On Reunions, Primitive Utilitarianism, and Passing the Baton

Abstract

I HADN'T seen them for 18 years, and I wasn't really sure why I needed to see them now. Still, I had driven 17 hours from my home outside Boston to the small community near the Indiana/Ohio border. My stomach had begun to churn around Columbus, more than two hours earlier. What if we just don't like each other? I'd wondered as I drove west on I-70 toward Lewisburg, Ohio, where I was about to be reunited with students from my first class. As I turned onto the exit ramp, I was reminded of how many times I had driven up the same ramp during the two years I taught sixth grade at Lewisburg Elementary School. I drove past the Warnkes' house, where the reunion would be held, and through the center of town. Nothing much had changed. There was still only one stoplight--and still not much need for it. The furniture store needed a coat of paint, and the Methodist parsonage where I had often had dinner with the family of one of my students was a little run-down. There was a new bank with a digital clock, and a brick fire station had been built to replace the one that had burned to the ground back in the spring of '69. I smiled as I remembered the kids' joyful retelling of how the firefighters--or firemen in those days--had just barely managed to save the fire trucks and my seizing upon their amusement to teach the concept of irony. Soon I turned my car into the school parking lot and got out to walk around the grounds. The building had finally been condemned the year before, but it still looked the same as it had the first time I saw it back in August of 1968. Looking up at the fire escape and the door that led into room 201, I was transported back in time. I saw the kids everywhere--lounging on the fire escape reading their books and having small-group meetings; sitting under the big oak trees that lined the playground, clipboards on their knees, their faces scrunched in pain as they tried to think of what to write; clustered around me as we prepared for a kickball game and listening--or pretending to listen--as I gave the ceremonial lecture about why we cannot just divide into teams by the classic boy/girl rule; and emerging from the wooded area at the southern edge of the yard covered with mud and burrs and clutching the fossils and plant life that would become central features of one study or another. And I could hear their voices, not words really, but laughing ... so much laughing. I remembered the frantic call I'd received from the superintendent less than a week before school started. I had no idea how he got my name, but I knew he was desperate. There were only two criteria for employment in those days of drastic teacher shortage--candidates had to have 60 college credits and be breathing on their own. Those who met the criteria could get emergency teaching certificates. I'd always wanted to be a teacher, and now, out of the blue and a full year shy of graduation, I got a call inviting me into the profession. Of course I jumped at the opportunity. I can't even describe what it was like for me when, alone in the classroom for the first time, I leaned against the desk and surveyed the room. I didn't see the institutional green walls, the peeling plaster, or the broken window that later that year allowed snow to blow into our little haven. Instead, I saw a room filled with color and excitement, projects and displays, plants and pets, and children laughing, working, creating, learning, achieving. I could hardly contain myself. I walked to the chalkboard. Not really noticing the wide crack that ran down one side or the missing chunk of the surface, I picked up the chalk and, using my very best penmanship, wrote my name across the black slate. That was the first day of the rest of my life. And I remembered the remarkable times that were the late Sixties. My younger brother Thomas was among the leaders of the antiwar movement at Ohio State. My older brother Miles was a state trooper often called out to handle student riots. …