What Teachers Do You Remember?

~ By Vonnie Davis

I was blessed to have the same English teacher for both my sophomore and senior years of high school, back in '64 and '66. Miss Campbell was a walking grammar force. A compact lady, she always wore a suit, a matching three-strand set of beads, and thick heels. Her class was ruled with her iron-clad-pursed lips. She stalked the aisles between the desks, beads rattling in her fingers and looking down her nose at us as she barked grammar rules.

Heaven help you if you slouched in your chair or came to her class with a pencil that needed sharpening or didn't have neatly written homework ready to turn in. She suffered no fools.

Back then, we diagramed sentences and learned the structure and meaning of every word contained within one.

Miss Campbell with a fuzzy head of red hair owned an ugly faded brown suit she wore only on days she planned to spring a surprise quiz on us. Word quickly spread through the halls. "Quick! Study! Campbell's wearing that nasty brown suit." We were all trembling with nerves when we walked into her room. The map was pulled down to cover the precisely written quiz on the blackboard. And when she zipped that map up, you had ten minutes of brain-wracking hell ahead of you. While I remember all she taught me--and it was a lot--I never saw her smile.

My son, a language arts teacher, operates by a rule: Never let your students see you smile until after Christmas. His students call him Professor Shubert. He puts on a demonstration the first day of school. A 5th degree black belt, he sets up a concrete block display to break with his hand.


Then he glares at his students and tells them there will be no disciplinary problems in his class. He tells them his room is a safe zone. No one gets to them unless they go through him. Some days he plays his guitar with raps he's made up with grammar rules. He has them place their chairs in a circle and he teaches by the Socrates method to encourage them to think on a deeper level. Every year he's voted the best teacher at the school.

Oh, he can be cranky. His room is his domain. He teaches his way. His students score high. And he expects to be left alone. He's happy his classes have not been audited or evaluated in three years, although he did ask the principal to sit in on one of his Socrates sessions to show him how this ancient method could work with 7th and 8th graders.

To Steve's delight, the students asked the principal questions, too, forcing him to join in the discussion. The administrator found Steve's students quiet, respectful, engrossed in the subject matter, and doing well. This included the lower-ranked classes Steve had emotionally built up by telling them no one thought they could learn this way. But he had faith in them. They snatched onto his faith and excelled. Steve believes in teaching up, not teaching down.

Steve and my high school junior granddaughter. She attends the Maryland School of the Arts for vocal music and theory.

Allison Moore the heroine in NIKO: Licensed to Kill is a high school Art teacher. I wonder what impression she makes on her students? Is she strict or open to new teaching styles? Boring or engaging?

EXCERPT FROM NIKO: LICENSED TO KILL ...

While the young man wasn’t blatantly tall, he was excessively male. Sex appeal oozed from every pore on his skin. Alyson’s body responded, which surprised her. She’d thought that part of her body long dead after a near sexless marriage.

With the firm and muscled, yet slender build of many European men, she judged him to be around thirty. He had an olive complexion and short, wavy black hair styled like that of a GQ model. His eyes were dark and angry.

What’s his problem? I’m the one held here against my will, hungry and thirsty. And, dammit, I have to pee.

The older man sat while Macho Male prowled the room like a tightly-reigned panther.

“Ms. Moore, I’m Field Supervisor Henri Moreau. I head the French task force on counterterrorism. The irritated man behind me is my second in command, Niko Reynard.”

The young man deigned to spare her a nod in greeting. Oh, she knew the type.

She nodded once in return with a dose of her own attitude. After all, she hadn’t been a teacher all these years without perfecting a piercing glare. One of his dark eyebrows quirked in response and a corner of his mouth quivered for an instant as if he were a heartbeat away from laughing at her. She hiked her chin and held eye contact with him for a few seconds.

Touché.

Okay, so she was being bitchy, but after all she’d been through today, frankly she didn’t give a crap.

“We’ve reviewed the Louvre’s security tapes and completed a thorough background check on you.” Moreau flipped open a manila file. “You’re a high school art teacher from Asheville, North Carolina. Went to university at Duke. Additional studies in New York City. Worked for two years at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.” His head nodded as he cited her life’s history, almost as if it were nothing more than another series of boring facts—which unfortunately it was.

“You’ve been teaching art for thirteen years. Married for twelve. No children.” His gaze rose to hers. “You’re recently divorced. Your husband…”

“Ex-husband.” She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. She may have to put up with this interrogation, but she didn’t have to like it. Nor did she appreciate having strangers inventory her personal life, no matter how damn boring it was.

He spared her the briefest of smiles. She closed her eyes, sensing what was coming next. “Your ex-husband is now living an openly gay lifestyle--"

A wounded sound escaped from her chest, her broken heart giving one last whimper of pain, perhaps. Robert had hurt her so badly.

Macho Male stopped pacing behind his partner and nudged him with his elbow. “Gentillesse, Henri.”

"Of course, one must always be gentle." The older man glared at her. "If it is appropriate."

 

BUY LINK:  http://a.co/4H8W7Xn    

BOOK TWO... JEAN-LUC: Once is Never Enough releases June 13th.  

COULD SOMEONE DIM THOSE SPOTLIGHTS, PLEASE? --Vonnie Davis

The spotlight shines on me today at Roses of Prose, and I’m squirming in my seat wondering how I'll introduce myself--one of the "new" yet old roses on the vine. What can I possibly say to engage and entertain? Granted, I’m a writer, but my heroines—strong women, all—and my heroes—alpha males with a soft caramel center—are more interesting to write about than myself.

For you see, I am the typical late bloomer. I didn’t start college until the age of forty-four. The love of my life didn’t enter my life until I was fifty-five. And I didn’t start writing seriously until I was in my early sixties. But I do have a wild and crazy variety of life experiences that spill over into my writing.



What was it like going to college with kids the same ages or younger than my children, who were college students themselves? It was a blast! At the time, I worked in a factory on third shift as one of three women working with sixty-seven men. Tough odds, I'll admit. I was a member of the machinists’ union, read blueprints, ran machines and worked in the oil and dredge of heavy steel industries.

After my shift ended at seven in the morning I’d rush home, shower and change before dashing off to campus.  

I was a full-time student at Penn State, majoring in Business Management and English with a concentration in technical writing. Slowly I became the campus mom; the person homesick kids went to with their problems.

Yet, it was my sons I called in the evening when I couldn’t do my homework. I struggled with sciences, and my youngest was majoring in micro-biology. A collegiate wrestler, he shared an apartment with five other wrestlers. One night when I called for help, Mike yelled to his roommates, “Hey, guys, quiet down! I’m trying to help my mom with her homework.” Of course, his roomies responded with various questions like When is she making us more brownies? Is she bringing us some more jars of homemade spaghetti sauce? Ask her to make us those yummy stuffed shells like she did last time she was here. Men, we do know how they think, don’t we?

My oldest son transferred to my campus for his final semester so he could say he went to college with his mom. What fun we had. To be sure, my college years were a special time.

On the tenth anniversary of my divorce, I bought a bottle of wine, Chinese takeout and a bag of Oreos. Folks, I was determined to have one last pity party and finally—finally—get that man out of my system. A few hours later in a wine-MSG-sugar-induced moment of madness, I went online and filled out a profile on match dot com. I woke up the next morning with a start, head throbbing, vision doubled, mouth tasting as if a herd of buffalo had roamed through it and an obscure, wild memory that I’d put myself out on the internet for every wacko to find. Surely I hadn’t done that! Surely not…

But I had. Did the wackos find me? Oh, yeah. They came in droves. Oh, the horrors!

Then one day, Calvin sashayed into my mailbox on a jazzbeat and a smile—a gentleman with southern charm, a retired English teacher and a writer. We met for the first time at a Barnes and Noble. He was standing by the door holding a bouquet of red roses, and I was entranced.

That was eight years ago. Since then we’ve married. I retired as a techincal writer and, with Calvin’s encouragement, started writing. Last month we each had a book released. His The Phantom Lady of Paris is set on the Left Bank of Paris in 1968. My Storm’s Interlude is a contemporary romance full of family love and passion set in the hill country of Texas.

Having shared all this, I suppose if there’s one thing I can pass along to you, it’s that one is never too old to pursue his or her dreams. Age be damned. Truly. For it is our spirits that define us. No matter how downtrodden or damaged or dinged our spirits are, they’ll always rise to the occasion. They’ll whisper in our ears, “Let’s try it. Let’s see what we can do, shall we?”

I'll be here posting the 12th and 27th of every month. Write on!