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penfield"O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning"
- Walt Whitman
Not long ago, my mother mentioned in passing that my former AP English teacher, Ms Hamm, has fallen ill. How ill? I don't know, but she hasn't returned to her classroom this year and she once told me with a perfectly straight face that she was going to teach until she dropped dead, so I'm concerned that it might be pretty bad.
I had always assumed she was bionic. Could it simply be a ploy for attention? Is she just trying to weasel her way into working from home? Might she merely be feigning weakness in order to lull arrogant students into a false sense of security?
It's the sort of thing Ms Hamm might do, too, if she thought she was losing her edge. Because no teacher in the Webster Central School District struck fear into the hearts of students like she did. She was not a physically imposing person -- small and fluttery, I probably could have fit her into my knapsack -- but she had an ice-cold intellect that could and would freeze your ass to your seat. She deployed it with precision, another tool to prepare us for collegiate work.
This is not to say that she had a chilling personality. She could be warm and encouraging and even sweet, like mango salsa. But there was no compromising when it came to the Work. If you knew the rules and you followed them, you were fine.
And there were a lot of rules. You probably noticed how there's no "." after "Ms". That's one of hers. (There's no period because it's not an abbreviation -- "Ms" isn't short for anything.) She pounded into our little high school brains the difference between "less" and "fewer," and "further" and "farther," and "thus" and "therefore," as if she were burying a hatchet into our heads.
Her expertise wasn't limited to vocabulary, either. As the school's resident speech and public speaking, she was firm about our diction and pronunciation. "Probly," or, heaven forbid, "Prolly," would not substitute for "Probably." Forte, the synonym for strength was said as "fort," not "for-tay." I'm not sure if she ever went over "preventive" vs. "preventative," but I feel confident that she has an opinion about it.
And there was all the standard English teacher stuff: literary theory, poetry analysis, beginning composition, etc.; the kind of stuff that generally makes teenagers hate high school. And I had friends who hated her class, who approached their desk as if it was a dentist's chair.
But I know those same students -- who have probably forgotten everything about geometry proofs and the Boxer Rebellion and cell mitosis -- still have vivid impressions of that class and Ms Hamm herself. They hear her rules ringing in their heads and see her red ink in their nightmares. If they're anything like me, when they're writing correspondence, they can't help but feel shame at unabashed references-to-self in the first three words of any sentence.
If she were reading this, or worse, grading this journal entry, she might chastise me for my cavalier use of past tense. If my sources are correct, she is not gone yet. Just resting.
And it would be fair to say that she and her lessons have stuck with me. Hers is one of the voices in my head when I write. (Along with my mother's, and that of a few assorted friends, and for some reason, John Houseman. I don't know where that one came from.) Anyway, I owe her a great debt. It seems almost unfair that she worked for a public school.
With any good fortune, she'll be up and around and drilling young minds again soon. I wrote her an e-mail lately -- and damn if that wasn't the most intimidating e-mail in the history of my life -- sending her my best wishes for a speedy recovery. Or a successful ruse, should that apply.
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning"
- Walt Whitman
Not long ago, my mother mentioned in passing that my former AP English teacher, Ms Hamm, has fallen ill. How ill? I don't know, but she hasn't returned to her classroom this year and she once told me with a perfectly straight face that she was going to teach until she dropped dead, so I'm concerned that it might be pretty bad.
I had always assumed she was bionic. Could it simply be a ploy for attention? Is she just trying to weasel her way into working from home? Might she merely be feigning weakness in order to lull arrogant students into a false sense of security?
It's the sort of thing Ms Hamm might do, too, if she thought she was losing her edge. Because no teacher in the Webster Central School District struck fear into the hearts of students like she did. She was not a physically imposing person -- small and fluttery, I probably could have fit her into my knapsack -- but she had an ice-cold intellect that could and would freeze your ass to your seat. She deployed it with precision, another tool to prepare us for collegiate work.
This is not to say that she had a chilling personality. She could be warm and encouraging and even sweet, like mango salsa. But there was no compromising when it came to the Work. If you knew the rules and you followed them, you were fine.
And there were a lot of rules. You probably noticed how there's no "." after "Ms". That's one of hers. (There's no period because it's not an abbreviation -- "Ms" isn't short for anything.) She pounded into our little high school brains the difference between "less" and "fewer," and "further" and "farther," and "thus" and "therefore," as if she were burying a hatchet into our heads.
Her expertise wasn't limited to vocabulary, either. As the school's resident speech and public speaking, she was firm about our diction and pronunciation. "Probly," or, heaven forbid, "Prolly," would not substitute for "Probably." Forte, the synonym for strength was said as "fort," not "for-tay." I'm not sure if she ever went over "preventive" vs. "preventative," but I feel confident that she has an opinion about it.
And there was all the standard English teacher stuff: literary theory, poetry analysis, beginning composition, etc.; the kind of stuff that generally makes teenagers hate high school. And I had friends who hated her class, who approached their desk as if it was a dentist's chair.
But I know those same students -- who have probably forgotten everything about geometry proofs and the Boxer Rebellion and cell mitosis -- still have vivid impressions of that class and Ms Hamm herself. They hear her rules ringing in their heads and see her red ink in their nightmares. If they're anything like me, when they're writing correspondence, they can't help but feel shame at unabashed references-to-self in the first three words of any sentence.
If she were reading this, or worse, grading this journal entry, she might chastise me for my cavalier use of past tense. If my sources are correct, she is not gone yet. Just resting.
And it would be fair to say that she and her lessons have stuck with me. Hers is one of the voices in my head when I write. (Along with my mother's, and that of a few assorted friends, and for some reason, John Houseman. I don't know where that one came from.) Anyway, I owe her a great debt. It seems almost unfair that she worked for a public school.
With any good fortune, she'll be up and around and drilling young minds again soon. I wrote her an e-mail lately -- and damn if that wasn't the most intimidating e-mail in the history of my life -- sending her my best wishes for a speedy recovery. Or a successful ruse, should that apply.
