The Hut at the Crest of West that I call home is in one of Frostburg’s many old-town neighborhoods, with narrow streets and no sidewalks, so that when the kids get the urge to pedal, I throw the bikes in the back of the truck and head for an empty parking lot.
A couple weeks ago we ended up behind St. Michael School, Dad and Prof. Mary of Pot State stationed on the tailgate as two of the Progeny Three zipped to and fro across the pavement. At one point I yelled to the boy, noting the window of his classroom that looked down on the parking lot, and how his days of third-grade confinement were rapidly drawing to a close.
“I won’t miss it,” he replied, or something to that effect, as I wasn’t taking notes and can’t recall the exact quote. Nevertheless, it was the kind of response one would expect from a 9 year old boy, as reflexive as a doc-knock to the knee.
What I didn’t expect was what came in the next breath, betraying regret at the remark just uttered. “Third grade was the best year I ever had,” he said, voice fading as he pedaled away. “I like Mrs. Engle.”
Diane Engle is an institution unto herself at St. Mike’s, the kind of teacher who takes delight in her craft, works tirelessly at it, and treasures the young people in her charge. And she’s not afraid to let parents know when they’re not holding up their end of the educational bargain, like a certain someone who didn’t visit the school Web site enough to check the grades she labored mightily to update every week.
With three sisters who went into teaching and a girlfriend who also works nine months out of the year molding young minds, I’m intimately familiar with how overworked and underpaid they are, so I try to do the little things to let the kids’ teachers know how much I appreciate their efforts. I always sign my notes with a separate “Thanks!” and send in a little bouquet of lilacs come May. So it was that I went out of my way the last day of school to let the good Mrs. Engle know about Will’s remark, how third grade was the best ever of his five years at St. Mike’s, going all the way back to the rice table, naps and copious playtime of Pre-K.
Following an emotional, tear-filled summer sendoff for the student body, Mrs. Engle wasn’t buying it. “Oh, they say that every year!” she laughed.
She was just being modest. However many times he crosses the church parking lot in years to come, heading to school or Mass, I know my son will gaze up to that window and recall the 2007-08 school year as one of his best.
Teachers as a group are like any other bunch of clock punchers. Some truly invest themselves in their work, doing the best they can, not because it will mean more pay, but because it’s what they require of themselves in all they do. Others just show up.
Among the educators of West Virginia University, it is the former group, I suspect, that arose to protest the master’s degree awarded to a governor’s daughter who didn’t earn it. The university’s reputation was at stake in the matter, to be sure, but it also came down to pride in one’s craft. WVU professors are at the height of their profession, and if degrees can be handed out like candy canes a favored few, their life’s work is rendered worthless.
WVU’s faculty senate would still be standing alone protesting the egregious offense, and the university president would still be ignoring them, had the moneyed alums not stepped into the fray. But it was the educators’ principled stand that first set the university back upon the path of righteousness.
The debacle has claimed its most prominent victim in the soon-to-be former University President Mike Garrison, but Gov. Joe Manchin is greatly reduced in my eyes for the sordid affair. Like the rest of America, I watched his performance during the Sago Mine disaster with genuine admiration. He was there start to finish, not because it looked good for the cameras, but because he was the governor of a coal-mining state, and felt he needed to be with those suffering families.
But now this, a daughter who needs a degree to land a six-figure job with a politically connected Morgantown pharmaceutical company, and a university administration only too happy to comply. You can almost hear the plaintive cry of “Daddy!” and the speed-dial beeps of a call to the university president. Kinkos couldn’t whip up a sheepskin any faster.
In one of the few comments he has made about the controversy, Manchin didn’t disavow the special treatment his daughter received or rebuke his 38-year-old daughter, rather, he lamented the strain the whole affair has placed upon the poor, pampered child of privilege.
We all love our kids, would do anything for them, but one of the most important values any parent can convey is integrity. In this, Gov. Manchin has failed not only his daughter, but the state of West Virginia and its namesake university…