Wise Up!
Education
By David Bruce
Athens NEWS Contributor
February 25, 2008
• Children’s book author Barbara Park — creator of Junie B. Jones — got a college degree in teaching, but after some bad experiences in the classroom, she discovered very quickly that she did not want to teach. For example, when Barbara did her student teaching at a rural junior high school, the experienced teacher she was supposed to be assisting simply handed her a geography textbook and told her, “There you go — teach.”
One day, when she was alone with the class, she decided to hold a geography bee, but she had not learned how noisy a group of students can get when a competition is exciting. Eventually, an angry voice came from the intercom in the room, but Barbara decided to ignore it because she didn’t like talking to machinery instead of people — it took her years to go through her first drive-through at a fast-food restaurant. The voice kept demanding to talk to the classroom teacher, and eventually the students said, “Our teacher isn’t here.” (She really wasn’t; Barbara was just the classroom teacher’s student assistant.)
After a lot of confusion, the voice of authority coming from the intercom told the students, “You’re being far too loud, so we’re sending a student teacher down there to take charge.” Barbara still could not bring herself to talk to machinery, so the students informed the voice of authority that they already had a student teacher: Barbara. Barbara doesn’t remember exactly what happened after that. (Apparently, the memory is too traumatic, so she has repressed it.) However, she did quickly stop teaching, and eventually she started writing for children — lovers of children’s literature definitely think she made a good trade of careers.
• When Alex Rodriguez went into a slump early in his career, he struck out against Roger Clemens with the bases loaded. On television, Alex cursed and threw his bat. Watching the game and seeing Alex’s poor behavior was his old Boys Club coach, Eddie Rodriguez, who telephoned and told him, “Your actions can shame everyone who helped you get this far. You embarrass your family, friends, coaches, and mentors, like Mr. [J.D.] Artega [Sr., a father figure to Alex]. No one can act perfectly all the time. Everyone makes mistakes. But we must always strive to do the right thing. That means playing hard and honorably. In doing so, you honor all those people who supported you throughout your life.” Mr. Rodriguez resolved to do his best to “always strive to do the right thing.”
• When Gabrielle Reece started playing volleyball at Florida State University, her coach, Cecile Reynaud, knew that she needed to make a lot of improvement, and so Coach Reynaud had Ms. Reece practice serving the ball to the middle. To motivate Ms. Reece to do her best, Coach Reynaud would order the entire team to run a suicide drill whenever a ball did not hit the desired spot on the court. Coach Reynaud was a good life coach as well as a good volleyball coach. When Ms. Reece had a chance to model as well as play volleyball, Coach Reynaud advised her to do both, but to remember to concentrate on whatever she was supposed to concentrate on at a particular time. In Coach Reynaud’s words, “When you are here, you are here. When you are there, you are there.”
• When the United States entered World War II, it suffered defeat after defeat in the Pacific. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took great pains to explain the geography of battle to the American people. In February of 1942, he urged Americans to buy a map and to use it when he spoke about the war in the Pacific during his fireside chats on the radio. Americans in fact did just that. Many stores sold their entire stock of maps, and a great percentage of Americans listened to President Roosevelt on the radio. Why did President Roosevelt do this? He wanted the American people to know the immense distances that supplies had to be shipped in order to reach the armed forces, and he believed that if they understood that, “they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin.”
• Actor Robert Clary survived a number of concentration camps, including Buchenwald, during the Holocaust. He is best known for playing the character of Corporal Louis LeBeau in the TV sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes,” which is set in a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. He lectures frequently about the Holocaust, and he creates art that depicts scenes of peace. Mr. Clary says, “My wish is that 100 years from now when a teacher asks a student to face a map of the world, to close his eyes and point to a place on the map … when that child opens his eyes, wherever he has pointed, that place in the world will be at peace … no wars, no famine, no hatred.”
• When Mandy Moore was a little girl, her mother got her a voice teacher, but her mother told the teacher, “If she doesn’t have any talent, tell me. I don’t want to waste your time.” In 1999, teenager Mandy got a hit with the single “Candy,” which propelled her album “So Real” into a million-copy seller in only 12 weeks. Of course, Mandy quickly became a star. She said back then, “There are people selling ‘What Mandy signed in my fifth-grade yearbook’ on the Internet and that’s just scary.”
• Some students are manipulative. For example, a student may cry instead of producing the work that is due. Germaine Greer, author of “The Female Eunuch,” has been a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. Ms. Greer says that this was her standard response to these manipulative, crying students: “Don’t you dare cry. I’m the one who should be crying. It’s my time and effort that’s being wasted.”
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