Mr. Christie

I guess it comes to a surprise to me that the the most inspiring call to teaching I have drawn from is not out of contrast to the bad teachers I have experienced, for I have experienced some bad teachers. The most dramatic examples of crummy teachers in my youth came from my early classroom teachers from second and third grade. These insensitive, impatient and vindictive teachers made a small child feel useless, bad, and stupid, wasting years of potential education on suffering and self-pity. When I consider how I would have felt if my experiences with education had never broadened to include those who did not treat my existence as a liability, it is hard to imagine me continuing in the public school system through to graduation. Tolerant instructors proved to be just the ray of sunshine through the clouds necessary to give me hope and keep me going. I suppose the possibility of being a teacher who children can feel safe and stimulated with is one of my main motivations for studying to be a teacher.

In my youth, I went to minority elementary schools; first my local one and then, because of a rather dramatic series of bullying incidents, I was bussed to a performing arts magnet. I got into fights a lot, fights I didn't pick. But being the only white girl in class, and kind of a weirdo besides, will do that. I can guess that my problems with other students, namely that they despised me, and the disruption that those problems caused made life in the classroom harder for my teachers. It didn't help that lessons in class seemed simple and I was often bored with the lesson. I can understand how I, not an angel by any extent of the imagination, could become the symbol for all classroom disturbance and misbehavior. However, not every teacher I encountered found it necessary for me to be the assigned devil of their classroom. There was a “specials” teacher in science that always made me feel welcome.

Mr. Christie taught science in the specials program of my performing arts magnet school. His special worked like P.E. and computers so all children took it at least once a week. Every child in the school had to go to Mr. Christie's class at some point, but he never seemed to be tired of teaching, or sick of his job. This teacher showed his class compassion, enthusiasm, understanding, and creativity. Mr. Christie has been my favorite teacher of all time, and if my career in teaching can even nearly emulate his, I will consider it a most definite success.

There were rules in Mr. Christie's classroom just as there were rules in other classrooms, but for some reason they were easier to follow. I still remember my favorite rule in his classroom. “There is no eating or drinking in my classroom,” he said, “No candy or bubblegum unless you have enough for everyone,” and then he grinned, “and two for me!” the entire class would erupt in laughter and it made us more comfortable to know that he had a sense of humor. Mr. Christie had a bucket in the bottom of the supply closet at the front of the class where confiscated candy would go and you could find him eating it if you came to him between classes.

Perhaps the lessons that I learned in that science classroom were more riveting than those in my regular class because they were all new. Mr. Christie taught a lot of physics and mechanical laws in his class, and mostly none of us had ever learned anything about science before. Exploring the ways of the universe in Mr. Christie's classroom was riveting because of the way he taught. Mr. Christie's class was full of demonstrations and hands on experiments. We learned about gas pressure from watching him crush a can with just a flame. We learned about magnetic fields by drawing the lines iron shavings would form on a piece of paper placed over a bar magnet. We learned newton's laws of motion by rolling toy cars and round canisters around on the desks. We learned mechanical science like levers pulleys and gears through a series of projects building machines with legos. It was also not at all uncommon to take field trips to the science museum and sometimes just outside.

Mr. Christie always went far above and beyond his requirements as a specials teacher. He registered his students for lego and robotics competitions and organized the practices and field trips. He proctored a voluntary test twice a year in advanced mathematics and encouraged his students to take it. He started a very successful club for kids where they would simulate trading on the stock market; they would be given a certain amount of theoretical money to start and they would try to out earn each other. He hosted clubs after school for math and science, too.

Mr. Christie was a special teacher because of the individual attention he paid to his students. When no one else in the school wanted to bother with me, Mr. Christie did. His appreciation and encouragement of my math skills showed me that I might be more that merely a menace to the school system, I had a talent. I observed other students also be taken under his wing, and I have to say that I would not have the thirst for academics I have now if it were not for the way he encouraged me.

Part of the reason why Mr. Christie changed his students so profoundly were his high expectations of the children in his classes. I think every child in his classes was expected to do well. He thought we could handle the advanced material, like robotics, that he was teaching us, and we generally succeeded. He expected us to be generally good and courteous to each other, and not wanting to disappoint the only really nice teacher I had ever known, I always tried to fulfill his expectations. Since the other students in his class behaved and performed remarkably as well, I assume their feelings were similar.

I think one of the best things about Mr. Christie was his easy going style and sense of humor. Mr. Christie was very animated and often smiling. He had an entertaining personality and we were never bored in his class. But most important, I think was his controlled joviality, we knew what to expect in his class, not to misbehave or we would be punished but every time a student did something for him, like retrieve the Lego packets from the closet, Mr. Christie would reply with his loud “Thank you very very much!” and a smile.

-- Alison Rognas, Florida Atlantic University