Not The Happiest 6th Grader

I was not the happiest 6th grade student. 

My family moved to Atlanta before my 4th grade year. I spent my 4th grade year with Mrs. Scott, joined by most of my friends from my new community that my family had moved into a few months prior. 5th grade was with Mrs. Harms, just down the hall from my 4th grade classroom. Again, somehow all of my friends were grouped together for our 5th grade year. I loved school.

Near the end of the year, all of my friends and I became increasingly excited to move to the local middle school for our 6th grade year in the fall. It was around this time that my parents sat me down and informed me that I'd be attending private school for 6th grade. I was devastated.

While some 11 year olds would handle this news with grace, I did not. Instead, I protested, argued, made the empty threats only an 11 year old can make ("Well, then I'll just live somewhere else!"), and spent every day leading up to 6th grade as a relatively unhappy child. My parents, in looking back, have a few choice words to describe my behaviors during this time. Essentially, I was not a very happy 5th grade student.

And so I entered Westminster not knowing a soul. 

Westminster was at the time (and still is) a high performing K-12 private catholic school. My day started with a 30 minute commute. There were weekly religious church sessions (which was something different for me to sit through). I didn't know anyone. I really didn't make any friends the whole year. 

From my entire year at Westminster, I have four, and only four, distinct memories. 

I remember running in PE twice a week throughout the entire campus. They said the route was approximately 2.2 miles, but I'm pretty sure it was much longer than that. 

I remember playing a lot of foosball and buying candy at break and lunch.

I remember being pooped on by a bird en route to art class one day. 

And I remember Mr. Gardner.

Mr. Gardner was my 6th grade science teacher. Science was my least favorite class. It's important to note that I also had a geography class, art class, a music class, the aforementioned running/PE class... and yet, science was still my least favorite. It was in my science class with Mr. Gardner that I acted out the worst. For whatever reason, Mr. Gardner took the brunt of my frustration about switching schools, from being away from my friends, for just being an angry 11 year old child.

Mr. Gardner did everything a teacher should do. He tried the consequence route. He held parent-student-teacher conferences. He assigned more work. He assigned less work. He graded me a bit harshly. He gave me a lot of grace. Looking back, he tried everything. 

One day, I was being especially challenging in class, and I could tell that Mr. Gardner was equally frustrated with the situation. He stopped his lesson for the class and asked me if I wanted to lead the class since I had so much to say. I told him I'd be glad to teach the class for him. He paused and said calmly that I'd be leading the chapter review lesson the following day for the class and that I best be ready. No problem, I said.

But there was a problem. I hadn't paid attention for the entire chapter and hadn't started preparing for the test in two days. Now, I was responsible for the chapter review to be delivered in 24 hours. This was not good.

I went home and immediately read the chapter. I had collected some notes from a classmate. I treated the teacher-provided study guide as the holy grail. I even referenced the encyclopedia set we had at home. By late that evening, I had cobbled together a Jeopardy style review, even with the hidden daily doubles. I felt prepared. 

The class itself was a blur. It's amazing how much faster the class period goes when you're the one in front of the class, leading the lesson. I put my classmates into three teams and they could, within their groups, respond to each of the answers with the correct question for the points shown. At the end, one team was declared the winner and, as a class, we had reviewed everything from the study guide plus some additional information gleaned from the encyclopedias. 

Mr. Gardner sat off to the side for the entire lesson. At the end, he looked over at me and said "well done." I was very exhausted afterwards and fell asleep early that night. I was not prepared for exactly how challenging and tiring leading a class lesson could be. I also earned an "A" on the chapter test the following day; turns out if you prepare the class review, you learn the material for the test quite well. My main takeaway was how much I enjoyed teaching. A seed was planted.

All of this took place in 1986-87. We moved to California after my 6th grade year and I never looked back at my year at Westminster and Mr. Gardner, even though I credit him with my first teaching experience. I'm not sure I would have ever gone into education without Mr. Gardner taking a chance on letting a knucklehead of a 6th grader lead a chapter review in science class way back when. 

Every so often, I would search online for Mr. Gardner. I only knew his last name and that he worked at Westminster, but I figured it couldn't be that hard... after all, I'm pretty good with my Internet searches. And yet, I had zero luck. 

Until I received a random reply from the dean of students at Westminster. He shared that Mr. Gardner had switched schools a while back and had since retired. He was living in Tennessee and yes, his first name is Warren (but went by Sandy) and he was on Facebook. Off to Facebook I went. A quick message one night was instantly replied to and he provided his email address for me to send a thank you that included my apology for what a challenging student I was for him in 6th grade science.

He replied to my email and shared his life since Westminster. He also kindly shared that he had no recollection of my Jeopardy game nor of me as a student. I'm not sure how this was possible; I had assumed that the year we spent together had permanently scarred his soul. However, his words provided the "why" and the "how" quite well in his email reply: 

"Your story to me, if you'll grant me a religious interpretation, speaks to what many call a 'God moment.' What was for you a seminal event was for me one of a blur of moments (as you know from your own experience being in charge of a class and now a school), but neither you nor I had to appreciate it for what it was at the time. It became something large because of who you are and where IMO God placed you to be influenced in a powerful and life-giving way. I can only imagine how effective that first class was. My daughter, who is now also a teacher, observed recently that kids listen to other kids who step into adult roles better than the adults. And your use of Jeopardy was perfect and outside my box (though it should not have been) and makes recall with more definition the day I turned over a class to a student. I'm sure everyone enjoyed it, including me, and in the process it lit something in you that still burns - yes, a God moment."

While I myself am not a religious person, I appreciated his words and how it best explains that perhaps there was some deliberate destiny involved in my parents' decision to transfer their 6th grade son (against his wishes) into private school back in 1986. 

Perhaps this means that what we endure in the present, even in a year as unbecoming as 2020, does directly spark who we collectively become in our shared future. 

Maybe there's a little bit of hope for us all, especially so for those parents with an unhappy, moody, ever-so-challenging 6th grade student.