wk 2 response to Bianca

Posted by Bianca at 4:44 PM Labels: assignment, reading, Rule #6, week 2
One of my favorite teachers was my high school 12th Grade English teacher, Hazel Haley. She was the oldest teacher at the school (she had taught at my school so long the entire English building was named after her), completely committed to the subject matter, and her class was NOT easy in the slightest. You couldn't be in one of her classes and not respect her knowledge of the subject. I enjoyed her class because of this, but the reason she was one of my favorite teachers had less to do with that and more to do with the fact she never took the subject she loved too seriously. he may never have heard of it, but she practiced Rule #6 every day she taught.

My previous English teacher for 11th Grade American English, Mrs. Fite, was a horror who sapped all the interest and humor out of the material we read and subscribed to over analyzing literature to death as a rule (We still laugh in my family about the time Mrs. Fite told my mother I was just too creative and I would have a hard time in university because of it. Most inaccurate and ridiculous advice... EVER!). Miss Haley was a breath of fresh air because she understood that you could both respect a subject as well as laugh about it when it was a bit ridiculous.

I'll never forget the day that she told our class that she was glad the curriculum had been changed so we were now reading Macbeth instead of Hamlet because she thought Hamlet was just a whiner and if he had just stopped whining and killed his uncle right away everyone would have been infinitely better off... and no, I'm not paraphrasing loosely... that was pretty much how she said it. Here was an English teacher actually criticizing a play by Shakespeare... this was simply novel to my 12th grade self. In her jesting she created an environment where we students were actually allowed to criticize what we were reading as long as we could back up our opinion, and that was infinitely more valuable to me in university than being told I should be "less creative."

Miss Haley epitomized our reading's Rule #6 for me. She could be serious and committed to her job, but she also knew when to step back and just laugh and I know her students all learned more because of that.

Hazel Haley died in 2008 after having taught for 69 years, 67 of those at Lakeland Senior High School. This interview is from her last week of teaching:


and I replied:
Loved the video- I think I saw it originally a few years ago. It brought tears to my eyes, some poignantly, some frustratingly; your Miss Haley had an amazing career in education and life. That is so rare and enviable. But I guess if I use her standards it's not too late for me to "grab" 20-30 years teaching some where.

She must have really enjoyed it all. Thanks for the reflection.