When I was a freshman in high school, I had two new teachers who quit soon after starting. One was student teaching in my U.S. history class. From day one, he struggled. He left after two weeks. The other was a newly licensed mathematics teacher. Mr. Richards taught a first-period algebra class, which, along with a few of us freshmen, included a large group of juniors and seniors taking the course for the second or third time. We managed to drive Mr. Richards away after about six weeks. By we, I include myself only because, scared witless by the testosterone-fueled rowdies around me, I sat quietly by, both fascinated and mortified by what they did.
The history student teacher never stood a chance. He was the epitome of the ‘deer in the headlights.’ Standing before us, a relative pliant group of freshman and sophomores, he stared at something invisible at the back of the classroom, never making eye contact with anyone. He constantly jingled a pocketful of change. We knew it was a pocketful because the noise cancelled out his mumbling.
Mr. Richards’s disposition was the opposite of Mr. Jingles. He was direct, verbose, and a bit aloof, immersed irretrievably in the content and seemingly unaware we were novices to it. He was all mathematics, and we were not having it. Within days, half the class had determined him to be uptight and overbearing. They ignored him completely, carrying on conversations with one another from opposite sides of the room. The other half, excluding me and the other freshmen, made half-hearted attempts to seem attentive while sighing loudly and rolling their eyes constantly. They had good intentions but short attention spans. The rest of us were pulled between wanting to learn algebra and hoping not to be found out by the upper classmen. We could only imagine what they would do to us after seeing what they were doing to Mr. Richards.
Mr. Richards reached his breaking point in mid-October after a few false escape attempts. He had stormed out of the room on a couple occasions, only to be coaxed back by Ms. Wood, a forty-year-math-teacher veteran. She, to some extent, was to blame for what Mr. Richards was experiencing, having failed most of the class in previous years. Ms. Wood delivered Mr. Richards back to the class and called us an embarrassment, which was met with approval by a large section of classmates.
The third time he tried to escape, Mr. Richards returned with Mr. Modlin, the principal. Mr. Modlin left with about ten of us in tow, all hand-picked by Mr. Richards. He probably would have picked all of us if Mr. Modlin had not told him that was enough for now.
The following Monday morning, Mr. Richards failed to appear. Ms. Wood summoned Mr. Modlin over the intercom. We sensed what had happened and saw it as our version of VE day. It must have sounded like a riot in progress when she called the front office.
Five-minutes later, Mr. Modlin was at the door. Without exchanging a word, Mr. Wood exited. Everyone readied themselves for the worst. We were all guilty, if not explicitly, at least by association. Suspensions were in order. Failing grades were guaranteed. Some of us—all of us?—might even be worthy of corporal punishment. Parents would approve. I know mine would.
Mr. Modlin glared at us for about two minutes, then calmly looked over Mr. Richards’s lesson plans and thumbed through the textbook. Finally, he said, “I see you’re supposed to be on page 92, working on multi-step equations.” He waited for confirmation. When none came, he went on: “We, however, are stepping backward, because you need to teach me two- and one-step equations first.”
And off we went. In a rapidity unsuspected of a short, plump, balding man, Mr. Modlin rattled off questions and only questions. “What page are we on? What problem are you talking about? What’s the first thing you do? Did you get that, Tom? Melissa, do you agree? Bobby can you tell Chris what his misstep was… no, better yet, can you come up here and show all of us? And so it went. Mr. Modlin was teaching algebra, or, he was pushing us to teach one another algebra. Of course, he didn’t hesitate to say, “Wait a second? Are you sure? I don’t know about that. Think again.” Then he’d pause and expect us to think. “Someone help that poor soul?” he would often say to our uproarious delight.
Mr. Modlin kept coming back, every day for the rest of October, all of November, and into December. He smiled…a lot. And he joked around, like an adult joking around, dry, sarcastic, and a bit self-deprecating that at first we laughed at then laughed with. He really liked teaching, we decided, asking who the hell was this guy and what did he do with our principal.
Before us was not the Mr. Modlin we knew. Not that he was now the complete opposite. As principal, he was approachable but business-like and adult serious. He smiled as principal, but in a way that made you think he might sell you a used car. He never cut anyone slack. Now he was reeling out the slack and trying to pull us all in on humor and algebra. He ribbed us and let us rib him back. But he was all about algebra. He loved it and talked about how much he loved it…and showed us how to love it even as it confounded us. Clearly, the man was a mathematician before he was a principal.
By mid-December, we were all in, even the few of us who still feigned disinterest. Everyone was trying, half-hearted and begrudging as it was for a handful of us. No one questioned Mr. Modlin’s desire to teach us…US! Working class punks, for the most part. For making that effort, he had our attention and respect.
After the holiday break, we returned to find a new teacher ensconced in Mr. Modlin’s chair. We didn’t know this was going to happen, although it had to be in the works for a while. Someone had gone out and hired another mathematics teacher. Mr. Modlin returned to his office and the person he was before.
Dr. Petrone, the new math guru, had a PhD, was a former university instructor, was, in fact, married to a university mathematics professor, and was as cool as a cucumber. She sat at her desk and made us do all the work, sort of like Mr. Modlin but without the myriad questions and humor. We marched to the board and worked out problems, either at her direction or on our own. The slightest disturbance was met with a stern glare and, when needed, a reminder that she didn’t care whether the one talking passed or failed but she did care that they were interfering with the rest of us. Her admonishments, though, were few and far between, for Mr. Modlin had tamed us and shaped us into pliancy. We were too far into algebra to return to where we had come from.
I think we all passed the course. I don’t know for sure. At the end of the year, the seniors breathed the loudest sigh of relief. They could graduate. The juniors were left wondering if they should take math their senior year, a ridiculous possibility only a few months earlier. The rest of had no choice, more math was our future, but instead of dreading it, we looked forward to it. I went on to geometry, analytical geometry, and trigonometry, all with Dr. Petrone.
By the time I would graduate, I would experience of range of classroom environments. They ranged from ones where us students were attentive and interested to varying degrees to ones where rebellion and misbehavior ruled the day. As the children of working class parents, we were on our way to becoming working class adults. Even as factories were closing and farms were foreclosing, many, if not most of us, imagined that was to be our lives. We didn’t need school, or at least we didn’t need it as it was most often presented to us. We ridiculed authority and carnivalized what it came wrapped in. We were ruthless and unforgiving, ever the more so when we sensed weakness or disrespect. It was our response to an education that was a cudgel being used against us.
What Mr. Modlin showed me—besides algebra—and what has continued to play itself out for me in classroom after classroom, is that adolescents—rowdies, freaks, flunkies, and gangbangers all—aren’t afraid of learning. And it isn’t that they can’t learn. They aren’t even afraid of the challenge or of trying and failing. Given respect and met on their own terms, they respond with respect, wit, and a raw, often humorous brilliance. And they respect the intelligence and authority of those they believe have earned it but aren’t holding it over their heads. That’s what Mr. Modlin did and even Dr. Petrone, each in their own way but both effectively.
Mr. Modlin was gone the next year. Lori, his daughter, however, was still a student in the school (full disclosure: I was secretly in love with Lori when we were both sixth graders). I don’t know what happened to Mr. Modlin, and I didn’t ask Lori. I like to think Mr. Modlin loved teaching us so much, he quit being a principal and went somewhere else to teach mathematics, maybe in a school where the kids were more hardened than us. I imagined he asked for the toughest kids the school had. Those lucky kids.