves that they were going to be prepared for future competitions, they were going to play to WIN.  As I sat in the tab room with Deborah so many years after that and we talked about the competitive nature of high school, much less Forensics, she brought me up short with a very simple questions.

"Do you press your kids to win at these little tournaments in the fall?"  These local competitions were small, a single evening, two rounds, just some quick judge feedback.  Do you press them...  I knew the right answer was "no".  I knew that it was absurd, demonstrably silly to rally a team for VICTORY at a little practice tournament, which is essentially what this was.  And even as I said something like "not, really" I knew I was telling at best a partial truth, probably more like a face-saving lie.  For the truth was I had pushed in certain ways for my kids to WIN at these things.  I don't think I ever made winning the more important thing than learning.  In fact, often I tell my students that they'll know the kids in the room that are better, more polished.  Watch them, I say, learn from them.  They will teach you much.

But I did put pressure on the winning thing.  Too much pressure.  A full Saturday VHSL tournament was different.  But at these things: be kind, be friendly.  More: find the kids in your room that seem really scared and out of their element and greet them.  Make them feel better.  Help them enjoy their time competing rather than trying to defeat them.  That adversarial mindset was silly.  Isn't the art of speaking well inherently the act of building a room up? Of connecting with the people all around you?  You can't do that when the room is a battlefield.

I suspect Deborah doesn't realize the impact she has had on me in relation to all this; she would probably dismiss it as not that big of a deal.  But to me it's huge.  She was and is still my professional reality check when my ego starts writing checks that I can't personally cash.  When I know she will be at a tournament, I feel a sense of relief inside.  I know that however far south the tournament might go from one of a hundred different mistakes, she will find a solution.  Might not be pretty but it will help the tournament go on and most likely the rest of the people there will never know there was a problem.  I've learned that from her too.

Deborah Ketchum is my great friend.  I have not had the chance to see her yet this school year but I know that where these local tournaments are progressing, she is there (with others) making the thing turn without flaw.