When I was a sophomore in high school, I was placed in an experimental trio of classes that were coined the Eco-Family. English, World History, and Biology were the three components of the family. The whole idea was that the same group of students would move together to the classes, getting to know each other, and forming a cohesive unit of highly educated 15/16 year olds.
Riiiight.
What we formed was a cohesive unit of rebellion that effectively brought about the demise of the Eco-Family that very same school year.
English
Ms. Williams. God bless her soul. A naive, soft-spoken lover of all things literary who was relentlessly teased by the boys in the class. Every time one of them would crack a joke in her direction, she would do that uncomfortable laugh - you know the one. The laugh where it is totally obvious she didn't get it, but wanted it to appear that she was wise to the joke. Once she figured out they were teasing her, she decided to use some leverage. She never let us forget that she took a $5,000 pay cut to come to us from a school in Atlanta and that she didn't have to be teaching us. If I remember correctly, we told her to return to Atlanta. Horrible.
Before taking English with Ms. Williams, the only required reading I had to do was a handful of William Shakespeare plays (very cool), and To Kill A Mockingbird (loved it). Ms. Williams introduced me to the required reading from hell in the form of All Quiet on the Western Front. All I remember is the title and that it made me uncomfortable for reasons I don't recall. My stomach feels weird, I need to stop talking about required reading. This book is the reason I never finished another required read until I met Jane Eyre my senior year.
Back to Ms. Williams. When the class would get rowdy,(which was quite often) she would break this mess out...
The infamous apple bell. It's a 1972 Fisher-Price child's plaything for crying out loud! When shaken, the bell would emit a soft jingling noise. And this was supposed to quiet us down? Yah...thanks for coming out. I think one of her remedial Eco-Family English classes tossed the apple bell out the window, only to watch it be obliterated into a kajillion pieces on the sidewalk below.
That very well may have been the last year Ms. Williams was at our school.
Eastside High (from the movie
Lean On Me) had nothin' on us.
HistoryEnter Mrs. Stanley. My mom and I
still talk about the absurdity of this class. You see, Mrs. Stanley had better things to do than teach. She was the cheerleading coach (I have nothing against cheerleaders - I always wanted to be one but could never do a Russian). Anyway, Stanley's room was one of the few with
NO windows. Seriously? That really cramped my daydreaming style. She did happen to be the one teacher of the three that didn't get teased. She was the cheerleading coach...remember? And we all know that cheerleaders are all kinds of cool.
Stanley was all about some busy work. I don't recall that I learned anything in her class except how to fill 200 index cards, each with one fact about some specific topic from World History.
I could have taught her class...when I was 4.
Funny story...Once during an exam I was concentrating so hard that a little foo-foo slipped out accidentally. I was MORTIFIED! In a setting where you could'a heard a pin drop, the foo-foo was like the freakin' H-Bomb!
Biology (
or Bology)
The One, the Only, Mrs. P. Henry Watkins. Oh, the education I received in her class. You won't have the full effect of Mrs. Watkins without her voice. She used to purse her lips like Sean Connery when she talked and that coupled with a bit of a nasal tone caused many a laugh. She was a very smart, very kind woman, who didn't have the patience for our shenanigans. I probably should find her and apologize for being so hateful.
There were several phrases that would coax peals of laughter from P. Henry's students. I shall list them for you (Mrs. Noonzie, you'll totally appreciate this):
"Class, get out your no-books (notebooks).""Formaldehyde will give you cancer.""Why don't you write HBJ." HBJ was the publisher of our Bology book and anytime we had an issue with something in the book, she would tell us to write them and complain - that way she wouldn't have to hear it."
"You will need Sex, Subject Index Finders." (Really, it was Six Subject Index Finders, otherwise known as dividers for a three-ring binder.)
"That's ONE demerit!" - when someone pushed her over the edge, she would do something that resembled jazz hands and yell this at them. Two demerits was the limit, but I'm not sure what happened after that.
"This is a feemstrip on Mollucks." - read: a filmstrip on Mollusks.
"No more Killer Statements." - Those were any unkind or hostile words toward anything or anyone. (i.e. "I hate feemstrips on mollucks" = a killer statement)
I sat at a table with Ben, Justin, and Amy and
were we ever delinquent. One day, Justin recorded a toilet flushing and played it in the middle of class. She knew it came from our table and wanted to search our backpacks. I adamantly refused and played an Oscar worthy performance of "the victim". I can't recall if she ever found it, but we were definitely on watch after that. I also got one demerit one day for rocking my chair back on two legs. She must have been having a really bad day that day.
My senior year of high school, our English teacher asked us to write a poem and I chose to honor P. Henry by writing a poem about her class.
Upstairs on the second floor Number 201 is on her doorHer class, meant to be an effective oneIs the kind of place where students have funOpen your no-books and write down this noteBut if you don't you might miss the boat.If you have an answer raise your hand and share it,but speak out of turn and you get one demerit.While reading HBJ, her glasses slip to her noseMeanwhile her class has begun to doze.Her voice has a nasal squeaky soundWhich makes everyone fall laughing to the ground.Fifty-five minutes on task is her theoryBut working for that A will make you quite wearyKiller statements are not her thingSo if you say one, the apple bell will ding
(oh yeah, she had an apple bell too.)Sometimes she is a complete boreBut when she does something funny, you'll be laughing some more.I think that sums it up well, no?
It really is a shame that we successfully launched and crash-landed the one-year reign of the eco-family. It could have provided many more laughs for our successors. Oh well. It did succeed at providing many wonderful high-school memories for me.
