Confessions of an Elementary School Principal

By Meril R Smith

Take a peek! What kinds of things really happen inside an elementary school? The stories in Confessions of an Elementary School Principal will make you laugh. A few may make you cry. Other stories will provide insight into children and teaching. Many will give you pause and someth

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookside Press
• Release date: May 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990695537

Meril R Smith

Meril R. Smith grew up at the end of World War II with children of migrant farm workers, with children born in the Japanese internment camps, and with children of day laborers and blue-collars workers. Poverty, recessions, and helping each other were all basic parts of surviving in his childhood world. Living through the times of the Berlin Wall, epidemics of polio, measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, and chickenpox, economic recessions, the assassination of President Kennedy, the space race, the development of Silicon Valley, the Vietnam War, and the tragedy of 9/11 have all fueled Meril's passion for understanding people and events.

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Copyright © 2022 by Meril R. Smith

ISBN: 978-1-990695-52-0 (Paperback)

978-1-990695-54-4 (Hardback)

978-1-990695-53-7 (E-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Contents

Part 1: Learning to Be a Teacher

It’s OK, Mr. Wallace

Never Be Alone!

Barf Bucket, Anyone?

Lucy and Norman

Teacher Gets a Grade: D-

I Luff You

You Have Fat Legs!

Where Oh Where Has My Student Gone?

Part 2: Coming Home

An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse

Undercover Reader

Wheels Instead of Hands

But the Planetarium Doesn’t Work!

Rock-a-Bye Baby

Part 3: A Principalship

Sakamoto School

Taking On a Veteran

Helicopter Gunships!

Miss Wiggins

Fuck

Cookbook, Anyone?

Abalone or the Hospital?

Part 4: The Very Best Years

What Should Be Done? What Could Be Done?

Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!

Not Feeling Well

Saturday Is Paint Day

Making a Deal with Gangs

No Respect, No Headlights

2:00 a.m. Domestic Violence

Bumper Stickers

Pimps, Prostitutes, and Drug Dealers

Green Tickets

Management vs Discipline

Cleanest School

Drill: Shooter on Campus

Shin Guards, Anyone?

Peeing on the Window

Girls at War!

I’ll Trade You Toilet Paper for Paper Towels

Condoms, Anyone?

The Train Has Left!

My Wife Cost Me $50,000

A Carwash Changed the Future

A Letter from a College Professor

Out of My Mouth?

A Quarter Million What?

Edenvale Memories

Be the Best We Can Be

La Quebradita

Bones!

Part 5: Growing Up Edenvale

Growing Up Edenvale

Everyone Can Accomplish Something

Sara Remembers

I Am an Edenvale Kid

Bilingual

Reflections

New Ways to Learn

Looking Back

A Mom Goes to College

Leadership

More than Just a T-Shirt

Boat People

You Matter!

What’s the Point?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Confessions of an Elementary School Principal

by Meril R. Smith

Reviewed by: Sarah Poulette

The challenge was creating memorable experiences at school that would last children a lifetime.

This engaging memoir of a man who has devoted his life to education has an unlikely start, as Smith was considered one of the dumb kids when he attended school. He did not learn to read until the sixth grade and struggled academically throughout high school and college. With the help of a teacher who believed in him, Smith eventually became an elementary school teacher himself and would go on to spend the majority of his career as a principal. His memoir describes his journey to becoming a principal and explains his educational ideology and its impact on his school, students, and community.

The book's beginning chapters consist mainly of lively and amusing anecdotes about classroom management in Smith's early years of teaching. Interspersed with his memoirs are guest chapters from the people around him at each stage: teachers who worked with him or for him, school secretaries, and even students and their families. Some of these accounts explain a side of education Smith may not have experienced, such as the stringent dress codes for women teachers in the 1960s or the importance of bilingual education. Others show the book's events from alternate points of view. For example, Smith's memorable campaign to increase student literacy rates ended with him sitting on the school's roof in a tutu, and many guest writers recall different facets of this incident. Most chapters include whimsical illustrations or photographs of the people or locations involved, as well as life lessons learned from the experience.

Smith's educational philosophy can be boiled down to one simple rule: treat every person with dignity and respect. But putting that rule into practice proves to be a challenge in several situations. Edenvale Elementary School had countless problems before Smith's arrival as principal there, including underperforming and underprivileged students, apathetic teachers, and even gang activity on campus. Smith's skills in advancing schools' curricula and instruction methods helped the school academically. However, his belief in treating everyone with respect slowly transformed the school and the greater community around it. Scenes of Smith speaking directly to gang members about keeping school safe and neutral, introducing himself around the local neighborhood every weekend, and treating children's parents who were drug dealers or prostitutes with dignity effectively show how Smith applies his educational philosophy in everyday settings.

Despite demonstrating the author's clear expertise in school management, Smith's memoir also shows his humility by including his struggles alongside his successes, such as school budget cuts that leave him bartering with other schools for toilet paper or figuring out how to help students feel safe when mass shootings become more frequent in the media. His reminiscences include relevant historical facts that remind readers that schools are never separate from the world around them, such as the effects of the new influx of Vietnamese refugees after the Vietnam War. However, the majority of chapters have a light and humorous aspect to them, such as the time the remnants of a pretend archeological dig frightened builders or the sitcom-like moment when Smith proudly promised children scholarships without realizing how many students would eventually take him up on the promise.

Some chapters delve into details of curriculum planning while others offer solely personal life stories. This blend ensures that the author's book has something for both fellow educators and the average reader. By contrast, the life lessons throughout the book are useful and enjoyable for anyone. More than a simple memoir of a career in education, this is an inspiring story of how one person's belief in treating others with respect can make a difference in countless lives of children and families.

Confessions of an Elementary School Principal

Meril R. Smith

Reviewed by: Liz Konkel

This memoir delivers a collection of memories that Meril R. Smith shares about his time as principal at Edenvale School and the journey he took to get there. Every story featured is authentic and comes from a place of love for teaching and being a principal. These stories showcase a wide range of emotions from humorous anecdotes about kids throwing up to serious stories about a positive change in a run-down community. These stories shine a light on how a school is more than a building but the heart of a community that has a positive impact on the lives of everyone there. Smith includes delightful and heartwarming stories from his wife Barbara, fellow teachers, and former students.

The book weaves from an introduction that explores Smith’s origins in a poor family to failing college – only to start over. These moments set up the essence of the desire that led him to become a teacher and eventually a principal. This book focuses primarily on his time as a principal but each story shared is one that had a deep impact through the smiles, the heart, and the emotion behind it. Each story within the beginning of the book focus on how he started and sets up a tone that’s personal, emotional, and full of heart. The book starts with him as a student teacher in 1964 which weaves into often humorous stories that sum up his experiences. The next parts weave through an overview of different decades with specific stories focused upon, such as his time after the Air Force, a student changing schools, and how a class came together to fix a planetarium.

The book stems from two principles that have guided him, clearly evident in the stories provided: treat everybody with dignity and respect, and heal, repair, and transform the world. The stories featured at the end of the book highlight just how much these two principles played a part in the lives he encountered. These Edenvale memories are sweet and genuine stories from various teachers and students with each sharing the same basic message: the impact the school had on them and how Smith brought change to a run-down community. Among those stories is Barbara Forkash Smith who shares a few of her delightful moments as a teacher such as a student telling her that she has fat legs and returning from a field trip without a student. Each voice included is an example of the community that Smith highlights as part of Edenvale’s identity.

Humor is the basis for most of the stories with each one coming from a place of heart – such as talking about his Miss Wiggins type of secretary and misunderstanding the pronunciation of a child’s name. Smith creates a balance with some of the stories having a serious tone such as focusing on the time when the school was in a bad shape with drugs and crime everywhere in the neighborhood, and the first experience he had with school shooting drills. This led to a shift as they fought for change in what is described as the best years of his career where they established a positive environment and won the cleanest school contest. Life lessons are scattered throughout at the end of various stories which feature profound tidbits that include learning to listen, seeing through the eyes of others, and good teachers are lifelong learners.

Sketches can be found throughout with a playful art style and match the tone of stories while also adding to the humorous aspect of the collection overall. Confessions of an Elementary School Principal is a charming, honest, and endearing collection of stories that focus on heart, community, and change.

Confessions of an Elementary School Principal

Meril R. Smith

Reviewed by: Michaela Gordoni

Confessions of an Elementary School Principal by author Meril R. Smith is a collection of experiences and life lessons for teaching, learned by the author. It also includes a few experiences and testimonies from other teachers, secretaries, and students of Meril Smith. Through the author’s challenges and experiences, the reader can see how Meril’s success at being an educator, principal, and mentor impacted the lives of children that came from struggling Californian communities. The book also demonstrates that really listening and observing are key qualities in a principal; in the education system, listening, observing, and having creativity are important in order to come up with solutions to unique and difficult problems. It also contains brief illustrations as well as photos of people mentioned.

Confessions of an Elementary School Principal is not just full of instructive educational insight, but it also contains many humorous anecdotes that will bring a smile to readers’ faces. One such anecdote relays the creation of a school cookbook with a second grader’s original and especially appetizing recipe: Cooked Carrots: 1. Put a bunch of carrots in a pot, 2. Put some water in the pot, 3. Put the pot on the stove, 4. Boil the carrots for 45 minutes. It also covers serious issues that Meril has faced: school shooting drills, being seen with the parents of students that had morally questionable careers, and condoms being passed around in an elementary school.

I thought that this contained a lot of amusing and useful things that can be used for education. I enjoyed learning about all of the creative solutions that Meril and his staff came up with. There were so many great examples of great teaching and school programs, but one thing I particularly liked is the green ticket incentive mentioned in the book. When a teacher saw a child demonstrating a good behavior or action, they gave them a green piece of paper that the kids could use as raffle tickets for school assembly prizes.

The great thing about this book is that educational insight can be taken away – not just by those that are involved in elementary education, but all the way up to the college level. Confessions of an Elementary School Principal shows that all it takes is one good educator to make a huge influence on thousands of children.

I have been awed and inspired by youngsters,

especially those who attend Edenvale School,

and by the teachers who truly believe

they can and do make the difference in each youngster’s life.

For over a half century, I have enjoyed

the love and support of Barbara Forkash Smith.

For being humbled and inspired by my children:

Rachel Esther Smith

Leah Amy Smith

For the love I share with

grandchildren and great-grandchildren:

Brennen Mathew Smith

Kyle Evans Smith-Doolittle

Laura Elizabeth Smith-Doolittle

Ari