This is a tribute to RHS English Teacher, Loren E. Leek. It was written by Chris Stella, RHS 1973.
RHS 100
Best Teachers -- Miss Loren E. Leek
If you
were a Ridgewood High School Student in 1972, and were not in the mood for work
during a free period, you could always amuse yourself by going to the library,
to examine the old yearbooks, particularly as regards the ancient portraits of
your current teachers. Usually, the contrasts were predictable – shorter hair
for the men, odd coiffures for the women, less commodious waistlines for both,
more enthusiasm for both. But, they always seemed to have been the people who
they now were, as they stood before you, in class.
The
situation with Miss Loren Leek, who was my senior year English teacher, was
entirely different. In her 1963 yearbook photo, she looked entirely
unrecognizable. And her name, moving forward
in time, it had changed from Mrs. Pipp, to Miss
Leek. The question of how this obviously prim and repressed 1963-model Mrs. Pipp
creature, had become transmogrified into my 1972 English teacher, the
sass-engorged, stylish, hot-tempered woman who now classified herself as a Miss
Leek, was a tantalizing mystery, of the greatest interest.
She was
intensely interested in the writing skills of her students. I would write an
assigned paper. She would review it, and make written comments. A meeting with
her would be scheduled.
And so,
with a rustle of bleeding Madras fabric, and a clink of her exotic bracelets,
she would tear mercilessly into my essays.
“Your
paper, it needs a haircut. This idea here, it’s a ‘wow’, but you already said
this, (and in a better way), in this other paragraph. And, you put your thesis
in the middle of the paper; it doesn’t belong there, put it in the first
paragraph, so your reader knows what you are trying to prove. And, all through
the paper, you use ‘gerunds’ inappropriately. I’ll bet you don’t even know what
a ‘gerund’ is!!”
Why, of
course I know what a “gerund” is, Miss Leek. It is one of those little furry
things that your sister buys at the Ye Towne Pet Shop. And, when she loses
interest in the little gerund, your mother gets stuck cleaning its cage.
Miss
Leek looked savage, but the corners of her mouth turned up slightly.
“Real
cute. Regarding the mouths of babes, sometimes the gems of wisdom get stuck in
the mouth, and they do not fall. Rewrite it, Mister, as of now; you’ve got a
‘D’.”
“This is
the form I want. You are strictly limited to a structure of five paragraphs.
First paragraph states your thesis. That is where you tell your reader what you
believe. Second, third, and fourth paragraphs are where you say what evidence
you have in favor of your beliefs. Fifth paragraph is your conclusion, where
you tell me why you think that the things in the middle paragraphs prove what
you said you believe at the beginning of your paper. This is what you have to
do, so please get to work.”
********
Form!
Structure! I could not believe what I was hearing. Didn’t this lady know that
this was 1972!! All across the creative world, everyone knew that the old forms
and structures needed to be broken down, burned, and discarded! This was the
only way that the creativity and feelings could be allowed to flow freely,
through the Universe, to reach all the people, in an unfettered way! I was
angry and it occurred to me that the Severely Repressed Pipp creature of 1963,
secretly lived on.
Well,
this went on for months. She was relentless in her infuriating criticisms. And,
I never did learn to reliably spot my gerunds, as they spent their days hopping
and skipping and cavorting through my prose. But, slowly, glacially, I began to
change. Sentences were re-written, and re-balanced. Word choices became more
careful, at her unceasing insistence.
After
many months, the Miss Leek method Just Looked Right, and I unconsciously began
to adopt her many suggestions.
But,
that did not make the process any easier.
Finally,
one day, during one of our meetings, in a heat of frustration, I told her off. “I
do not like this novel we are reading. It stinks. Get off my case.”
I
received a very neutral stare in return: I, a 1972 high school adolescent, she,
a gray ey’d Athena, cool of visage, and of purpose.
“Well,
then. Just what is it that you do
like? I don’t think that you like anything. You can go. “
And, at
that moment, that was pretty much how I felt about all sorts of things.
*******
So, she
went out and found some stuff for me to like. For her students, it was onto a bus that she specially chartered, and, ZIP, a trip to The Circle in the Square
Theater, at Lincoln Center, to see a world-class production of Eugene O’Neill’s
Mourning Becomes Electra. It was so wonderful, I hardly dared to breathe,
as the four hour drama, it seemed to go by in an instant.
Then, a
quick trip to Stratford, Connecticut to see a Watergate-era rendering of Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure. The Nixonesque main character, a dark brooding man with
a secret penchant for evil, seethed. We howled like Groundlings as the
codpieces moved, and the double-entendres
sizzled.
But,
most memorable was her multi-day in-class movie screening of Stanley Kubrick’s
Cold War, end-of-the-world nuclear comedy, Dr. Strangelove.
Now, you
did not always have to write a paper for Miss Leek. Sometimes, you would be
allowed to create a bit of visual art, in response to an assigned literary
work. A student might make a poster, or a small, Calder-like mobile, which
might be suspended, near the class windows, to shine in the sun, as the
elements moved. One student had mounted a dueling epee on a board, with the
words “…to thine own self be true” printed in old English, underneath.
She had
obviously liked that one a lot, because Miss Leek kept it untouched in her
classroom, for years.
I see
now that she did this to accommodate those students who were struggling with
writing on some deeper level, because they saw things in visual or physical,
rather than in language-based terms.
I,
however, was intent on proving that I could do both, as I planned my visual
arts project, in response to the Kubrick movie.
Four
titanic black pieces of construction paper were liberated from Ms. Crivelli’s
art room. I had access to large pieces of high quality cardboard from my
evening job as stock boy at the Vintage Corner Spirits Shop, near the Co-Op. I
set to work.
I glued
the four huge pieces of black art paper, together, to make an even larger
square. This was rolled into a tube, to make a cylinder, by adding big
cardboard circles, at the ends. To one end, I glued on the cardboard dividers
used to pack and ship wine bottles. They looked precisely like aerodynamic
vanes. Everything that was not already black, was painted black. After an Air
Force logo, and the scrawled words “Hi There!” were added, I had a
near-perfect, near life-sized model of the atomic bomb that Major “King” Kong
rode, to the doom of civilization, in the famous scene from Stanley Kubrick’s
movie, Dr. Strangelove.
To this,
I attached a small poster, a collage of pictures of beautiful things. The idea
was, if the Bomb is ever used, these are the things that will be destroyed. A
fine pacifist sentiment, which I meant in a serious way, but I also had a
secondary goal.
I put my
mother in the James Earl Jones role; she drove me to school with my creation,
as it was way too big to carry on the schoolbus. Miss Leek greeted me with her
customary enthusiastic smile, as I carried it into our classroom, before first
period. It was taller, and wider, than I was. “Oh, hi Chris, what is this?”
I briefly explained what it was, and what is
was supposed to show.
“Oh,
this is a ‘wow’ ! Let’s set it here, in the corner.”
Well,
actually not, Miss Leek. The Kubrick-Stella Reproduction Hydrogen bomb is meant
to be suspended in the air.
“Ah,
then, let’s hang it from the ceiling, here.”
No,
actually, I was thinking that it might look best suspended from the light
fixture directly over your desk.
A burst
of laughter, then that zillion megawatt smile: “Yes! Lets!”
Minutes later, it was done.
And, for
several days, there was a constant stream of visitors to her classroom, as Miss
Leek sat happily below my sinister gigantic paper model of a Strangelovian
thermonuclear warhead. I still have very mixed feelings about the whole
business, in many ways; it was a most unwise thing for me to have done. But it
was meant in a harmless way, done in a less harm-filled time, and I tell you
about it only to show you that Miss Leek was fearless, and open to all sorts of
types of expression, even those tinged with adolescent mania.
After
this, I thought that I had won her over. And, our relations in the classroom
did then become warm, and humor-filled.
But,
regarding my writing, she became more exacting than ever. For, now she had a
new rule:
“If
there is even one spelling error, or one cross-out on your paper, then the maximum
grade you can earn, is a ‘C’.”
Well,
this I would not do. And she made good on her threat. I slouched into a grade
of ‘D’ in my final quarter of English 12, with Miss Leek.
100 Best
Teachers, Miss Loren E. Leek, Chapter 2.
Now, in
order to have this story make any sense, I have to tell you about a seemingly-unrelated
conversation, thirty years later.
I was
speaking with an old, retired policeman. He had spent his life on a small-town
Force, usually a quiet setting, but when there was action it tended to be
spectacular, and dangerous. Because the Force was so small, he was basically
without much back-up. A radio call would produce no onslaught phalanx of
screaming sirens, no army of blue would descend if he was in trouble, he was
usually on his own, the only lawman within miles. I had my own professionally
stressful experiences, but the difference was, in his line of work, his own
life was also often at stake. I asked him if this required some ability to “kick
it up a notch”, when required.
He just
guffawed.
“Yeah,
that’s what they say – when it’s all on the line, you will find a way to ‘rise
to the occasion’. That’s bulltwinkie! Rise to the occasion, hah.”
“Listen,
buddy, when your own meat is on the line and there is danger, no one ‘rises to
the occasion!’”
“What
happens is, you default to the level of your most basic training.”
Now this
is interesting. When something you care personally and deeply about is at
stake, and you have to perform a complex task to protect, you tend to go back
to those things you learned hardest, and best. I’ll have to think about that.
********
Well, I
graduated from Ridgewood High School. And, with the help of my parents, and
some other people who had an unexplainable belief in me, I was admitted to a
pretty good school, the University of Rochester. I was pre-med, and I really
wanted to succeed in this, my whole view of myself was tied up in making it to
med school.
And,
although pre-med at Rochester reliably placed about 50 people into a medical school
each year, because I had probably the worst high-school grades of anyone in the
freshman class, well, the prognosis seemed grim. For the first time in my life
I really cared about, and needed, good grades. I was petrified.
In my
first week of college, I found myself enrolled in English 130, Concepts of
Literature, with an aggressive, fuming Assistant Professor who I will call
the Professional Aesthete. He was brilliant. He was incandescent. He was, most
definitely, a Step to the Next Level.
After
several weeks of aggressive, fuming, brilliant incandescence, the Professional
Aesthete had his first assignment for us.
“Read
the D.H. Lawrence story, Odour of Chrysanthemums. Write a three page
paper. In your paper, tell me what the Lawrence story is ‘about’. Then,
starting next week, I’ll meet with all of you, one at a time, to discuss your
paper, and grade. Class dismissed.”
Some of
my new classmates smirked with pleasure. They knew the drill. You had a nice
dinner. You went to your room, and in an hour, wrote your paper. Then you
turned it in. And then, your teacher said wonderful things about you.
As for
me, it seemed that my brain had turned to stone. All the frothy, manic ideas
that had tended to well up in my mind when I had been in the presence of Miss
Leek, fled from me. I carefully typed out my paper while in this condition, to
the best of my ability. I used the 1973 version of a word processor: my roommate’s old typewriter, fitted with a
special paper, upon which you could expunge typed printing with a rubber
eraser. I did not know it, but I had defaulted to the level of my most basic,
hard-learned training.
********
But,
after turning in our first college work, something strange began to happen. As
my dorm mates returned from their meetings with the Professional Aesthete, there
were wide eyes, blank stares, fearful expressions. The Professional Aesthete,
it developed, was a grading nightmare. Everyone was returning with their papers
perforated with slashing, words, written in bold red ink. Grades of C and below
were the norm.
Entire careers
in Cosmetic Dentistry were at risk, aflame with the P.A.’s red penned critique.
Happy years performing Medicare Colonoscopies, maybe seven in a day, hung in
the balance.
And, as
I studied the dissected papers of my freshman friends, an even more disturbing
trend seemed clear. The Professional Aesthete, his judgments were, well,
aesthetic. He could say, “This is bad”, and he would be right. But, he appeared
to be less effective in articulating how flaws could be corrected. He was not
saying to anyone, given your interests and aptitudes, here are the affirmative
things that you can do to write a better paper.
Finally,
it was my turn. As the sonorous bell chimed out the Indian Summer hour from
atop the Rush Rhees library dome, I wobbled across the inner courtyard, towards
the P.A.’s office, which was located in the lowest, and innermost building, of
the innermost Quadrangle. I ascended the 13-or-so stairs, and was waved into
his small office, to receive my critique.
Up
close, the persona of the Professional Aesthete was even more terrifying, than
in class. His features seemed even more sharply incised. For the first time, I
noticed small tufts of hair, which he should have shaved off, sprouting from
the tips of his ears. I thought I saw the flit
of a nictitating membrane. As he motioned me into the old oaken chair, I felt
the cool wood against my calf. A knotted cord hung from a humming electrical
fixture. Piles of burnt residue from his illegally-imported Cuban cigars smoldered
on his desk.
A nicely
freckled and friendly smile, was not seen. A diaphanous and airy Madras skirt, cowling,
but also emphasizing, attractively tanned female legs, was not noted to be
present, in the office of the Professional Aesthete, Assistant Professor of
English, at the University of Rochester.
He also
stared intently at me, as he pushed
my paper across his desk, into my view. I looked at it. I could not see the
grade – yet. But, there were no red marks, on it, at all. What few changes he
had made, were made with a stubby, green felt pen. In one place, he had a
double arrow, to indicate two of my words should be re-positioned. In another
place, he had crossed out one of my words, and wrote in one of his own, that he
liked better. That was it.
“Where
did you go to high school?” he asked.
I told
him.
Then, he
started. The Professional Aesthete’s voice had a tone of respect, and his face
now showed an intense sense of engagement.
“Well,
it is very clear that your secondary school preparation in expository writing
has been superb.…”
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