That just might be the best piece of feedback I've ever received, and I've gotten a lot of feedback in my lifetime. Those words were written on the back of my 8th grade English report card by Betty Jean Hyde, a teacher at Callanan Junior High in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1967. Back then, each teacher filled out a grade card for each student in his/her class, then each students cards were put in an envelope and sent home for a parent to sign and return. At the end of the school year, you were given all your grade cards from all your classes in an envelope to take home for your parents to review. I'm not sure if I gave my cards in 1967 to my parents to read or not, but I kept them. They had 8 children and things like this slipped through the cracks all the time, believe me. I stuck them away in a box of my personal stuff and toted them with me from town to town as I trudged the road of happy destiny for nearly 23 years.
Sometime around 1990, this particular report card and this specific piece of feedback began to take on new and significant meaning. Before I tell you that part of the story, let's take a closer look at this report card.
The front of the report card is signed by my mother who signed her name as "Mrs. Donald Kingkade". Back then, it was common for a married woman to sign her name using her husbands first name, rather than her own first name. I point this out not just because this is no longer a common custom, but because "Mrs. Donald" was soon to become an early adopter of the "women's lib" movement as it was referred to at that time. She would go on to reject Mother's Day and claimed that it was a vast conspiracy engineered by men to keep women in their place.
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| Front side of 8th Grade English Report Card |
Now to the back of the report card. Down on the bottom you will see BASIC TRACK, GENERAL TRACK, and ADVANCED TRACK with descriptions for each. Students were identified and grouped according to ability. If you were in the Advanced Track, you were one of the smart kids. If you were in the General Track, you were, well, just average. Imagine labeling kids as average today. Average seemed to be OK back then. That brings us to the Basic Track--you did not want to be in the Basic Track. Everyone knew who the "Basics" were and sadly I'm afraid, they knew who they were too. I started in the General Track when I was enrolled in the 7th grade after transferring from St. Augustine's Grade School. However, when school started in the fall of 1966, I found myself sitting in the Advanced Track English class along side the "smart kids". That class was taught by Betty Jean Hyde.
At the top of the report card, in the teacher's comments section, Mrs Hyde has broken down the grade by sections of the English curriculum and you will notice that I was only doing average work. My 3rd quarter grades are on the left ranging from a 4 (equal to a D) in unit work to a 1 L (equal to an A-) in spelling. By the end of the year I had managed to earn 2's across the board. In other words, I got a B in Advanced Track 8th Grade English after spending a good deal of the semester getting my seat moved for excessive wisecracks and side comments. Clearly I was not working to my full potential. In spite of that, I continued in Advanced English all the way through high school, took a written exam before my freshman year at Drake and earned 6 hours of college credit for English before stepping foot on the campus in the fall of 1971.
When the report card surfaced in the 1990's, the feedback Mrs. Hyde had written began to resonate in a very different way. "I had a good mind, but was going through a silly period." I liked that. It fit me. I had taken myself too seriously for too many years, I needed to lighten up. I started sharing the report card whenever and with whomever I could. I shared it as way to introduce myself in the seminars I taught. Stress Management Seminar- I shared it. Communication Skills Seminar- I shared it . Management Training- I shared it. I shared it in Iowa, Nebraska, in New York and in the Netherlands. I shared it to get a laugh. I shared it to connect with my students. Wherever I shared it, it worked. I'm still sharing it and it's still getting laughs. And the more I share it, the more I become aware of the gift that Betty Hyde gave me- a gift that goes far beyond the laughter that it created or the connections it helped me to make.
Betty Jean Hyde was an exceptional teacher who had the ability to maintain a dignified and graceful presence, yet challenge her students to learn and grow. In spite of my immaturity at the time, I realized that she could look past my immediate behavior and see something more than my classroom antics. She had a way of giving you feedback without shaming you or embarrassing you. It would have been so easy for her to simply put me in my place, embarrass me in front of the class, but she never did. She made you want to learn and she taught you about respect and dignity.
I began to talk about Betty Hyde when I shared the report card, after the laughs dwindled away, in a more serious tone. Who were your best teachers, I asked? What did they teach you? Whose influence do you still feel today?
I talked about Betty Hyde for nearly 23 years. The only person I didn't tell about Betty Hyde's contribution to my development was Betty Hyde. But that was about to change. And that is a story that must be told. In the meantime, who was the one teacher that made the biggest contribution to your life? What did they teach you? Have you told them?
Until next week......
1 comment:
You might have heard me tell this story, but when I was in 4th grade, my teacher (Miss Wallin, now Mrs. Mosey), made me stay after class, and, once the other students had exited, asked me if I was bored. I remember thinking, "Is that a trick question?" She told me she thought I was, and offered me the chance to work independently in the subject of my choosing. I ended up doing so in 3 subjects that year. 20 years later, I found her online to thank her as a result of having done too many "board of directors" exercises without having been current with the last one of mine. I told her that I was the first of my family to graduate college, the only one with a master's degree, and that her role in that was significant. These days, we are friends on FB, and I acknowledged her in my first book and sent her a free copy. She opened a world of possibility to me I would never have known otherwise, and one I needed desperately at the time.
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