A Great Adventure

I walked into the classroom nervous and uncertain. Then I saw my teacher. He looked at us and smiled a mischievous smile. He had a red beard and a fairly healthy potbelly. He was short, stocky, and strong. His red hair was like fire and his voice was boisterous. He was no ordinary man. I took one look at him and gulped. Mr. P. is what we called him. He would be my eighth grade history teacher. The rest of the year was a great adventure. He had a tendency to get kind of crazy. His methods were unusual as well as his personality. Our class was pretty unusual itself, or shall I say that we were just extremely bad. Every teacher at school was fed up with us. We also infected the good kids and the younger grades. We had bred a nice group of troublemakers. Everyone thought we were pretty cool 'cause we had "bad asses" in our grade. Mr. P. knew what he was dealing with. He was better with dealing with us than any other teacher. He would jokingly say to me that he would try a new method for teaching like scaring us into learning. I would shake my head and laugh. However, one day he had to put his theory to use. One day the majority of the class showed up with none of their homework done. Our class would do this on a regular basis with all of our teachers. He was silent, and he looked at us like the little criminals that we were. He was more red than usual. His arms were crossed in front of him. Just a couple of minutes ago the class was yelling, shouting, and cursing. Now we were all silent. Suddenly, somewhere to the back someone let out a choke of laughter. The kids in the back were making fun of something and weren't taking him seriously. He was watching them out of the corner of his eye. He grabbed a desk and slammed it down, so that the room quaked a little. When the desk had come down it had moved a couple inches from its original place. I knew what he was doing. He was trying out the theory, and I put my hand over my mouth and smiled. I turned my head so I couldn't expose it. Everyone had shut up including the kids in the back who were joking around. I could see he was trying to look serious and upset, but all the while he was just trying not to crack up. At the end of class Mr. P. winked at me and jokingly asked, "So you think it worked?" I just shook my head and laughed. Our class never took a teacher seriously when they told us to be quiet or when they yelled at us. We went on laughing at them and acted like jerks. That never happened with Mr. P. After that incident, homework was turned in the next day and projects were being done. The class no longer turned up without any material. Certain individuals did once in a while, but he worked with them. He did a lot of cooperative learning. There was plenty of group work that got everyone doing something, so that all of his students walked away with some credit. I don't think many people failed his class. I remember after that incident kids were telling stories of how he flung a desk across the room. "He's crazy," they'd say, but that made him even more popular. Everyone wanted to meet this crazy teacher. They wanted to see what he would do next. Then when they got to class they realized he was more than the crazy teacher. He made you laugh. He challenged you to be a better person. He got through to a lot more kids than anyone else. He would even help the "bad asses" and joke around with them. I knew what a softie he was. I knew that he tried hard not to throw out any kids from the class and from the school. He kept working on them. I don't remember anyone being thrown out of class. I knew he used to talk to them outside. I'm sure one or two were thrown out, but I can't remember that at all. It was so important to him to have all his students in class even the ones who didn't want to be there. Somehow he worked with them. Somehow he got through to them.

-- Dinushka De Silva