Marlin Woosley Convert this page to a PDF
Posted: Wednesday, May 29, 2013

by Marlin Woosley

“My Spanish teacher is a dork!”

“What do you mean?” Kevin was our youngest son. He always did well in school.

“She’s just a dork!”

“Okay, Kevin. Describe the behavior that makes her a dork.”

“She just makes these insane gestures and carries on with senseless rambling during the whole class period.”

His description gave me flashbacks of Miss Shear, who warmed the teacher’s chair in my second year Latin class when I was in high school. I was full of empathy for him.

“Then what you’re saying is that she is very boring?”

“No, Dad. I could deal with boring. She is annoying!”

I looked at Kevin’s Spanish textbook. He was in middle school.  Whether he believed it or not, I was certain that the class must have been boring as well. I knew my son well enough to know that the pace laid out in the textbook was way too slow for him. Kevin had to work harder than the other two boys for his grades but work he did.

Being that Kevin was the youngest of our sons, I had become more comfortable with knowing when to push the boys in school. Though, in the case of the oldest, pushing Don at anything that he didn’t want to do was like pushing a wet rope uphill with no hands. In fairness to Don, however, my changes in occupation put him into three different high schools over four years. That couldn’t have enhanced his enthusiasm for staying on task in school.

I have very clear memories of pushing Tim, the second son, to stay in band in middle school. Tim was going to drop out of band but I convinced him that high school was the time when band became fun. As a result, he experienced a trip to Russia in his senior year with his high school jazz band. In both high school and college he enjoyed participation in marching band. While he was in marching band at Iowa State, they traveled to Phoenix to perform in the Sun Bowl.

I spent much of Kevin’s eighth grade year convincing him to stay in Spanish class. I had my ear even closer to the ground at the semester end when I thought that he might jump the fence and make a break for it. I had my nose right into his business when the schedule was done for high school. I wanted to be sure that he was continuing to take Spanish.

As I was certain that it would, Kevin’s attitude toward Spanish did a flip in the positive direction in high school. He had a friend with whom he practiced drills and Spanish conversation throughout high school. By the time that they were juniors I don’t think that the two of them held a conversation with each other that wasn’t in Spanish.

I all but insisted that each of the boys take a couple of years of foreign language in high school. They all have some command of Spanish. Kevin, who ultimately took Spanish in all four years of high school, is fluent.

Kevin and his friend went different directions for college. Jason graduated from the University of Iowa with a Spanish major while Kevin graduated from Iowa State with a Marketing major and a Spanish minor.  Jason teaches high school Spanish. Kevin lives in the southwestern U.S. where his bilingual ability is an obvious advantage in anything that he does.

Many parents are not in the ideal situation for parenting. The number of American single parent households has doubled in the last 50 years. It is difficult enough to rear children in a two parent double income household. One can only try to imagine the struggle of rearing a child alone.

Income and a child’s parental attention would be less than half of that in a two parent household, in which both parents work outside of the home. However, being a single parent doesn’t have to mean parenting alone. Extended family can and should join in.

Oprah Winfrey credits her grandmother for much of who she became. When her mother could no longer endure lone parenting of the rebellious teenager that Oprah became, she was passed to her father. With strict discipline, he and Oprah’s stepmother built on the values that Oprah’s grandmother had instilled in her. While with her father, Oprah excelled in high school.

Our own President Obama, was parented by a single mother for much of his childhood. However, he had dedicated grandparents involved in his life to fill the gap. It was to the credit of Barack Obama’s grandfather that he was admitted to the prestigious and private Punahou School in Honolulu.

Without a doubt, there are teachers who should not be in the profession. Likewise, there are parents who should not be parents. On a rare occasion, a teacher, who cares, can bring along a student who is not properly parented. Almost always, parents, who are aware of their child’s frustrations, can help them over the difficult periods of inept teachers, boring courses and other difficulties that they might encounter. However, if a child faces these educational obstacles alone, the chances of mediocre performance or failure increase exponentially. Marlin Woosley is a native of Iowa now residing in southern Florida. He is veteran of nine years of service in the US Navy and is presently retired from twenty-two years in the transportation industry. Some of his interests, in addition to writing, are history, reading, dog training, motorcycling, photography and nature

http://marlinwoosley.blogspot.com/

This Article has been viewed 394 times. (Not updated in real-time.)Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
Most teachers, in order to deliver their lesson bombs, over target, without flak, teach to the BOTTOM of the class, which sends the brighter pupils into a state of mind of,' eyes out of the window, brain in the hall', classroom unconsciousness.

Low teacher expectations of pupils causes more low functioning.

If however, one has the very highest expectations, and teaches to the very best minds in the class, the slowest pupils will rise to meet those expectations.

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I totally agree.

Thank you for the read and comment, Paul.

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