The Invisible Teacher

In the previous blog, I gave Orv Schlatter credit for helping me to become the teacher that I wanted to be.
After considering that entry and reflecting on the subject a little more, I realized that Orv's influence was substantial, but it was augmented by observing and working with many other fantastic educators.  To really do justice to all of those people, I plan to to highlight educators that represent the qualities of others whom I have spent some time.

I mentioned Merle Rice in the previous entry and hadn't planned to elaborate on my experiences with him, but as I was writing about Orv, I realized that Merle influenced me as well.  Granted, Merle's contribution wasn't as dramatic to my career as Orv's, but it was necessary.  You see, Merle was a physics teacher.
When the National Endowment for the Humanities wanted courses created that blended the curriculum of different subject areas, Merle was included because he had great vision.  He was able to envision what this collaboration would look like, create the skeleton that would become our course, and when we got the endorsement from NEH, he was the driving force to stay with the model created.

That being said, Merle did have a weakness.  Even though he could create this class and plan all elements of it, he couldn't reach the students.  Whenever he was teaching his part of the course, the students disengaged and Orv and I would have to make adjustments.  To be fair, Merle knew that he had trouble connecting with the students.  Sometimes he would even defer to Orv or I by feeding us his lesson to teach.  We would encourage him to keep trying.  And he did.

His planning was always impeccable.  He had great ideas that were ahead of their time.  The best example of this was when we were trying to impress upon the students why they needed to know about economics.  We always planned our lessons around role playing in a fictional town - Millville.  The students were the inhabitants of the town.  They made decisions as they took on roles of key members of the community.

I remember that we were sitting in Merle's workroom.  That was commonly our planning location because we knew Merle wasn't all that comfortable away from his environment.  Our goal was to have the students involved in making decisions for the town on how much to tax the people and how the money was to be used.  The concept developed quickly until we reached the point about what to do about money.  Should we print up money?  We realized that wasn't a good idea because we couldn't create enough and it would be a waste of paper.

I didn't know it then, but that was the moment that I now realize how forward thinking Merle was.  He said that we just needed to have cards that represented money like credit cards.  I remember distinctly that he predicted that one day paper money and coins would one day be displaced by a card that would just deduct money from your bank account. I also remember that I told him that would never happen.  Boy was I wrong!  He created  a debit card system that we used in that class in 1978.

When the block went away in the early 80's, Merle went into his own classroom to teach physics and physical science.  It was a constant battle for him.  He would plan great lessons that were any bit as innovative as what we did in Millville, but when he tried to deliver the lesson like Orv or I would, he just couldn't do it.

Eventually, he retired.  He had confided with me over those last years that teaching was a struggle for him.
Students were mean to him, and some even were physical, to the point that he left on disability.  What they couldn't know was that he was a genius.  What I knew was that this genius was a man who desperately wanted to be a great teacher.  I hope that he realized that he helped to make two other teachers look pretty good.  Thank you  Merle.