Report Card

My tenth grade report card from Newton High School surfaced just now. Each of my teachers- Mr. Heintzelman (English), Miss Jewett (Latin), Miss Burdon (French), Mr. Ferguson (Social Studies), and Miss Brackett (Math) wrote out my grades on a crisp 4” x 6” blue card. It would be pleasant to report that I earned all A’s but in fact I received B’s in French and Math.

Miss Brackett, my math teacher, was a wiry woman with red hair. She was always clear and patient, and if I didn’t get an A it wasn’t her fault. I remember sitting half-panicked during some of her lessons, since I’ve never had much aptitude for math. She would have been at least as surprised as I was to find me teaching statistics to graduate students.

Miss Burdon, my French teacher, kept me after school one day because I had not only failed to bring a mirror to class to help me round my lips in an approved fashion when pronouncing a certain dipthong, but I had pretended to look in a mirror while rounding my lips. When she looked down at my desk and found no mirror inside my book, she cried out "you deceived me!" But then she never liked me.

I recall Miss Jewett, my second year Latin teacher, as a small, elderly woman (no doubt she was 30 years younger than I am today) who loved Latin and gave her students a love of the language too. It was a pleasure to study in her class. I went on for a third year (Cicero) with her. Had I continued for a fourth year, I could have read Virgil, but I thought it more “practical” to continue with French instead. Indeed, I did learn French well enough, after studying it in college, to get along in France during the summer of my 20^th year, but when I learned Hebrew, my French departed without even saying goodbye. I might have done better to read Virgil. Do high school students study Latin these days?

I remember Mr. Ferguson, my social studies teacher, as bored by the curriculum; but I’m not sure - it might have been another teacher - so I won’t accuse him of being flat and uninspiring. I vaguely remember his wearing suits to class, but this may be an invented memory. We teachers work so hard and what do our students remember about what we try to teach them or about us? I don’t remember a thing from that social studies course, not even the topics, and I remember almost nothing about him. But no doubt some of my students can say the same about my courses and about me.

Mr. Heintzelman, my English teacher, was a recent graduate of Amherst, a tall, dashing, energetic, athletic young man. If anyone can claim the credit of teaching me to write, it was he. Of all my teachers, he made the strongest impression on me and was the one I liked the most. Alas, he died a few years later, leaving behind his wife and two young children.

Why have I kept my tenth grade report card and not my eleventh and twelfth grade cards? I suspect that the eleventh and twelfth grade reports were even less distinguished. But why have I kept the card at all? It may in fact become a victim of the purge I’m contemplating, but not now, or at least not yet.

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