What's that alliteration? It's times like this I miss my English teachers. Well the ones I liked.
My first high school English teacher was Mrs. .. oh you've got to be kidding me... I just had her name on the tip of my tongue... shoot, it's gone now. Anyway, she was a lot of fun. We had to do "me" journals. There were some required pages, and a couple for creativity. I did another for a different teacher at the beginning of my senior year as well. In the one my freshman year, I expressed the interest in being in the Navy. No big surprise there seeing as I was in NJROTC (Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.... ROTC is in college, they throw the J in there for high school students)
Not only did I express the desire to join the Navy, but I wanted to be... wait for it.... a pilot. Not just any pilot either. Fighter pilot. Not just ANY fighter pilot. I wanted to pilot the F/A-18 Hornet. God what a beautiful machine. If I couldn't do that I wanted to be.....hahha...... I wanted to be.....teehee..........I wanted to be a JAG. Yep, a Navy Lawyer! Bwahahahahaha. Me, a lawyer. At the time it sounded like a good idea. Later in high school I decided if I was going to be a JAG, I was going Marine Corps. (you see how that panned out)
Another memorable thing in her class was the "party" we had after finishing Great Expectations. We got to dress up as a character. I believe I dressed up as Miss Haversham. It was neat, except only 2 people in the class dressed up. It was 'extra credit' not 'for a grade'. Lets just say, I was never studious and needed all the help I could get.
Sophomore year, I had a coach for the first semester of English. His name was Coach Seaman. He was pretty cool. I honestly forgot what he coached though. I remember reading Julius Caesar in his class. And *gasp* actually truly enjoyed the play. There was very little discussion, just what he had put on the test basically. And very little of the test seemed to be "understanding" the play. We were allowed to take from it what we were going to, and not what others said we should 'see'. Also I remember that during finals week, my friends and I had exempt our 2nd final of the day, and only had Coach S's to complete. Afterwards we walked up to the theater (this was in January, not spring finals, noooo...)and saw I think The Matrix. For whatever reason my brain ties seeing that in with his class. But whatever.
Junior year, oh Junior year. I got so lucky. I got to have the same teacher BOTH semesters. (will a teensy bit of string pulling to be honest. I'd been put in a math class where my previous 98 average suddenly was a 78 in the first week. Um, no, so I got my cousler to put me back in that math class, and because she had to switch periods for that, I got to ask to get in Miss Tollers class as well. Thankfully she allowed this to happen. She was so awesome! She's one of those you go back to visit after you're not in her class anymore. Hell I went to visit her after I'd been out of school, and had a kid! (only to discover she too had a child now, and was no longer teaching!!!)
Memorable things in her class, were original poetry. Something about someone special to us. I had written a poem a week ahead of time, and planned to share it. But the night before the presentation I couldn't sleep. and ended up writing a long poem about my biological father, and the lack of relationship. I took both pieces in with me, just to prove that I really had not waited until the last moment, but chose to take the 2nd one as my grade. I "moved her to tears" and recieved an A. I remember reading "Of Mice and Men" and watching "Dead Poets Society" in her class. We debated on "Into the Wild" , my first and only debate. I did pretty well. Even though I didnt finish the book ha! (sorry Miss Toller!!)
Later in the year we read The Great Gatsby, and I think I read the whole thing ;) And again we got to dress up, only this time, we had to, or we couldn't get into the classroom. I dressed up as Daisy! We got to mingle, and act like our characters, it was a lot of fun. Of course we did have a "test" and had to recite a part of our characters 'lines'. A bunch of us 'slackers' that sat in the back were trying to figure out what to do to show our appreciation of such a wonderful teacher. We finally decided the day before the last class that we would take a note from Neil Perry , Todd Anderson , Knox Overstreet, Charlie Dalton, Richard Cameron, Steven Meeks and Gerard Pitts. We started about 5 minutes before the bell rang, and we started one by one standing on top of our desks and saying "Oh Capitan! My Capitain!"
It is a great memory.
My senior year was a very difficult year for me, and not acidemicaly (though my grades tell a slightly different story). I along with my JROTC friends suffered a great loss, and I ended up suffering a depression. My grades all dropped, I think my highest grade was a high D. But I managed that high D in my British Literature class. Miss Robie. Another 'me' journal, and this time I actually learned something about myself. I learned that I had the passion and the feeling to create poetry. I learned that some songs could really capture my feelings, and define parts of my life. The semester I spent in school that year was a very informative semester.
Not to fear! While I did drop out of school, I did complete my GED just over 2 years later (hey, I was busy with a baby for a while!!) and got pretty good grades! I managed a C in math, which is a feat for me! And high B's in Lit, Grammar, History/Social Studies, and Science.
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