Sixth Grade, Michelle, Jade East, Everything

Sixth grade. The awkward grade. I had a terrible crush on Michelle, but watched her turn from fratgirl to greaser chick over a period of months. In fact, all the girls turned weird. They used to be so easy to get along with. Now, in the corner of my eye, they almost seemed to be snickering at me. No matter how much Jade East I splashed on my unshowered face each morning, I could never make any progress with Michelle. In fact, as time went by, she grew more and more distant. What could explain such behavior?

· Was it our sixth grade teacher Mr. Kotyk’s fascinating approach to pupil control?
· Was it because I was accused of unethical Safety Patrol behavior?
· That I nearly set the classroom on fire twice?

I overheard someone on TV say that girls matured sooner than boys. Impossible! I was totally mature! I wore white khakis and a no-collar shirt, the kind that buttoned from the chest up. I was able to describe everything that happened on Man from Uncle from the previous Friday night. I was reasonably good at 4-square. Oh, sure, I was a Boy Scout, but I seldom wore my uniform to school. In what possible way did I lack the maturity needed to get Michelle, or any suitable girl for that matter, to “like” me?

Maybe it was my shoddy approach to “learning.”

I was a “smart” kid in that I knew a lot of stuff. But, as I’ve said earlier, I seldom did homework or viewed it as any sort of imperative upon my valuable time. If the homework seemed interesting and did not cut into my street football or favorite TV show time, there was a reasonable probability that I would complete some of it. Scratch “reasonable.” Say “some.”

Perhaps the most amazing example of this was when our vocal music teacher, Mrs. Edwards, assigned us to make some kind of musical instrument. But I already had a guitar, a trumpet, and a piano at home and I really saw no reason to make some kind of dorky second rate noise maker. Oh yeah, I could have put beans in an oatmeal box and covered it with construction paper, but why? For a while, I considered making a sort of guitar out of cigar box and I went so far as to cut a hole in the lid.

That hole-in-top cigar box sat on a shelf at home for about a month, the length of time Mrs. Edwards had given us to complete this important assignment. Essentially, I had forgotten about the whole thing. The night before it was due, I realized that this was the night before it was due.

I took the cigar box to school the next day and to music class that afternoon. Mrs. Edwards asked each student to show off his/her product. When it was my turn, I stood up and demonstrated what a loud noise the box made when I slammed it, and I had the balls to add, “It wouldn’t make such a loud noise if I hadn’t cut a hole in the lid!”

I could almost see squiggly comic book lines of aggravation shooting from the head of this friendly, funny, sweet, and very talented teacher. “Roger,” she said in her deepest, most serious tone, “I’m very disappointed in you.” Fortunately, I think – I hope – this was the only time I upset her so.

On the other hand, my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Kotyk – I disappointed him lots of times. But given his sarcastic familiarity with the ways of 12-year old boys, he really might not have given a shit. Mr. Kotyk was funny and friendly, not like kindly Mrs. Edwards, but in a Greek, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Son of Popeye, part-time bar tender at the local Elks Club sort of way. He was a tough old cuss who could pat you on the back one moment and give you a quick pop in the chops the next. I tended to get more pops than pats.

Example: Mr. Kotyk hated “long hair on boys,” meaning any hair he could see or pinch. When he wanted me to get a haircut, he didn’t make a request. He’d just yank the hank o’ hair above my ear and say something like, “If I can still do that on Monday, you’d better hope I’m not here!”

Example: My desk was usually a mess, filled with stuffed and bulging books and papers. Kotyk had a simple solution. He’d drag it out in the hall, dump it all over the place, and make me clean it up. Actually, I kind of enjoyed this. The peacefulness of the hallway made up for the brief moment of humiliation.

But now here’s the grand example of Mr. Kotyk’s unique approach to pupil control, an example that I still speak about with tremendous admiration to my Penn State education students. Allow me to set the scene.

It’s about 2:00. We’re supposed to be copying sentences from our language book, learning to write, “Pass the potatoes to me” instead of “Shoot me the potatoes.” The book had an illustration of a cowboy shooting his pal for having use the incorrect phrase. They don’t write ‘em like that anymore. Anyhow, it was always at this lazy boring afternoon moment when Mr. Kotyk would leave the room.

We didn’t know where he went. Maybe he went to the bathroom, maybe to make a phone call, maybe to sell insurance. Sometimes two minutes, sometimes twenty. Sometimes we’d sort of carry on with our work, but most of the time we’d start screwin’ around. Imagine a classroom as an engine and disruption as a flywheel. It takes some effort to get the initial gear moving. But when you get it going just right, all the other gears start to spin.

For example: Somebody’d say to Jeff Biggers, “do your Man from Uncle!” and he’d rearrange the parts of his pen, hold it up to his mouth, and say “open channel D!” Then all the boys would be take their pens apart and pretend to be Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin. Somebody’d make a fart noise or actually let one. Colleen Collins or Ruth Umstead would fall off her chair and the room would explode into sweet mayhem. Once again, however, we were doomed.

From out of nowhere, Mr. Kotyk would burst in and announce, “All the talkers come to the front of the room!” Because this would cause dead silence, one might think that we’d all be smart enough to just sit there and quietly go back to work. Yet inevitably, one or two of the good Catholic kids would slowly rise and walk to the front. That was bad enough, but then one of them – often my pal Johnny Kotlarczyk – would turn back to me and admonish, “Shouse! You were talking too!” Kotyk’s sardonic grin would hit me like a tractor beam. "C'mon up here, Shouse!"

So, what was in store for us? Long chalkboard pointer in hand, Kotyk stood at the head of the line. One by one he’d order the boys to bend over and the girls to extend their hand (except that one time when he was so pissed at Colleen Collins that he made her bend over too). Some days there’d be three or four kids up there. But on a really good day, there might be 20 or more and only three or four left in their seats. This was classic Kotyk. If he was having a good day, there’d be a wisecrack, a whack, and a smile for each kid. If not, it would be just one wicked whack.

The entire ceremony was highly functional. First, it allowed Mr. Kotyk to kill 15 or 20 minutes of class time. Second, it must have seemed to him like a reasonable way to teach a room full of kids to behave themselves even when the teacher was out of the room. Today’s teachers and school administrators whine and moan weird stuff like, “oh, the teacher must never leave the room!” which, of course, I find absurd. Obviously, a sixth grade teacher must sometimes leave the room, if only to help students develop habits of self control.

Finally, the ceremony was a way of establishing a sense of classroom justice; for there were days when some of us did keep doing our work, while others had tried hard to get the damn flywheel spinning. If you were one of the mature, responsible kids, you felt a great sense of satisfaction to watch the festivities at the front of the room.

Mr. Kotyk demonstrated what I would call the artful use of corporal punishment, the pros and cons of which we can debate another day. One more thing—this wasn’t the only way Mr. Kotyk “killed time” in the afternoon. On nice spring days he’d take us out for an extra long recess to play softball. He’d pitch. It was good for all our souls.

Coming soon: Fire in the classroom; Safety Boy scandals; The Story of John and Barbara.