Learning to Cool Off

"Julie, if you can't settle down, why don't you just go outside in the snow and cool off!"

My geometry teacher bellowed at me one January day during my sophomore year in high school. He had stopped his lecture and was glaring with his eyes boring into mine.

Caught off guard, I became aware of my mouth hanging open just slightly in surprise. I quickly clamped it shut and stared back at him, angry, humiliated, and shocked. All I had done was turn over my shoulder for a few seconds so my friend Randy could use my eraser - his was worn down to the metal. We had maybe exchanged a few quiet words like "Here, use mine", and "Thanks." I could feel the blood rushing up to my face, and everyone in the class looking silently from me to him and back again.

What could I say? I was the 15 year old student, he was the 32 year old teacher with 10 years in the classroom. Was I going to say "Hey, what did I do?" Even though at the time I'm sure I couldn't have pinpointed it out loud to anyone else, I knew what was going on. Our class was just before lunch, and today it seemed everyone was antsy and hungry. Vermont in the dead of winter, a cold corner classroom, and, it was Friday. Despite being the AP class, we were subject to restlessness just like anyone else, I suppose. Perhaps he could sense that we weren't really with him that day, and he was frustrated.

Shaking his head in disappointment, and with one final cock of his eyebrow at me, he turned back to the proof we were working on up on the board.

As soon as his back was turned, evil seething thoughts crashed around in my head. "No way am I babysitting for YOU Friday night, mister! And I'm telling your wife that the Gordon Lightfoot album you always croon to was a gift from Margaret #1, your old girlfriend!" Jerk. JERK! My eyes were involuntarily slanting, my lips pursed together.

"Hey, Jules, sorry....." Randy's feeble whisper came from behind me. I gave a quick one shoulder shrug to show indifference. When your brother is your teacher, there are times when there are no rules to play by.

The principal had met briefly with us the previous June and said "You both know the policy is no teachers can have their children as students - but this is a first for us - we've never had a sibling/teacher issue. But there's only one AP Geometry section, and Ed, well, you know we want you on that class."

At 14 years old, I was slightly intrigued by the novelty of my brother as my teacher. Besides, he was 17 years older than me and there were 9 other kids in our family. As a result, I didn't even really know him that well anyway! I certainly wasn't going to give up my AP class with all my friends. So we all shook on it.

Neither of us was prepared for the strange position we would be in during the long year that followed. Now, 15 years later, it is clear that he was often struggling to not show favoritism - plain and simple. For my part, well, I was just trying to be a teenager.

The littlest things manifested into an awkward moment sometimes. If I called him "Mr. Alexander", kids laughed. One time I just forgot and called him "Ed", and kids laughed, You can believe I heard about it from him afterwards. I finally just resorted to "Hey, uh....".

But did I learn? That is the real issue here. Yes. Without question. I got the highest grade in the class at the end of the year. Not because my brother cut me any slack - just the opposite. His expectations for all of us were very high - they are for all his students, no matter what level. But what he demanded of me was even higher, partially because he was overcompensating to make sure no one could ever say he played favorites, but there was something else going on.

Ed had known me my whole life; he knew what teachers I had had and the level of work I had done. Naturally he cared for me in a deeper way than he did for just any student, and so he wanted more. He raised the bar for me by a notch - and I stepped up to the challenge, even though I'm quite sure I had no idea what was going on at the time. I worked extra hard for him, even if sometimes it was just so I could envision myself sticking my tongue out at him over Easter dinner.

Sometimes he came down too hard on me for no reason, and sometimes I deserved it, like any normal 15 year old kid in high school.

Just a few weeks ago, on a vacation in Vermont, I stayed with his family on a Sunday night since they live so close to the airport - I had an early plane to catch back to DC the next morning. It was after dinner, his two teenage sons were each plugging away at some homework, his wife was puttering around, so I settled in with a book. And there was Ed, with a pile of AP Geometry tests, painstakingly going through every proof with the red pen, notations everywhere to show where they'd gone wrong, and words or praise for their efforts and correct answers.

I was struck that night to realize that I am twice as old now as I was when I was his student, and I have grown and changed and moved. But Ed is still there, still doing the same thing: getting those kids charged up about Venn Diagrams, keeping them from killing each other with protractors, and having fun pronouncing the word "obtuse". Since my time in 1985, the old "no parents-as-teachers" policy is gone. Tyler, my 15 year old nephew, looks knowingly at me when we talk about AP Geometry. We both struggled and we both were number one in our class. We had the same teacher.