Teaching: The Life
Ray H. Lawson
Rochester, Michigan
Retired after 64 years of teaching.

In the 1940’s and 50’s, teachers did not settle down for long periods on a job.  Many felt that five years was long enough before moving to another district, even another state, to find a salary better than one or two thousand dollars a year.  For some though, remaining on a job for 30 years was the highlight of a lifetime—many times a necessity because of a lack of retirement security through adequate pensions.  I was in the first group; reluctant to come to Rochester, Michigan, my agreement was to remain for a couple of years and then make a final decision. However, becoming part of the town, establishing my own family, and teaching three generations of the same families made it difficult to cut the ties. Rochester had become my home.

I graduated from Central State Teachers College—now Central Michigan University—in 1940, and my career began as a high school teacher.  After a year, I faced a different kind of learning when I began a five-year hiatus in the United States Army. There I experienced a different kind of teaching from technical manuals and by “teachers” who taught by authority—a valuable lesson for me to remember once I was able to return to the classroom.  Because of the large number of soldiers who lacked formal education or had a language barrier, I had an opportunity to organize and teach classes for these “illiterate” soldiers. I learned that although authority may have worked in the army, it did not in the classroom.  After my discharge from the Army at the end of World War II, I continued my teaching career at Rochester High School where I taught in the same school—one of three high schools in the district—for 59 years.

After I retired at the end of the spring semester in 2004, one of the most frequent questions I was asked was “How in hell could you spend so many years with those teenagers?”  How could I not have spent that much time with students?  Each year brought a new group—new challenges.  I never thought of the number of days or years.  My major concern was having enough time to work in my chosen role in life.  Whitman wrote in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” that every man has a role in life and that he may play it “big or small” as he wishes.  I chose to play my role as a teacher as big as possible so that I could make each day better not only for me but also for my students, all of us becoming part of one another. Playing this role, as it should, had its obstacles in bringing about improvement—an endless but vital task.

Like any other career, teaching has its challenges through which comes change.  For me, one of the reasons for staying so long was anticipating situations that would have a positive effect on my teaching.  One of these challenges was working with administrators whose task was to improve the quality of education.  What a great joy it was meeting new principals who wanted to make changes but had no time because of so many other activities, such as committee meetings or discipline.  My job as a Department Head was helping the principal to bring about those changes in teaching English.

After 40 years, one of these challenges was overcome in 1985 when I was able to convince the K-12 teachers—not totally, unfortunately—and the Rochester Board of Education that teaching grammar as an objective should be eliminated and only taught in relation to student writing.  At the same time, I achieved another goal of convincing the teachers to promote writing as a process. With more writing going on in the classroom, it became a greater challenge to convince the Board to reduce the enrollment in composition classes to 25.  Finally, they agreed which was another good reason for wanting to remain a part of the system.

Teaching in a society that believes that test scores represent quality in teaching presented a further challenge because I believe testing is not teaching.  Although testing is an easy way out for many teachers, my challenge was to prove better ways exist for evaluating student progress in a subject.  In a Modern American Novel class, for example, my students asked on the first day, “Do we have to write a paper or take a test after completing a novel?”  Through a discussion, we decided that whenever students found something to react to they could write a paper to demonstrate their reasons for the reaction.  In turn, I would react through a composition to the student.   No grades, just student-evaluations at the end of the course.  This produced an immediate change in student attitudes.  We became a community of people reflecting on the reading and reacting with one another—the kind of challenge that makes a teacher want to go on forever.

Although challenges have always been an important part of my life as a teacher, there were times when they also made me aware of stark reality, especially when a principal needed to “save face.”  I faced this situation one day when I was called down to my principal’s office.  He began his criticism in a low key by indicating that I was an icon among teachers of English.  In his next breath, however, he stated that he was receiving criticism about my expecting too much from my students and giving too many low grades.  He dismissed me by saying, “If you have to go before the Board to answer the complaints, I will not be able to support you.”  The world seemed to stop, but only until I remembered all the students who could support me by their achievements, both in and after my class.

Although this kind of principal brings a dark cloud over a faculty, there are many others that bring rays of sunshine.  It was these excellent administrators throughout the district that encouraged me to remain on the job.  One of the principals I shall always remember went the extra mile to help teachers in distress.  Even though he was over-worked with the administration of the high school, he could always find time to make a person feel the importance of being on his staff.  His open door and pleasing smile made a call to his office a welcoming experience.  He made his teachers part of his life with excursions for weekends to his cottage on a nearby lake.  Great parties.  Good food.  Memorable boating excursions.  Relaxation. Who would not want to extend his teaching career with this kind of atmosphere?

In addition to being energized by daily challenges, another reason for my extended tenure was the district’s belief in the importance of academic freedom.  This gave me the freedom to meet the requirements of the curriculum in whatever way I felt was best for the students. At a time when censorship of literature was running rampant, we could write or read about whatever the students wanted to choose. I could take on a new responsibility of showing the beauty and truth in banned books. Once I had convinced the parents to read the novel being criticized, then I could get them to see the morality in this “horrible creature,” Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.  One year, a small religious group brought charges against the District for allowing students to read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.  They thought the author was promoting an anti-religious attitude. Through litigation, the group succeeded in getting the book banned along with a general court ruling including any other novel with religious implications. This effectively banned all books—because all great literature has a base in biblical or mythological allusions.  As I helped in preparing arguments, meeting with parent groups, and writing articles to support the Board’s appeal of the ruling I became convinced that there was so much to do and so little time to do it. Eventually, the ruling was overturned, but I learned that choosing the right novel or other reading material to meet the needs and interests of the students as well as the course objectives can become a monumental task, but a satisfying one.

Censorship has a way of rearing its ugly head at the most unexpected times.  One time the school received a call from an agitated parent who was horrified that the English Department was trying to convert her son to Buddhism because of the cover of Hesse’s Siddartha.  It is true that the figure of Buddha appeared on the cover, but the purpose of using this novel was to demonstrate the importance of man’s searching for the truth, not to convert her son to Buddhism. 

Another time, late one afternoon, the principal rushed into my office and asked whether I knew the meaning of transcendentalism.  An angry parent in his office wanted to remove his daughter from the class where the teacher was teaching Satanism through Emerson. My challenge was trying to find a way of explaining a difficult concept to an angry man with a very limited education. After he had a chance to explain his problem, he pointed out that he had told his daughter what she had to believe.  Once I could get him to discuss the source for his belief, my moment came.  He was satisfied when he realized that what he had done to his daughter, Emerson had been doing through transcendentalism, that is to decide what was right in his own thinking and beliefs.  He thanked me, shook hands and told the principal that his daughter would be back in the class.

However frustrating and time-consuming these activities are, they are just as valuable.  These situations gave me an opportunity to use whatever knowledge I had about literature to destroy what people were trying to do through censorship.  These encounters supported my philosophy of better living through education.

A significant reason for my long tenure is being active professionally. In 1947, I joined the Michigan Education Association and the National Education Association, two organizations whose purpose was to help improve education through legislative means. Being a member of the Board of Directors of the MEA for 15 years and, in 1965, its president, I had a chance to lead the MEA in its implementation of the legislative action that permitted teachers to organize in an effort to improve teaching conditions, and thus, educational practices in the classroom. Although these actions were steps toward my goal, it is safe to say they have not come to full fruition.

To put more emphasis on the improvement of teaching language arts, I became active in the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and the National Council of Teachers of English, serving for 30 years as the Secretary/Treasurer of MCTE.  Writing articles for the journals of both organizations has been a means of promoting my philosophy about testing and the elimination of grammar as an objective. The conferences of both organizations presented a vehicle through which to demonstrate techniques for teaching literature and writing and, importantly, to learn from the experiences of others.  As a member of the MCTE, I was able to become very active on committees and commissions of the State Board of Education and the Department of Education.  Although bureaucracies often move slowly towards important changes, becoming involved with professional organizations must be an integral part of a teacher’s life, particularly if the concern is to promote life-long learning.
 
Some people consider the long summer vacation as a reason for choosing teaching as a career.  It was important. It was a time to relax; to study and prepare for another year; and to catch up on reading and writing.  And yes, even the unexpected snow-day played a big role in keeping my batteries charged.  Important as these times may have been though, they could never surpass the most important reason for my longevity in this career.  My students.  All 12,000 of them.

From the beginning, I determined never to be the authoritarian figure or the disciplinarian.  I learned that if I wanted respect, then I must reciprocate by using my knowledge and skill to help students become human beings.  People.   Subordinates only in age.  I wanted an atmosphere where I was a student learning from the other students in the room.  I gave them every opportunity to talk to me about their choice of topics in their language, not mine.  The process takes time but has great results.  Not having to parrot what I had to say to pass a test helped change attitudes.

Learning new ideas or reaffirming old ones is one of the richest values to come from being in the classroom with active students. It is also a good reason for staying on the job.  In a very practical way, if an adult wants to become literate in this technological society, the best sources are often students, who have not only the information but also the ability to disseminate it effectively.  They can be great teachers.  In class, frequently, I was not sure that what I heard was English.  On the other hand, through their slang they brought change to the language and found ways of communicating that opened new avenues of opportunity for all of us once they knew I was interested and wanted to become more knowledgeable about their world.  So much of our lives are based upon tradition, but the students can break through those traditions of sex, views of religion, treatment of friends or family.   I sometimes envy the strength and courage they use in facing a very cruel world of sexism, poverty, racism, or violence.  I have learned from watching them demonstrate their values of honesty and integrity.  These students, about whom adults may be critical, are valuable sources of information and life. The reports from these students, when they return after graduation or keep in touch by writing about their lives, also make teaching vitally important.  These are gifts that no amount of money could purchase.

I have learned much about their feelings and frustrations from their classroom writing or from their conversations outside school.  One of my sophomore boys chose not to do any writing.  When we talked about it, his reason was that he was not comfortable with the topics.  My response for him was to choose one of his own ideas.  When he turned in the composition, I returned it, not with red marks, but with comments about his style, writing ability, and excellent ideas.  The next week, he met me at my door with a paper about which he said, “Here is something I just had to write.”

Another student called me at home and said, “I have just completed Ecclesiastes and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  I don’t understand why Hamlet had to die.  May I come over for a chat?”  Who could ask for a better way of enjoying an evening?

A senior’s desire to learn beyond what he was doing in my AP English class is another example of the satisfaction that comes with a devotion to teaching. He wanted to talk in greater depth about novels and poetry.  As a result, we met at my home every Monday evening for about three hours to talk—not as student and teacher but two people with a common interest—about literature, art, music, or just life. 

A teacher can never know when he or she has done something that will make a difference in a student’s life.  A few years ago, I was reading a composition when the telephone rang.  When I answered, the caller identified herself as one of my students who had graduated 30 years ago.  She was reading a paper from one of her law students.  She said, “As I was reading this paper, I remembered my own research paper in your class and had to call and let you know the value of that class.”   Where else can great memories like that be made?

My home has always been available to my students and they know they are welcome.  Now that I have retired, these memories are even more important.  The epitome of this relationship with my students came on a hot day this summer.  A college graduate, whose friendship I have valued very much, called with this message, "Ray, would you be interested in a gin-and-tonic?" This kind of relationship supports my philosophy that we are all human beings.  Although the drink was refreshing, the compatibility between two people, two generations, two human beings made the moment so special.  What is more important is that it represents the real reason for my 64 years of teaching “those teenagers.”

Having come to the end of a teaching assignment-certainly not a career—leaves a person with many mixed emotions.    Great memories live on, however, replaying the many reasons for teaching so long—the daily challenges, the compatible teacher and administrative staff, and the professional activities.  Among these reasons—love of the profession, the enjoyment of working with people—the most important is the commitment to help young people develop into thinking human beings with a desire to make the world a better place for having been part of it.