I have been teaching at Rosemead High School since 1996-97 and it gets better every fall. I absolutely love teaching. I work at my alma mater, although ironically I was expelled my senior year for behavioral problems. I'm back, and things haven't been the same since.
While my vision of me as a teacher has become more complex as the years have passed, the foundation remains the same: I emulate the teachers from which I learned and abstain from the methods of the teachers with which I struggled. We are products of our surroundings, and I attempt to create an environment of high expectations and an avoidance of excuses, all the while injecting humor into the situation. I was lead into teaching to help the kids the way I was helped, to teach what I have learned. It sounded exciting and fun, and I have not been disappointed. Considering I teach at the high school level, every day is a new adventure with constant melodrama filling air. I remember vividly the pain of adolescence, and it is this empathy that sometimes becomes a more powerful instrument than my teaching skills. A smile in the hallway, a simple ÒHow was your weekend?Ó, a congratulatory compliment to an athlete, a hall pass for a fidgety youth means the world to these kids. Teachers have immense power and influence over their students, and it is a great responsibility that must not be taken lightly. We are here to educate not only their brains, but their minds, as well. Teaching is more than books, it is about showing them respect and kindness.
Lois Heilemann is the reason I am a teacher. She was my AP English teacher my senior year. In sixth grade I was diagnosed with ADHD but never medicated; Lois understood that I needed to keep busy. Instead of giving me extra reading or homework (this would have only made the situation worse) she always gave me the lead in whatever play we were reading, called on me constantly during discussion, and even arranged for a period of independent study for creative writing. I used this time to talk to girls around campus, of course, but this was not the point Ð she did as much as she could to save me from myself. Even Lois could not stop me from being expelled later that year. I barely made it to college, eventually enrolling at Pasadena City College, and continued to struggle mightily. But Lois was still there, phoning me to see how things were progressing, offering words of encouragement, never judging me for how I lead my life.
I began to visit Lois' house about once a month and we talked for a couple hours at a time. We became great friends, but it was still a long time before I was able stop calling her Mrs. Heilemann. When we talked at first it was mainly about my life, but she began talking to me about her teaching. For many months I wanted nothing to do with Rosemead High School, but she just kept talking about the books, plays and poetry she was teaching. I eventually found myself caught up in discussions about the literature. Soon after that I was suggesting ways of approaching certain texts and Lois respectfully listened. Then she began soliciting my ideas for her classroom. I actually felt a passion growing for the teaching profession because of this experience. One day, four and a half years after my expulsion, I was visiting Lois and told her of a decision I had come to: I was going to become a teacher. Her eyes welled with tears as she explained that she had been hoping for such a revelation but knew that the idea needed to come from me. A couple of years later I was hired at Rosemead High and my classroom was just a couple of doors from Lois'. For the past 10 years she has stopped by my room with teaching ideas, funny stories or just to say she was proud of me. I honored Lois by giving her maiden name, Crain, to my son as his middle name. She once explained to me that would be immortal because things she had taught me would be passed on to the next generation, and then passed on again, and so on.
Lois retired in 2006 after 43 years of service to Rosemead High School, but she will never be gone.
