I've had a lot of
teachers who, due to one
trait or another, seem to poke their
heads up in the waving,
undulating crowd I see when peering into my
past. Most of them were bad, but many had
positive traits as well. Mr. Sharp was a
embodiment of everything I found good in
teachers, a living
pantheon of teaching
gods stuffed into a single
individual.
Mr. Sharp taught
world history when I went to
high school. His
style was
revolutionary. His
scores were based only on the
tests and a few
projects. Your time in his
class was still your
time to
read, doze off, or
anything that didn't
disturb the other students, and if you could
conquer the
test even without paying
attention or doing
homework, then you
passed. He spent his
time teaching those who were
interested in
learning instead of harping on those who didn't or felt they already had
the scoop. He also seemed to be of the
opinion, like the protagonist in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, that testing and scoring the
students on the
material wasn't so important as simply
expanding their little
minds.
To prove that he found the scoring
unimportant, he would
devote every
Friday to an
extra credit exercise in which he would read
trivia questions, rotating around the
class. If you couldn't answer the
question, he would then pick someone else from
a show of hands to give it a
shot. If you did answer it, I believe you got something like ten points and the option to go
double or nothing, which you could keep doing until you answered
incorrectly.
Mr. Sharp displayed a
wild irreverance toward the
administration and the
school system. He would read the
faculty announcements, teachers
eyes only, to the students every day, sprinkling them with
intermittent comments or jokes aimed at the
administration or simply laughing out loud at what he read. There were often notices for faculty
meetings in there. Mr. Sharp would always talk about how boring these were and whenever one came up, he'd tell us how overjoyed he was that he would not be there. He also kept a big
super soaker water gun by his desk, to spray
student messengers from the
main office, yelling "YES!" every time he
nailed one. I, among others being quite
lazy, owed my
A to this very practice, going double or nothing sometimes four or five in a row.
I don't know if he's still teaching there, but I know that anyone who's had his class will never forget him. You who teach the young people of the world, remember Mr. Sharp's message, it is easier to teach people who can
relate to you. Push on
teenagers and they'll push
away harder.