I never wanted to lose any of my students to the lure of “get along” and “just enough.” I wanted them to be better as much as they could.

I took the ones at borderline failure to beyond empty “proficiency” to realizing they had something to say and finding ways to say it.

The “better” classes, Honors and Advanced Placement, I wanted to go beyond high school and get their feet college wet.

I seemed to have developed a reputation for being tough on grades. I didn’t like the system of imposing numbers and letters until it was absolutely necessary. I wanted us collaboratively to see where they were at the beginning of the semester, and then work intensively together to the end where the standard was waiting and we could see and agree how close they came.

I liked giving A’s at the end, and they liked feeling and realizing they had earned them.

Some students decided not to go through the process and transferred out to other teachers and certain easy grades. I was aware of the problem. I had encountered it way back when I was teaching fifth grade. A student came in with his father to request a transfer. I gave in but with a warning – work hard, make the best of your choice. After a week the student came back with his father, begged me to take him back. I said with the assurance I didn’t always manifest, like a Biblical judge: “Sorry. You had your chance. You made your bed, now you must lie in it.”

I may misremember the details, but in high school I had a student who requested a transfer out. He argued that as a young Black male he carried the burden of needed demonstrable success for what he called “the whole race.” He said he had been accepted by Harvard on an athletic scholarship (is there such a thing?) and he needed the A grade, but wasn’t sure he would get it in my class. He wanted the teacher where the grade was assured. I let him go with the caution: If the college made a commitment to you for admission, that doesn’t mean they have to keep you. They have standards to uphold, and even if you’re not in my class, I can help you know what those standards are and how to meet them. He thanked me, but no thanks, they’ve accepted me already. Affirmative action. The first year in college he flunked out.

I felt I’d lost another one.

I tried very hard, went out of my way to engage the students to want the best they were capable of, to settle for nothing less. I took the Biblical dictum to “take the least of these” but didn’t want any one to settle for being “least.” I didn’t have the time to find the ways to “save” every single one, and I discover in my files a rather remarkable, funny, earnest attempt to encourage a student to allow me to teach him.

				Date: 5/18/83 (i.e., about time, i.e., overdue…)
Letter to ___Herring: ( no smoked herring jokes, no pickled herring, just fishing)

Dear ___:
	Another chat. Because you’ve burdened me with a great sense of regret/loss/guilt; because the stuff you wrote for Mrs. L___  is wonderful, delightful, free easy and fun, and I’m jealous. And the stuff you showed me from your Amer. Lit class w. S-B is pretty good also (more about that below). And what you’ve written for me is so wonderful but there’s so little of it that I’ve:
___turned you off?
___failed to stimulate you?
___intimidated/inhibited you?
___bored/repelled you (these all seem to sound alike)?
___other__________________

This crushes me. Not just my fragile ego, because I (notice how many times I use I?) forget about it (i.e., ego); but because I (sorry) can’t stand to think of you as one that (who) got away.
Yes, the fishing metaphor. (change the bait? Fix the hook? Pay out more line? Deeper water? Uh…)
Pop psychology (which I don’t know) tells me that maybe:

___senioritis has struck (infected)?
___you’ve mentally graduated?
___the vast scheme of things doesn’t include the last semester?
___whatever happened in lst sem. AP was a blow from which you’ve not quite recovered and falling into a “mere” “Creative Writing” class by default is demeaning and…?
___other_________________

Because I cherish the illusion that I can/could teach you some things, that some of the suggestions I might be able to make might have some value to them, but that I need more texts of yours to interact with, I’m issuing a cry for help. HELP! This is the teacher begging the student to let him teach him. Because a mind is a turrible thing to waste. Not that you are. And you don’t hate English. And you like/love to read, and also to write (yes, you do, you know you do). So here am I a resource you’re not taking advantage of, someone you’ve dismissed? Have I:
___pushed/hovered too much?
___not enough?
___who cares?
___other_________________

Please let me know how one does catch a herring.

OK. Enough with the praise. Now down to business. Re: your Scarlet Letter wrap-up as a study in isolation. You do something special very naturally here, you make an assigned topic seem as if it were your own, your own choice of approach to the book. (This is praise. I can’t seem not to…) 

Suggestion: Another level of consideration: each character is isolated from himself (and attempts an unsuccessful re-integration), isolated from his God or the source of his redemption (and attempts to recover a relationship with that source), and perhaps even (I’d have to look at the book again to check this off-the-top-of-the-head speculation) isolated from the source of rejuvenation imagery and rhetoric (i.e., do the patterns of language/expression change?)…

Re: The Tell-Tale Heart: Again, you fulfill the assignment with intelligent diligence; but it’s time now for you to consider such things as the quality of the work under evaluation. 

Therefore, you need to read Yvor Winters’ article “Edgar Allan Poe: A Crisis in the History of American Obscurantism”, a copy of which I donated and is on file in our school library. Let me know what you think…

And, by the way, please answer this letter. I don’t mean to be flippant or fatuous.
 	--Mr. Sterling (signed, no, not yet in blood)

25 May, 1983
Mr Sterling:

This is an interesting predicament I find myself in. The pressures, responsibilities, and the pressure for less responsibility I am experiencing have me so preoccupied and confused that I never seem to get anything done. I find this a very frustrating situation, since I have so much work to do with so little time. I’m especially frustrated because even in my most rational, clear-headed moments I don’t really want to do any of it.

Us seniors are a difficult bunch, aren’t we? You are sympathetic naturally, because you were one once. But you can only be sympathetic to a point; in the end you put our noses to the grindstone and (in a sense) force us to work. “You’ll see,” you say, “When you get into college and see how hard it is and how lucky you are that you’re prepared, you’ll thank me.” “Sure we will,” we say, “It’s your job to force us to work.” 

Reasonably, I can say that you are correct. But what does it matter? Is my life not my own to live? Sure, I have ‘obligations’ and ‘responsibilities’, but who can force me to live up to them? Essentially what you the parent, teacher, or ‘leader’ must do is to convince me the student that you know best what is good for me. 

This is hard to do, since I am struggling so hard to be independent after 18 long years living under the iron fist of my parents.

Fourteen days of school, plus a week of finals. After some 3600 days in the Pasadena public school system, this certainly doesn’t seem very long. But this is the longest three weeks I have ever had to endure. Out of all those days, these 14 are the most important. 

I’m making a final statement – to UCSD, to my teachers, to my parents, and to myself. Were I to do well these next few weeks, turn in all of my assignments and reverse my tendency towards ever decreasing GPA’s, I would be proving that I can, in fact, be productive during times of extreme stress such as this. 

Somehow I know this will never happen, however. As evidenced by my performance in the past, when I am faced with as tremendous (for me) a workload as this, I fall apart and accomplish nothing. I rationalize this by considering that once it’s over, once the due date for the term paper has passed, the situation is beyond my control and therefore no longer an immediate problem.

I sit up the night before, struggling to complete the assignment. At one in the morning I raise my head, halfway done and about to fall asleep. I wonder how on earth I will ever finish before seven: I divide the time remaining amongst the remaining tasks, making a schedule, which I then attempt to follow. Within a half an hour, I find that I am already hopelessly behind schedule, so I give up and go to sleep. 

In the morning I am in a panic, but after the class passes, the shameful moment of helplessness, all is well. So, I’ll have to turn it in late. But the scenario is repeated once again when the final day arrives – more often than not I never finish.

So, can you now understand why I am not taking advantage of you as a valuable resource, which I am convinced you are? It is all I can do to get out of bed every morning – I don’t seem to care much anymore. Sometimes I feel that the only reason I come to school and do anything at all is because if I didn’t my parents would take away my car…

(Looks like I’m ending an essay with an apology rather than starting with one – I suppose it’s an improvement, but is it a fluke or does it indicate a change? I often wonder whether I will ever change…)

_______


A student who was not “one who got away.” On the verge of graduation he poured out his ambivalence. He wanted to communicate. I don’t really think he was trying to establish a level of credibility that would translate to a higher grade. He wanted to show me he was mired in the juvenile self-awareness we all go through, to let me know he was “a work in progress.”

Yes, he got his A, and went on to life which took him in.

Another one I didn’t lose after all.