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Q: Who was your favorite teacher?
Scott K Fish
Last days of school. Boarding the school bus for home. Weekends. School vacations and graduation days. These were my favorite moments of each school year.
My first day of kindergarten at Wisdom Lane School I crawled along the classroom perimeter, out of my teacher’s view, out the door into the hallway, toward the sun shining through glass doors at the hallway’s end. Freedom.
When I heard footsteps advancing behind me, I stood up and ran toward my freedom. It was not to be. Miss Gardella grabbed me around my waist, lifted me, and carried me, screaming, back into the classroom.
My K–12 school experience improved after that first day, but it never felt as if it improved too much. See, when I was age 5, I discovered my Uncle Bob’s drum set. I knew then, at age 5, I wanted to play drums for a living. For many people, school is where they discover their life’s work. I discovered mine before I started school. So school was very much a 13-year holding pen where I could pursue my life’s work only when school was out.
My life is in three overlapping phases. 1: Music. 2: Writing. 3: Politics. Music was my first love. In my mid-teens writing was a new love. But I decided a teenager hadn’t enough life experience to write the Great American Novel, and so I refocused on music. In my late 20s writing was my dominant interest, my livelihood, my means of hashing out thoughts on newer interests, i.e., politics.
My favorite teachers throughout the phases of my life were family, lifelong friends, strangers, coworkers, books, music. Sometimes what I learned from these teachers was of immediate use. Other times their ideas stayed with me unused for decades.
I can’t remember my high school typing teacher’s name, but her teaching me to type is of enormous value. Art Simeone, my high school music teacher, liked me for some reason. I was not interested then in learning to read music. Still, Mr. Simeone had me bring my drums to his home. He’d play jazz piano and coach me on accompanying him. Years later, auditioning with the Millard Cowan piano trio for my first professional gig, I was sitting behind the drum set in front of a live audience, scared, but remembering what Art Simeone taught me: “Keep that ride cymbal going, Scotty.” I got the gig. Playing drums six nights a week for two years!
Claire and Chet Fish Jr., my parents, taught me the fundamentals of reading, writing, religion, critical thinking, honesty. They allowed me to fail and gave me the gumption to start all over again.
May Ross and Charlotte Carrie were my great teachers of how laws are really made in the State House.
Max Roach opened for me the concept of melodic drumming.
Rudolf Flesch’s books help me write simply, briefly.
I am grateful to everyone who taught me a valuable lesson, making my favorite teacher, well . . . life. No offense, Miss Gardella.
Sean Faircloth
My mother has always collected obituaries, so I learned to pay attention to them, too. In 1997, when Lady Diana was killed, I read the year-end obituaries. It was all Lady Di. My hero Justice William Brennan also died that year, but Brennan’s vast impact on history was barely noted. So I started compiling obituaries myself, but with an eye for true impact and not just celebrity. (While my mother clips obituaries from newspapers, I cut and paste mine from the Internet, so it’s easy to be more selective.)
Sure, make fun, but collecting obituaries is a great way to reflect on the impact one passionate person can make. One obit I saved was Robert E. Fulton Jr., an inventor whose 70 patents included a car that could fly. A standout on my list of people who died in 2008 was Irena Sendler, who repeatedly risked her life to save 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust. Obituary collecting is a terrific education, central to the style of learning my mother conveys.
I didn’t live with my mother Janice growing up, but we were quite close.
Throughout my childhood, she had the confidence in me to discuss Bertrand Russell’s books, Paul Robeson’s singing, Chet Baker’s trumpeting, the scuttling claws of T. S. Eliot—and interesting obituaries.
I lived with my dad and stepmom, Marilyn, both teachers. In our living room, dad taught politics, Shakespeare, baseball, and classic movies. I learned from my folks that whatever was happening in my teenage years wasn’t the only interesting thing that’s ever happened. I learned to savor people from every time—from ancient Greece to today’s newspaper. You’ve seen guys with Elvis pompadours, stuck somewhere in time as if glazed in amber. Not bad people, but my folks convinced me if you’re interested in James Madison today, you’re more likely to participate in whatever comes in the year 2020, not ossified in some youthful heyday.
My father is a teacher by profession, my mother, Jan, a teacher by instinct, but Marilyn, my stepmother (mom), I think of as a natural-born teacher.
I took her math class. Once, in seventh grade during the pledge of allegiance, I had one hand over my heart, the other in my pocket. She stopped the class, pointed at me, and commanded that I show proper respect for our flag. I obeyed this daughter of a submarine chief petty officer! Thanks to her, I’m still distressed by disrespect for our flag. I’m not talking protesters; I’m talking widespread slovenly disrespect. Marilyn doesn’t approve.
Many people today dress slovenly. Not Marilyn. Mom dresses neatly, staying trim at 70. She teaches that respect—and self-respect—need not be harsh. Marilyn has an incredible ability to make anybody welcome. She can’t rattle off lists of dead people with their corresponding life stories, but she teaches us to remember the names of nieces and nephews, of second cousins—and to listen to each person with respect.
It’s just one of my parents’ lessons I strive to relearn daily.
