New Blogging Exercise for 2022 - Using Prompts (The Dark Teacher)

When I started blogging in the good old days of MySpace, I would write any old thing that popped into my head.  Everything that happened to me was a potential blog post subject.  I would treat every interesting thought and every life experience as something "for the blog" in the same way young people today need to snap a photo "for the 'Gram".  

Life went on and I got out of that habit after I moved Shipwrecked & Comatose from MySpace to Blogger.  Blog posts became less frequent and more long-winded.  I had a hard time focusing on a single topic.  I suppose social media ruined my attention span for writing in the same way it ruined my attention span for anything else.  

Every once in a while I decide I need to reinvigorate this blog and try to find new reasons to do so.  I find I write more often when I spend less time on Facebook (something I am actively trying to do) because I am more likely to make "slice of life" posts when I'm not putting my whole life out there in Facebook snippets.  

Even so, I need some more inspiration sometimes.  I make far too many posts about liberal politics and the War on Christmas.  I need some new ideas.  

I decided to scour the internet for websites that offered writing prompts and use ones I find interesting.  While looking through a list of typical prompts, this one caught my eye:

Write about your darkest teacher

The prompt provided no clarification as to what kind of teacher this was.  I don't know if I was supposed to write about a metaphorical teacher or an actual teacher.  What was the definition of dark?  Was this supposed to be a post about a learning something new the hard way through a negative experience or was it about a bad experience in the classroom.  Maybe that was the point of the prompt.  It was vague in order for me to interpret it as I saw fit.  

Regardless of whether or not the prompt was meant to be taken literally or not, when I saw the phrase "darkest teacher" only one teacher came to mind.

Mr. Mansky.  

Mr. Mansky was a literal teacher in a dark period of my life.

Let's go back to the beginning of third grade.  I briefly moved to a new school.  That's always traumatic for children, but I think I was especially affected.  I was a weird kid to say the least.  I was impulsive and attention-seeking, yet simultaneously hypersensitive.  I would always want to act out, and say and do outrageous things, but if kids made fun or me for it, or teachers were angry with me for it, I'd burst into inconsolable tears.  

My social skills were not the greatest.  I had an immense fear of authority figures and dreaded getting into trouble for anything.  I never seemed to be able to control my urge to talk, but if the teacher punished me for it, my life was over. (Did I mention I was overly dramatic on top of everything else?)  I suspect if I grew up in the twenty-first century someone might have tried to put me on ADHD meds, but in those days, I was simply a difficult child who needed to be dealt with.

Despite all my issues, up until third grade I liked school.  Part of that was because I always had kind and fun teachers.  In kindergarten and first grade I had the brilliant Mrs. Garner.  In second grade I had the sweet and caring Mrs. Doody (yes, that was her unfortunate name).  They put up with me because I was fond of them and they knew how to play to my strengths.  I wasn't always easy to work with, but I was teachable.  I was the kid with the perfect attendance record in those days because I never wanted to miss a day.  I wanted to be in the classroom with those wonderful women.

I tried to be optimistic when I started on the first day in my new school.  I remember being in the main office to await my assignment to my new teacher. I wanted to have another teacher I loved as much as Mrs. Garner and Mrs. Doody.   I remember how I felt when the administrator lady told me I would be in Mr. Mansky's class.

"MISTER Mansky?"

It wasn't that I had anything against male teachers as a concept.  The only problem was I didn't know too many of them.  The only male teacher at my old school was mean Mr. Johnson, who was infamous in the school for his shouting and fits of temper.  He put it in my head that male teachers were scary. 

I put on a brave face and entered his classroom.  He was a middle aged man, bespectacled, with close-cropped brown hair.  He had no physical resemblance to any other teacher from my past.  His demeanor on the first day was pleasant, but not the cheerful enthusiasm of my first and second grade teachers.  He seemed nice enough - merely different.  

At lunch time I ran into an older girl who went to the same day camp as I did that summer.  She asked me who my teacher was.  When I said it was Mr. Mansky, she told me, "He's the meanest teacher in the whole school."  I wasn't sure if I should believe her or not.  I thought she might be trying to scare me.  Later that afternoon I was talking to one of my new classmates about what the other girl had said, and my classmate said the other girl must be wrong.  Mr. Mansky seemed so nice.

As the months went by, I realized Mr. Mansky had a gift for making a good first impression.  

Mr. Mansky seemed to have no patience for the noise and chaos of young children.  He discouraged interaction in the classroom.  For most of my school life I always sat in a cluster of desks with four or six kids together so we could work collaboratively.  In Mr. Mansky's class we sat in straight rows of three desks each - often with one empty desk in the middle.  We didn't have much in the way of class discussions or spontaneous brainstorming.  There was little humor or fun.  School was always serious business in Mr. Mansky's class.  I went from a kid who loved school to one who dreaded it because school no longer had much for me to enjoy.  

I still remember one glaring example of Mr. Mansky's brusque and unimaginative teaching style.  It was after we watched a school play.  The play was a musical about Christopher Columbus.  (I can still hear the opening song, a parody of She Loves You.  "Hey Hey Columbus, people put him down until he showed them that the earth was round...With a man like that you know you should be glad.") The play recounted all the typical historical myths about Columbus they taught in those days.  But it was also supposed to have a deeper meaning.  There was a banner behind the stage that said, "Hey Columbus, Working Together We Discover New Worlds."  The play was supposed to be about cooperation and collaboration.  Columbus couldn't have done what he did without the aid of Ferdinand and Isabella or the sailors who sailed with him (or something like that).

After the play was over and we returned to our classroom, Mr. Mansky told us all to take out a piece of paper and write down what the play was about.  Most of us wrote about what we knew about Columbus - the stuff that had been drilled into our heads since kindergarten.  We wrote about the belief of a flat earth and the desire to go to the Far East and how Ferdinand and Isabella financed the trip.  

As each child read his or her composition, a disappointed Mr. Mansky would shout, "No!"  I think at some point he didn't even allow the children to read their entire statement.  He would cut them off as soon as he realized they missed they point.  "None of you said anything about working together," he said angrily after all statements were read. I look back on that day and think about how a good teacher would have asked the students some leading questions, made them think more.  We could have had a class discussion about it.  Instead, we were told to write an essay about what the play was about with no further discussion from the teacher, and we all failed the assignment.

I was probably the student in that class most negatively affected by his actions.  In previous grades I would often be scolded, and occasionally punished, for talking too much, or too loudly, or out of turn.  I hated it, and often fussed and cried about it, but I never felt so afraid before.  In contrast to previous teachers, an impulsive, expressive kid like me was too much for someone like Mr. Mansky to bear.  I tried to behave and acquire some discipline, but my nature was hard to stifle.  Sometimes I couldn't help chatting with my classmates, cracking a joke, or expressing my opinion.  This was always met with harsh reprimands - probably harsher than my misdemeanors deserved.  Being such a hypersensitive child, that would send me into a blubbering fit.  

Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Mansky was a bully.  Did he find my weakness and pick on me deliberately?  I can think of times I felt singled out, or yelled at for things I felt were minor infractions.  

I remember one day I fell into a sneezing fit.  I wasn't sick.  I had no allergies.  I simply started to sneeze uncontrollably (I have always had a wonky respiratory system, but that's a subject for another day).  As my incessant sneezes began to draw the attention of the the other students and were bringing the lesson to a halt, Mr. Mansky grew frustrated with me and bellowed, "Are you sick?"  I said, "No."  He went on a rant about how I should go to the nurse if I was sick and I don't even remember what else.  He finished the rant by saying, "Cover your mouth."  Fair enough.  I should have covered my face a bit better.  This was before the days when kids were trained to sneeze into the crooks of their elbows.  However, he seemed more angry than concerned about my well-being, as if a completely involuntary bodily function was a plot to disrupt his class.  My thought when his rant was over was, "A simple 'God bless you," would have been nice."  He could have asked me to cover my face a bit more politely.  Politeness wasn't his style unless it involved a student being impolite to the teacher.

There was another time when I had been sitting in my chair all day and had my usual restlessness.  I did what I felt was a perfectly natural and inoffensive gesture.  I yawned and stretched.  This enraged Mr. Mansky.  He began shouting at me as usual.  I felt so attacked.  I hadn't been disruptive.  I hadn't talked out of turn.  I made an almost involuntary response to sitting still for hours and gave myself some relief.  Not only did I feel the usual sense of fear and intimidation, but I also felt I had been attacked unfairly.  Mr. Mansky had many reasons to yell at me for misbehaving, but this wasn't one of them.

He began to make a bigger deal of this than he needed to.  He demanded to speak to my parents that day and asked if they would be picking me up from school.  I told him my grandparents were picking me up, and he said he wanted to talk to them.  At the end of the school day, he followed me out.  I couldn't believe he was doing that.  I raced ahead of him, thinking there was no way he was going to follow me all the way to my grandparents' car, but he kept up.  As I opened the car door to get inside, he stuck his head inside and demanded to speak to one of them right away.  My grandmother complied.

Years later she told me Mr. Mansky asked her, "Why is your granddaughter always crying?"  I'm not sure what answer she gave, but he must have been placated.  He had me sit in another room while he talked to her.  When he came out, he had on his deceptive, smiling, calm, face.  When he acted like that, it was hard to convince my family what a terror he was.  I remember him talking to me gently and asking what the problem had been that day.  I said I was yawning and stretching.  He said, "Okay.  No more yawning and stretching." I think I even remember him making a show of writing it down.  How does one tell a third grader not to yawn and stretch ever?

Was Mr. Mansky exasperated with me, was he trying to find out if something was seriously wrong with me, or did he actually care?  When my family failed to provide him with answers for my behavior, he sent me to the school psychologist.  I always saw that as him trying to prove I was crazy.  Maybe he thought I should be on meds (maybe I should have been).  I don't remember my talk with the school psychologist.  I only remember being scared about what I had done wrong and if this would mean trouble for me.  I suppose she didn't find anything wrong with me because it didn't go anywhere.  

There are times when I try to give Mr. Mansky the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he didn't think I was crazy, but maybe he thought there was something wrong with my home life.  Maybe he was trying to see if I was mistreated at home and was acting out in class because of it.  Were these impromptu conferences and visits to the school psychologist an act of kindness?  

Should a teacher ultimately be judged on the quality of his output?  He was not a kind or gentle man, but was he a good teacher?  Did I learn in his class?

In Mr. Mansky's class I learned multiplication and division.  I solidified my ability to tell time.  I learned how to write in cursive.  I don't remember what my grades were, but I was not failing by any means.  I don't recall ever receiving much praise or encouragement on my work, but I don't recall him favoring any student's achievements in that class. (Mr. Mansky may have especially disliked me, but he had no teacher's pets.)  

In some ways I think I did well in that class because of Mr. Mansky.  I was too afraid to mess up, and wanted to do something that would meet with his approval.  On the first day of class, without doing any sort of assessment, he asked each student what their current reading and math levels were - low, middle, or high.  He was going to assign our math and reading groups on the honor system.  I had no problem telling him I was at a high reading level.  I was always a voracious and accelerated reader.  On the other hand, math was something I struggled with and hated.  I didn't want my math work to be too hard, but I also didn't want to be put in a group with the "dumb" kids.  I told him my math level was in the middle.  Once I said that, I knew I had to be a middle level math student.  I didn't slack off.  I completed every problem in my workbook.  I had to show Mr. Mansky I might have been weird and difficult, but I was smart.

Sometimes Mr. Mansky did teach outside the box.  He felt we needed our art and music lessons enhanced.  He had a piano in the classroom and would sometimes play for us in an attempt to get us to expand our musical horizons.  (Our music teacher was a cool lady who played the guitar and taught us Beatles songs.)   He also taught us art beyond what we learned in Mrs. Dianni's art class. (No offense to Mrs. Dianni. I adored her.)  I remember sketching landscapes with a charcoal pencil.  It somehow felt more sophisticated than the crayons, modeling clay, and tempera paints I was used to.  

Eventually I moved back to my hometown and to my old school.  It was sweet relief to leave Mr. Mansky's class and be placed under the tutelage of kind Miss Lancia.  I'm sure she sometimes was a bit frustrated with my quirks, but she was much gentler about it.  Sometimes it felt too good to be true.  I once had a nightmare that I was walking through the school halls with my class and Mr. Mansky came barreling down the hallway, demanding I be returned to his classroom, trying to bully Miss Lancia into giving me back to him.  

I realize now it was probably as much of a relief for him as it was for me.  I'm sure he was glad to not have to deal with me anymore.  Even if my suspicions were correct and he got a kick out of bullying me, I think he would prefer not having to deal with me at all.

I give Mr. Mansky a little credit for preparing me for the future.  In fifth grade I was placed in Mean Mr. Johnson's class.  I couldn't imagine he would be any scarier than Mr. Mansky.  On the first day of school Mr. Johnson half jokingly asked the kids in the class if they heard terrible stories about him.  He openly admitted he sometimes had a bad temper, but he was working on it and assured us he was much calmer than he used to be.  Like Mr. Mansky, Mr. Johnson was a stickler for order and discipline, but he was more willing to accept that kids will be kids.  To this day I admire him for owning up to his mistakes and making an effort to do better.  He didn't want to have that bad reputation.  Mr. Mansky didn't care.  

Did he ever?

I was chatting with my family once about the nightmare that was Mr. Mansky's class.  I questioned why Mr. Mansky would choose teaching elementary school as a profession.  He was able to impart knowledge onto his students, but he didn't teach us much about how to think or question.  He didn't seem to enjoy children.  I thought he might make a decent high school teacher.  High school students are better able to sit quietly and absorb the lessons, making life easier for him.  Teenagers would not have liked him, but they might respect him, and even appreciate his sense of order.  It seemed to me he didn't like teaching grade school kids.  What drove him to do so?  He wasn't the right age to be using teaching to dodge the draft.

My brother asked me, "Was he a young guy?"

I didn't like saying he wasn't young.  My family scolded me when I called him old.  He probably wasn't much older than I am now.  But he wasn't a youthful, fresh-out-of-grad school noob hoping to change the world.  He was closer to retirement than he was to his graduation, and I diplomatically said words to that effect.

My brother said, "He used to like it."

Is that it?  Was Mr. Mansky simply tired of teaching?  Assuming he had been teaching for a good twenty years or so, he saw a lot of changes in the world.  My classroom probably looked and felt poles apart from the classroom he entered in the 1950s as a fresh-faced noob ready to change the world.

I don't know where Mr. Mansky is now.  I googled him without any luck.  If he isn't dead, he must be quite old.  I wonder when he retired and how he spent his time after his retirement.  Did he spend any time with children?  After writing this post, I wonder what he would have said if someone asked him to write a story about his most difficult student.