ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Jennifer Bassett

Kumiko Torikai

Curtis Kelly

Chuck Sandy

Marc Helgesen

Panelists: Jennifer | Kumiko | Curtis | Chuck | Marc
Date: November 2005

Topic: "Sharing Our Stories"

This Think Tank is a follow up to that of September 2005 and the subsequent Think Tank Live event at the JALT2005 National Conference.

Marc Helgesen

This is a little story about criticism.

It happened when I was in second grade so I was, what, seven years old? I lived just a couple minutes from school, so usually I ate lunch at home. But one week my mom was gone ­ visiting my grandmother, maybe. Anyway, I was eating lunch at school. We didn’t have school lunches in those days. We brought our own. But we could order little bottles of milk.

“I wonder, a year or two or forty years from now, will my students remember me? And for what?”

I was eating my lunch and drinking my milk when, as bad luck would have it, I knocked over the milk. It drenched me, my lunch and ran into my desk, giving my papers and books a good soak.

Embarrassed, I cleaned it up. I don’t remember what the teacher said but the next day, when they were passing out the milk, she said something like, “Marc, I hope you don’t spill your milk and make a big mess today.” And of course, she said this in front of all the other students (my peers = the most important people in the world).

I’m sure if someone had asked her after school that night what she had said to me, she wouldn’t have remembered. But here it is, more than 40 years later, and I still remember the feeling of humiliation.

And (this is an interesting part), I remember the names of all my other teachers from Kindergarten through 6th grade. Even the “extra teachers” like music, art and gym (that was Mr. Beyers ­ Like “Beers with a Y,” he explained to us kids who thought that was very funny.) But I absolutely can’t remember the name of my 2nd grade teacher.

And I wonder, a year or two or forty years from now, will my students remember me? And for what?

Panelists: Jennifer | Kumiko | Curtis | Chuck | Marc

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Marc Helgesen, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College

Co-author of English Firsthand and Active Listening

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