The teacher who had a most innovative discipline technique

We have heard about PE teacher Mrs. Keeling who, when children would not stop talking in her classroom, would order them to their knees and then noses to the stinky benches. And we have unconfirmed reports that she on occasion would, with children who continued to talk with their nose to the bench, sit on their heads. And we have another unconfirmed report that auditorium teacher Miss Wilson would pinch unruly children.

As I have thought about my various elementary teachers and their varied disciplinary techniques, I had a sort of epiphany of what must be the most innovative technique of disciplining an unruly child—making him blush (http://www.facialblush.com/).

I have mentioned in previous posts that I had many problems while in public schools and one of them was blushing. My seventh grade home room teacher Mrs. Willis was one of those stellar Texas women who taught us at Reinhardt. The day that I came into her classroom with my new Hardys shoes that had horseshoe taps that clicked so loudly that they disrupted classroom activity, what did she do? Did she send me to the principal’s office for licks? Did she take me to the hallway for a browbeating lecture? No, she called me to her desk and asked me to deliver a folded piece of paper to Miss Parks in her classroom at the end of the wing. And in the deadly silence of the classrooms and hallway, five or six classrooms listened to each of my tortured steps. As I reentered Mrs. Willis’s classroom, I blushed and also understood her correction and removed my taps from my shoes.

My biggest blush in her classroom came on a day when, according to her, I was pestering the boy who sat in a desk next to me, Kenny Williams. She said to the entire class, “Kenny, if Don was bothering me like he is bothering you, I think I would hit him on the head with something.” Kenny lifted the largest textbook he could find in his backpack and hit me as hard as he could on the top of my head. The popping sound blasted through the seventh grade wing and gave me a blush that might have been close to a childhood heart attack. Needless to say, I left Kenny alone after that.