I was doing something in school yesterday that is very taboo.
Gambling…with students!
I had a reading teacher in eighth grade, Mr. Sprowles. He was the best! He is the reason I have a love for reading. It was a class of eighteen boys and we were all friends. Picture a roughly sixty year old, deaf, retired member of the Army trying to show us goofy thirteen year olds that reading was fun.
He did it and then some.
He started the year with the Trojan War. Yes, of course we all laughed at the word Trojan in the title. One of the factors at play in the book was Fate. The characters we encountered in the book were dictated by the idea of fate being on or off their side. Mr. Sprowles incorporated this into the classroom environment. "Mr. Sprowles, can I go to the bathroom?" He would pull out a quarter and say "Let's let fate decide" He stuck by it too. Even if it looked like our bladders were going to explode. We finished the book and then he let us put on a play. I still wonder how he convinced us this was a good idea but I think it had something to do with the fact that he let us make swords and armor. The best part was my new friend Cypher had REAL swords...un-guard! Miraculously, no one got hurt.
About this time of the year, we started our horror unit. Thrilling stuff. Literally. We read Poe and Hitchcock and he taught us that horror did not mean gore. They psychological is scarier than the visual. He taught us that the scariest thing we could encounter is what we harbored in our own minds and thoughts. Powerful stuff for an eighth grader. He dressed up as a gate keeper one time and read us the Pit and the Pendulum by candlelight. He kept prepubescent, rowdy, and caffeine laced boys in a complete stupor. And he did it without things like Ritalin...you know, performance enhancing drugs. Anyway, it was great.
He had a black pot that we were using for some reason concerning our horror unit, I’m not sure now why. Anyway, we all had good grades and decided that if Mr. Sprowles would let us, we wanted to put money on who could do the best on the next test. Two bucks a kid, winner takes the pot. He agreed and said he would oversee the funds. Cypher won. Mr. Sprowles, while teaching his horror unit, created a monster. To be exact, he created about eighteen of these stinky, pimple faced monsters mobbing his room every day, hungry not for brains and screams, but unbeknownst to the monsters themselves...knowledge.
Now, it was on. We threw more money around than Vegas bookies. He let us bet on everything! Tests, midterm grades, nine weeks grades. You name it, the pot came out. Concerning my parents, I had been asking for extra "lunch money" almost the entire year only to gamble it away on my grades. Now, I doubt they would have been that upset. Near the end of the third nine weeks Mr. Sprowles let us have a little competition. Since he was a military man, he was all about staying in physical shape. That was the day’s lesson. Physical toughness and mental toughness are all about pushing yourself and the reward of it all. Push-ups for points. We stood against the blackboard facing Mr. Sprowles and above all of our heads he wrote a number. That number designated how many push-ups he thought we could do. Do more than that number, get bonus points. Reach that number and offer a challenge to another classmate who also only reached their number. Winner of the challenge gets the bonus points,
Looking back, I think Mr. Sprowles always pushed us to do more than we ever previously had. This goes for push-ups and academics. A byproduct of his experiment was that in the course of physical and mental challenges in which we were pitted against one another for grades and money, we started to cheer for one another. "you can do more push-ups, come on, I will do them with you" to "come on man we gotta get this story read" "oh you don't know that word, sound it out. it's just like.." Maybe Mr. Sprowles had it up his sleeve the whole time, but he gave us a headfake. Taught us all something without our even knowing. In a way, I think we ended up giving him a headfake right back.
I learned more life lessons and more about myself in that class than any other in my life.
Shocker here.
While I was student teaching at Reynolds, I had to be involved in an extra-curricular activity. It was spring so my only real choice was track. My only experience with track was in high school where I participated for two weeks, in which the best part was getting new shoes. The track coach Wayne was great. Classic comedian. During a track meet at Greenville High School, I spotted a slightly hunched over, aging man who looked damn familiar. When he turned, I knew it! It was Mr. Sprowles. Here I am starting my career as a teacher, and I see the man I credit for pointing me in the direction I was headed.
One of my biggest regrets in High School was never thanking him for the impact he had. High School students were forbidden in the Middle School halls, and I, one to rarely break the rules, followed them until the last day. But now, I could redeem myself.
There was a risk. At one point all the way back in eighth grade, Mr. Sprowles showed us a Civil War movie where he and his brother were re-enactors. They were only on screen for a split second, but you could tell by the excitement in his voice, it was his claim to fame. The showing of the video revealed my current dilemma.
Mr. Sprowles brother was his identical twin. Now, standing in the rain at a middle school track meet, how was I to know I was approaching the right 'Mr. Sprowles'? Hell, don’t miss another opportunity I thought. I was beginning to understand what it meant to a teacher to have a student share kind and meaningful words. Inspiration is a two way street with no age restrictions on who the driver has to be: I was about to cruise down it; windows down, radio up.
I tapped him on the shoulder and said “Mr. Sprowles, you probably don’t remember me but my name is Tim Mengel and I had you for eigth grade reading at Knoch high school, and you are the reason I’m here today.” Lucky me, it was the right Mr. Sprowles. We talked for an hour. He was as captivating as ever. It was comforting. A truly great experience for both of us.
So yesterday, I realized I learned a lesson from Mr. Sprowles that I had yet to employ in class. Motivate them with what they crave. Every last student in Mr. Sprowles class with me got a better grade than they ever would have based on conventional teaching standards. He let us raise the bar for ourselves. He walked the line, bent the rules, maybe even broke them but he did it in the name of his students. Not all of us had the opportunity to meet him on a dreary day at a junior high track meet and tell him that, but I know we all wish we could have.
So yesterday, I gambled with students. I walked the line. I bent the rules, maybe broke them. If my students pass my next test with an A, they are automatically exempt from the following test with the only clause being they still must complete all the homework for the unit. It was actually their idea. A kid named Matt who right now is sitting directly in front of me diligently working so as to assure his future success and maybe even the excuse from a future test. He is raising the bar for himself. Mr. Sprowles teachings live on through him now.
It feels great.
When I was in school and still today, you are not allowed to have a deck of cards, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t gamble. In this case, I’m rolling the dice…
