WE need a bit of magic

I can’t begin to list all the intangibles that go into creating a successful class, much less make one come true.

However, I want to brag a bit about a great class. It was one of my all time favorites. It met directly after my lunch period. I was often late—more than a minute or two. They were always quiet, expectant, waiting patiently.

It was my fault of course, but I had a good excuse. I had an unusually good lunch bunch. We would be right in the middle of solving all the world’s problems, reinventing the school or giving each other a brilliant self improvement list. And then, all of a sudden the bell would ring—just as one of us was going to start the grand finale, the moment of true enlightenment.  And so we’d scurry off to class. Some of us might linger for just a moment or two. And then of course, there was always a student or two who just like me didn’t belong in the halls and needed to be hustled along. I arrived a minute or two late. I’d rush in and I say, “Redd, where did we leave off yesterday?”

And Redd, unlike me was always prepared, always ready, and he’d answer, “Mr. Wemstrom, we just started to read ACT II of Purlie Victorious. We just started the watermelon count when the bell rang.” I’d ask if everybody remembered their parts from yesterday, the class would nod and we’d begin. Maybe we didn’t have forty minutes like we should, but we had a great thirty minutes.  And then all of a sudden the bell rang startling us, bringing us back to Chicago. They’d moan and groan as they left. On the way out I’d yell, “Finish tonight and we’ll read and talk more tomorrow.” Then they'd be gone and I wondered who ever invented such a retarded system.

By the time the class got to February, I relied on Redd completely. When we were reading Purlie Victorious, he asked about sharecropping, Jim Crow, or what else Ossie Davis wrote. When we read The Learning Tree, he asked why they didn’t talk more about blacks in the US History book. I told the class he was right the books should spend more time talking about African Americans in the standard US History books and not just in the Afro-History books. And I said we shouldn’t be on the third floor reading literature and studying history on the second floor. And we were off and Newt and Kansas were left far behind and God only knows where we’d go from there, but the students liked Newt and we’d be back in Kansas the next day. It was all good.

  I had discovered that the class was interested in whatever he was interested in. If I got too longwinded, he’d interrupt, ask another question or change the subject. If we were doing something the class liked he’d want to stretch it out a bit. No telling what boring stuff was coming up next.

If I was attempting to do something that the class wasn’t interested in, he knew just what to do. I’d come rushing in slightly out of breath and before I could ask Redd for my cue, he’d ask me a question. “Mr. Wemstrom, yesterday you said… or we were talking about… or I saw on TV last night that….” And we’d be gone. But not just the two of us, he knew just how to do it, so he had the whole class interested.

Redd was tall, over six feet, all muscle, built like a basketball player. But he didn’t like sports. He never said, but you could tell right away he wouldn’t like anything competitive, with winners and losers. He didn’t like anything that involved hurting people, even for fun. He was gentle, quiet and a natural leader.

A couple of years later, I had his sister in class. It was a good class. We were all about business and we got a lot done. One day, I asked his sister how Redd was doing. She answered, “OK”. A lot of students were like Redd. After high school, they just did OK. They were smart enough to go to college or learn a skill but their skills weren’t quite good enough to get in or they were worried that they weren’t quite good enough and were afraid to apply and even try.

She repeated that he was doing OK and then she said, “You know, Terrence (his sister was the only one who used his first name) came home from school every day when I was in grammar school and he talked and talked about your class. I couldn’t wait to get to high school so I could take your class. So now, I’m in your class and you know what, it’s just OK. It’s better than a lot of classes, but there’s nothing special about our class.  We work hard and we learn a lot and you’re a good teacher, but it’s not special. My brother was really lucky.”

Donna was a good student. I recommended her for the honors track and when she graduated she went off to college.

And you know what? School ought to be special. And when we talk about test scores and good classes, we forget to talk about magic. And yes, school should be magical.