Dear Mr. Heavisides

Dear Mr. Heavisides,

It has been an astonishing thirty-two years since I sat in your ninth-grade English class. You were fresh out of teaching college. (You’re probably old now, like I am.)

I went to school for seventeen years. I have had moderately good teachers. I have had some excellent teachers. And from kindergarten through college, I have had brilliant teachers, energetic teachers, creative teachers, demanding teachers, weird teachers, likable teachers, effective teachers, and memorable teachers. It’s a rare privilege to have a schoolteacher who unites more than a few of those qualities. 

You combined all eight.

It’s astounding to do the math about how long it’s been because I can picture you in the classroom clearer than I can remember what I had for lunch today.

Don’t start your concluding paragraph with ‘In conclusion’! Bleah!! (*vomiting noise*)

If you ever get the chance to become a teacher, do it. It’s the best job in the world. And if you ever get a chance to be an English teacher, even better.

out on the town with Liz for my birthday

Guess what? I got the chance to be a homeschool teacher. And it is the best job in the world, you’re right! 

Liz and I solved the speakeasy escape room with thirteen minutes to spare—an activity that Mr. Heavisides, sadly, was probably not allowed to do with his students.

One of the escape room clues was accompanied by this surprise message

And this year, I became a ninth-grade English teacher, just like you. Well, except my classroom is my house and my students are my children and my class size is two.

I’ve outsourced high school English before, and come away dissatisfied (shout-out to involuntary guinea pig oldest children everywhere). If you could, at age twenty-three, teach forty ninth-graders to stop writing “In conclusion” and get them to write a page full of sentences that follow logically from one another, then it is possible. 

Although it may be harder than you made it look.

 Can I explain what makes a good thesis sentence? Will I succeed in teaching reasonably coherent writing?

You did it. And you did it while somehow being popular with teenagers and lots of fun, too. 

That’s higher than I’m aiming. I just want them to learn how to write. 

pedicure with Maddie, also for my birthday

Fun, high energy, likability, and brilliance may not be possible for me. There’s a good chance I will achieve memorable, though. Even if one day they make me cringe with convoluted writing, forgetting all I labored to teach them in high school composition class, they’ll probably remember that I’m their mom.

recent storm with the biggest (and loudest) hail I’ve ever seen

Thanks for teaching me to write and inspiring me to do the same.

Mindy

Class of ‘98