School House Diary: Reflections of a Retired Educator

By Jerry L. Roberts

Every teacher knows that a day in the classroom is always full of surprises, successes, failures, and inspirational moments. In the poignant memoir School House Diary, longtime educator shares anecdotesboth tragic and humorousthat detail his nearly thirty years as a social studies teacher, coach, and student advocate in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Jerry Roberts began his career as a high school history teacher not as a green twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate, but as a four-year Army veteran and father of two young children. As he details the antics, humorous incidents, and human tragedy that often unfolded on a daily basis in his classroom, Roberts offers an eye-opening glimpse into the life of a teachera life that often includes switching roles from history teacher to surrogate parent to armchair psychologist. From the helicopter Mom who had difficulty letting her daughter grow up to the pregnant twelve-year-old student to the driven high school student who learned that leadership requires building trust in others, Roberts shines a fascinating light into the challenging world of an educator.

School House Diary is a compelling collection of essays that prove that teachers truly make a difference every day in the lives of their students.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462008186

Jerry L. Roberts

Jerry Roberts earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University, a master’s degree from Xavier University, and a principal’s certificate from the University of Dayton. He worked for twenty-seven years as a teacher, coach, and student advocate until his retirement in 2005. He currently resides with his wife, Lee, in Cincinnati, Ohio

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Contents

To the Reader

About the Author

Acknowledgments

A Vicious Cycle

A Couple of Pricks

American, Please

Classroom Humor

Does Anyone Hear Me?

Drive-By Staring

The Day the Fish Died

Give Me the Bat, Mom

Got Ya

Helicopter Mom

Hello, I Am, Like, Socrates

I Survived To Tell the Story

Jimmy, What If?

Keep Them Calm

Make Him Stop!

Okay, I Get It, Finally!

Oops

Our Dear President

Stressful Meeting

Survival of the Feces

The Melee

The Colonel

The Good Die Young

The Intervention

The Klan

The Sirens’ Call

The Vendor

This One Is For You

Touchè

What Are You Doing, Man?

When Was Color Invented?

Here’s Johnny!

Keeping Score

Is That Mine?

Please Love Me

You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover

Final Thoughts

To the Reader

Teaching is the profession that teaches all other professions.

Anonymous

I don’t really know why I became an educator. I was not a gifted student in high school. But I was a curious kid. My dad would often scold me for asking too many questions. Being curious, it turns out, is paramount to becoming a good engineer, artist, or any career, for that matter. Curiosity drove me to be a reader, especially of history books, and thus I developed a love for learning.

Similarly, attending college was not on my parents’ radar screen for me or my five brothers and sisters. I grew up in a working class family. My parents migrated from the hills of Kentucky to Ohio during the Great Depression, just prior to WWII. Neither had much schooling, nor did they encourage me or my siblings to pursue education beyond high school. It was not that they were. anti-education; they never had a chance to be educated. Instead, their focus was to raise their children in a safe, nurturing home, and instill solid values and good character. I think they were successful for the first five children, but I sometimes have grave doubts about myself, the spoiled baby of the family.

Oddly, my first glimpse of the future came from my next door neighbor, Dorothy, the mother of my grade school buddy Jimmy. I was in the fourth grade and had received a D in history. I don’t remember how she knew about my bad grade, but she told me I could do better and asked if I would let her help me. I said yes. She tutored me for one grading period, and I got an A on my next report card. Her positive influence gave me confidence that I could be a good student. I have never forgotten her pure act of love. She was proof to me that we are all teachers. Children are always watching and learning from adults. Our actions and words are creating narratives in the lives of our children and our neighbor’s children that will play out for decades.

It was therefore no accident that twenty years later I stood before my first class as a high school history teacher. I was not a twenty two-year-old kid just out of college. I was a thirty-year-old man with four years in the United States Army and two young children. I had prepared myself intellectually to be an educator, but what I had not prepared for was the great emotional satisfaction and the enormous challenge of being a role model for students.

I quickly discovered teaching was much more than dispensing information to a group of students eager to learn. Sometimes over the years, I wondered if I were a history teacher or a psychologist. There were times when I felt I needed to study Freudian theory more than the Socratic method of teaching. But as time marched on, I discovered that to be an effective teacher, one had to not only master the art of pedagogy and one’s educational discipline but to also strive to become a better human being in the process. An effective teacher in today’s America must not only be competent but also be alert for students who are battered, drug addicted, or suicidal, as well as a plethora of other conditions that are sad realities in our society.

It is precisely because teaching has become so challenging that great teachers are needed now more the ever before. Students pay close attention to their teachers. They study a teacher’s every move and scrutinize each word. I can’t tell you how many times a student noticed if I got a haircut or bought a new tie. Sometimes, during my career, I would despair that I was not having a positive effect on my students. And then, out of the blue would come a call from a parent who would tell me how much her child loved my class and now wanted to be a history teacher. Recently, I received an e-mail from a former student from the mid 1980s, telling me that I helped him achieve his life-long goals. Teachers change lives for the better, and that makes educators very special.

In 1995, I began writing down stories about my teaching experiences. Some stories were based on current teaching experiences, and others were taken from the early years of my career. Some stories are funny, while others are very sad. All stories are true. The purpose of the book is to share some of the experiences throughout my career and to give a small glimpse of the life of a teacher. There are thousands of other stories, especially about brave kids who have overcome all odds to become successful adults. I have the utmost respect and admiration for the kids who have the grit and determination to look failure in the face and say, I will not fail. I am a winner.

More than anything, I believe that I was a lucky man to have been a teacher for almost thirty years. I had the opportunity to do something I loved. I was a part of something bigger than myself. I was doing important work for the youth of our nation. My reward was not financial; it was spiritual. When a student looked at me with admiration or I received sincere thanks from a parent that was my remuneration. I thank all my students for the opportunity to serve them.

About the Author

Jerry received his bachelor’s degree from Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio. He holds a master’s degree from Xavier University, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a principal’s certificate from the University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio.

Jerry worked for twenty-seven years as a social studies teacher, coach, and student advocate, until his retirement in 2005. Additionally, Jerry has been a speaker, both locally and in state-wide educational conventions. Jerry was a key person in the redesign of a large vocational school, which transformed the school from a conventional vocational school model into a successful academy. He has also been a presenter in many staff development workshops. Jerry was acknowledged as a proven innovator and motivator of students and teachers during his career.

Jerry has continued to be involved in education since his retirement. He was a consultant for American Federation of Teachers between 2005 and 2006. He has volunteered at a local high school helping students prepare for state achievement tests. Recently, Jerry was a member of a North Central Accreditation Team in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Prior to his career as an educator, Jerry worked at General Motors and Square D Corporation. Jerry also served for four years in the United States Army. Jerry currently resides with his wife, Lee, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Acknowledgments

I had the privilege of spending almost thirty years of my life as a teacher. I hope I inspired each and every one of my students to pursue their dreams in life. Being a teacher was a great source of happiness and satisfaction.

I would like to give a special thanks to all the wonderful friends and colleagues who enriched my life over the years. You have a special place in my life. Also, I wish to acknowledge Heather Harper for her editorial expertise. Her work was a key ingredient in the successful completion of this book.

Finally, and most importantly, without my wife this book would never have been written. Her positive encouragement lifted me on days when I became frustrated. She read, reread, and edited my stories, always with love and the gentle encouragement to move forward.

Thank you, Lee—you are my Lady Rob.

A Vicious Cycle

Reducing teen pregnancy and birth is one of the most

effective ways of preventing poverty in America.

Jordan Brown

When I first heard the bad news, I was both shocked and dismayed. I was shocked that this could happen to a twelve-year-old girl, a girl who in an ideal world should be laughing and playing with her favorite Barbie Doll. Kiani was a girl who’s only concern should have been what outfit she was going to wear to school, or if she was going to get a love note from the boy who smiled at her in the hallway the day before. I was dismayed; I feared for her future. Honestly, I feared for all our futures, because this phenomenon was occurring with extraordinary frequency across the country and still is. Yes, you guessed correctly—she was pregnant.

As the girls huddled in the back of the room to discuss the good news, I was fighting back an urge to vomit. I wanted to run back to those girls and scream, What in the hell is the matter with you kids? Have you lost your minds? Don’t any of you understand the implications of this irresponsible behavior? Who is going to raise this child? Oh, I know—how about your crack head mom? Or perhaps your dad will step up. Oh, I forgot. He is still in prison for whatever; and what about those two drug-dealing brothers of yours who kick your ass every day and terrorize you and your mother? Of course, I held my tongue; other folks like counselors and social workers were already involved. Maybe the experts could put the genie back in the bottle.

But I knew there would be no miracle; no divine intervention was in the making. Life doesn’t work that way. The rules of life are often cold and hard; second chances are rare. Life is more existential than righteous. This poor girl had been handed a life full of people who died in the streets. For her, and the girls who supported her, sex equaled love, and a baby was evidence that someone, even for a brief moment, loved them.

She gave birth to a boy that August. By then, I had been transferred to another school within the district. I lost track of Kiani for four years. In 2001 she enrolled in the vocational high school where I was working as a student