Education, schools and school teachers are hot topics everywhere parents or politicians are locked in the same room these days. The recent State Supreme decision on the Constitutional requirement to fully funding schools created quite a furor among political leaders in office and those hoping to get into office.
Education was even a bullet point in President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday evening.
It is a compelling subject and of critical importance. I think it may be the single most difficult issue the Legislature will wrestling with this session considering they are starting with a big black hole in the budget.
Everybody worries about their kids receiving a good education and getting a decent shot in life. Living life is not all that easy – good education or not.
Taking shots at teachers is an age-old sport. I always keep my mouth shut about teachers since herding a group of 10-year-olds is far beyond my skills, much less teaching them anything beyond cute words I learned in the Navy.
One of the teachers that I remember was Miss Cass. She was my seventh-grade science teacher who had taught my mom, my brothers and sisters and me. I can’t say she affected me for the good nor can I dream up some fuzzy story about how my life was changed because of her. It wasn’t.
Other than her voice, there was a story about her my dad told me that has stuck with me.
She had an odd, nasal voice that was incredibly easy to mimic for a brainless seventh-grade boy, which I was. I can still do a dead-on impression of Miss Cass.
The best thing for the boys in her class was she had a bunch of dead pickled things floating in jars on shelves in her classroom. A perfect conversation breaker to help a 12 year old talk to a girl.
My dad told me the in the 1950s someone in Enumclaw got the bright idea to call her a communist. Hunting for commies under every bed was a popular sport in those days and teachers were at times an easy mark. Apparently, whoever pointed the finger at her never had to face her in class when you didn’t know the answer to some science question like what is the makeup of the bunch of brown goo that looks like puke.
The exchange went something like this as I remember.
“I don’t know Miss Cass, how about puke.”
“How about I hit you with a pen.”
I lived in the days of corporal punishment, which meant Miss Cass could whack me with a pen, although a big stick would have been more effective.
My dad told me they pulled her before some sort of sedition board. I can just see her – short, plump, walking in that room probably looking at a bunch of cowering former students trying to be politically correct for the 1950s.
Dad said she never sat down. She stood there and waited for the meeting to be called to order – she was proper that way.
Once the meeting was gaveled to order, Miss Cass promptly told the gathered cast, according to my dad, “to go straight to hell.”
I bet it was the only time in her life she came close to swearing.
She turned around and walked out.
She was still in the same classroom 15 years later whacking me with a pen and pounding seventh-grade science into my rock head.
She was a good teacher.
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