It doesn’t take long in this profession before every teacher has that student in class who is admittedly much smarter than he is IQ-wise. Only experience and age hold the two in their appropriate roles. Like his first puppy love, no teacher ever forgets that extraordinarily superior kid. Yeah, that one who ultimately challenged him yearlong and transformed him into a much better teacher. Similarly, it doesn’t take long to encounter that advanced student’s antipodes: that one student you can never forget for his unfathomable academic limitations. Both these characters hit me head on as a second-year teacher at my tender age of 22 and their second year in high school. We were all new to this: only one year of high school experience from opposite sides of the Big Desk. I remember both these students clearly, but one is more fun to recall than the other.
The future MENSA starling was Gisselle. Brilliant at 15 and now probably a state judge or CEO somewhere, she was not a particularly attractive girl and eagerly standoffish to her classmates. Behind her back, she was always referred to as either Gristle or The Griffin. Kids can be cruel, but I did have to giggle silently inside each time I warned her gossipers, “Guys, that’s enough,” which I timed to fall after the end of their latest told tale. I have no doubt that The Griffin is successfully sleeping alone tonight, visions of corporate takeover dancing in her head.
Gisselle’s counterpoint truly was her complete opposite. Big, good looking boy who wore his five-sport letterman jacket—earned in only his freshman year–anytime the temperatures dipped into the 60’s F, he was a bona-fide sweetheart of a person. His expressions always amazed me; even when he clearly understood something, he still looked like he had no clue. His name was Troy and everybody loved him. You couldn’t help but to love such a nice guy. And as of homeroom day one of sophomore year, no one ever again called him Troy until his graduation night when the head of school was reading off the list of graduates. He was always referred to as Yort, Yorton the Who.
You see, as the 10th grade teacher I was naturally assigned the 10th grade homeroom to monitor and lead. Back then on day one of school, the HR period was always extended to hand out schedules, locker assignments and keys, textbooks, and for other business to be completed. Among these was that perennially mandatory “Personal Information” form from the government that no one ever knew the reason for but had to be completed in full anyway. You know, one of those school docs with all the bubbles to color in, the ones that can only be filled in with a #2 lead pencil.
So there we all were in homeroom to meet each other and get down to “the business of education” by calling role and coloring in the government coveted Scantron dots. Despite my reading loudly and clearly the federally scripted instructions to complete the dot matrix, then asking, “Are there any questions?” Troy still had questions.
But I was a brand-new teacher in that school, so he asked his jock and jocular buddies for help. I was busy helping others and only glanced over to see that the guys appeared to be helping him.
Troy: “Why do I have to put my last name first and my first name last? That’s dumb.”
Others: “That’s just the way it is, Dude. What’s even dumber is that you have to reverse the letters in your first name too. Yeah, so you have to fill in your first name Y-O-R-T, not TROY.”
As proof, Bob showed poor Troy that he had reversed his name and filled in the dots that way—B-O-B.
Confident that he knew what he was doing, Troy finished filling out the form as Y-O-R-T. He even had the other guys double check his work to make sure it was correct before I collected the papers.
From that moment forth, Troy no longer existed nominally. He had been reincarnated as YORT–Yorton, the Who. He was such a good-natured soul that he went along with it all. Ya’ gotta love a guy like that.
How those friends in homeroom restrained themselves from losing it to laughter that morning is still beyond me.
Months later once I had won their trust, the guys told me that they did this sort of thing to Yort all the time; by the time I had met him as Troy, his teammates had learned to control their outbursts until later.
And their tricks were never ending.
Yort was the city-wide, first team fullback in American football his last three years in high school. The guy was a naturally talented beast with a ball.
However, and this is true, before each game the coaches had to tape a small pebble to the inside of his left wrist so that he’d know which way to run on each play. In the huddle he had to be told rock side or no nock side to be sure.
I watched at practice one day when his teammates told him to go place the ball on the “53-yard line.” He tried, and he tried, running back and forth for ten minutes before coach stopped him.
In basketball, Yort was a formidable power forward. One year, before the team took the court for the first game of the season, the boys told him about the newest rule change.
“Yeah, when you make a shot and grab the ball before anyone else you can shoot again, …a four-point play.” He did this smilingly proud of himself and was charged with a technical foul.
During a track and field event his friends told him that they needed a shot-put catcher. Coach stopped him just in time.
I want to keep this a family-friendly article, so we’ll skip baseball season.
Yes, the guys gave Yort more than most people could stand, but he took it all in stride. Then there were the times in class when he needed no help to seem silly.
While walking around the room passing out papers one day, Yort had his ankle crossed at the knee and I noticed a hole in the sole of his shoe.
“You have a hole in your shoe. Can you buy a new pair or have that fixed?”
“Oh, no Sir, I’m just waiting for it to go away. It’s leather and skin heals itself.”
As a 23 year old, teacher or not, what do you say to that without laughing.
Another time we were analyzing poetry in class. Out of the blue and completely off topic, Yort interrupted to ask, “Why is Hawaii so hot and Alaska is so cold when they’re right next to each other?”
Seeing my puzzled look and those of his classmates, he clarified his inquiry by pointing to the US map on the wall. It was the standard classroom map of the contiguous 48 states with Hawaii and Alaska as inserts beneath California.
“Look, they’re both islands right next to each other by Mexico.”
Poor Yort, as his classmates explained this perceived anomaly to him, I grabbed the globe and gave it to the kids as a visual learning aid. There was no more poetry that day.
Here’s the gist. Just as most adults have teachers they’ll never forget; we teachers all have students whom we never will forget, nor ever want to forget.
Global English Tutor - Paul Cuadrado 