The English Teacher

The English Teacher
                    When I was eighteen-years-old, my life changed forever. I became passionate and ambitious for the first time in my life, I mastered my greatest weakness, and I fell in love. I know that’s a lot to account for as a senior in high school, but I have always believed that someone can be affected for the rest of his or her life at any age.                              Let me begin by saying that I came to American that year from Mexico, and I was not good with English. I tried so hard in all of my classes to listen attentively and grasp little phrases that I could use on a regular basis to strengthen my English, but it was never truly effective. In fact just when I thought I was following my math teacher correctly one day, I came into school the next day with twenty problems complete and a chapter read only to discover that we had no problems to complete and I had read the wrong chapter.                    Luckily, though, my guidance counselor had gained assistance from the Spanish teacher to help with translation during her free period. She was very nice and stayed by my side all during my third period the fall semester of my senior year. Though I seemed to gain some favor from her and my guidance counselor, I am saddened to recount that I had very few friends and though patience is a valuable attribute in the teaching profession very few of my teachers had the patience to deal with me. Needless to say the first semester of my senior year I spent alone – very alone.

              It wasn’t until the beginning of the second semester that I met him – the beacon of a  change in my life cleansed of sadness and loneliness. I was walking down the hallway to the first class of the day. Since we were on block we had a completely new schedule with the beginning of the new semester, and my new schedule began with English. I passed a group of teachers clustered in a corner in a heated discussion about their new classes and the students they now had and so forth. Some of them looked up briefly to smile at me as I passed in that sympathetic way that some do toward students that struggle the most on a day to day basis. He was one of them who looked up.                                        Time seemed to freeze for that brief moment and the bustle of students and the class bell ceased. He had cropped brown hair that brushed the top of his ears and danced in front of his piercing green eyes. His complexion suggested that he couldn’t be more than a few years older than me. With that in mind his suit made him look almost like a man child. I assumed he was a first year teacher maybe getting a pep talk from the more experienced dogs on the block. After I passed they dropped their voices a few noticeable decimals. As a fellow human being, reader, you know that when that happens it can be automatically assumed that said group of people can only be discussing you.                              I was correct in my assumption that he was a teacher. In fact, he was my first period English teacher. He stepped into the classroom that morning with the ease and confidence, no doubt engendered by the pow wow session in the hall way, and commenced to calling role. When he reached my name, unlike his predecessors, he pronounced it correctly, “Ana Guadalupe.” Though the pronunciation of my first name was obvious, my last name always put a snag in my teachers’, and fellow classmates’ for that matter, tongues. When he called my name he gave me a pleasant smile and continued on down the list. Although, it wasn’t a smile I appreciated at the time. It was more of a “I know your deal because my friends told me about you out in the hallway” kind of smile. After he finished he began class with a confident introduction of the course and a brief description of himself, most of which I didn’t follow. Sadly, the Spanish teacher wouldn’t be with me until fourth period this semester. To sum it up I gathered that he would be teaching English and we were to call him Mr. Andrews. He then put something on the dry erase board indicating that it would be due for tomorrow’s class. The only thing I really understood was the due date next to the assignment. I struggled to make sense of the rest whilst he discussed something else with us that I didn’t understand. It was like walking into a dark hallway with no walls to grab onto, frustrating almost to the point of tears. When the bell rang I tried to copy the assignment down in my planner exactly as it appeared for the Spanish teacher to translate later.          However, before I could copy the first word, he was standing beside me at my desk as the rest of the class hurried out the door. He smiled and knelt beside me as he eyed my planar. Then he said, “Tienes que leer a pagina 10 esta noche y escribe un parafo sobre tú.” Flawlessly, he had given me my homework assignment completely in Spanish (you have to read to page ten tonight and write a paragraph about you). He then winked at me and stood back up to walk to his desk. “ Tiene una buena dia.” (have a good day).                    “ Y usted,” (and you) I replied.

              That night was the first time my parents had seen me smile in a long time, and for the next several weeks I was fairly happy. I loved his class. He explained things well, and I understood his instructions, but only because he explained them in Spanish. Ironically, English a subject that had always been my weakness became my favorite class. However, the fact that it was my best class didn’t say much. I was still terrible at speaking, writing, and understanding English.                                                                      The second week of the new semester, I was late three times to his class solely based on the fact that my father had a limited understanding of time, believing that if he got me up ten minutes before the bus arrived, I could be completely ready to go on time. Therefore, Mr. Andrews regrettably told me, in Spanish, that I would have to stay after for after school detention with him. Though detention is an awful punishment simply because the student is forced to sit in a silent classroom for half an hour with his or her teacher and sink into a painful boredom, I decided that if I had to have detention I would rather spend it with him than any other teacher. Following the end of school, I reported back to his classroom. It was silent with the exception of him scratching away with a red pen at some apparently poorly written English papers. After literally twittling my thumbs for ten minutes, I looked over at his desk. He had finished grading and was filing away the bleeding testaments when he asked me, “quieres algo tèa?” (Do you want some tea?).                                        I nodded my head, “Por favor.” (Please). He then paced over to the kettle beside his desk and reached for a couple of Styrofoam cups, explaining that he had prepared it earlier that afternoon and some left. He then motioned for me to come sit with him at the table he had in his room, which had been set aside for group activities and at times a time out space – a but juvenile in my opinion, but within the first week of the new semester it had already been proved effective. After a moment of silence and my devastating discovery that I had twenty more minutes of this, he tried to engage me in conversation, completely in Spanish. He asked me where I was from and of the course the age old question, “ Te gusta America?” (Do you like America?). He also told me that when he was in college he had studied for a year in Puerto Rico, which explained his fluency in Spanish. He explained that he went through a phase in college when he was convinced that he wanted to do something with Spanish, but he said with a poetic spin that English was his one true love. The conversation then took another turn, and he asked me what I planned on doing as an adult.                                                                                                “ Quiero a aprender Ingles.” (I want to learn English).Silence settled between us as he cocked his head to the side and set his cup down on the table. He crossed his legs, resting his hands on the right knee. Then he studied me for a moment as if I were a misunderstood art-piece.                                                                              He laughed. “Por que?” (Why?). What kind of question was that? I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t. Instead, I looked into his glimmering green eyes, and he began to smile. “ Ayudaré ti.” (I will help you). He then told me his story, assuming that I could relate.                                                                                        As a teenager my English teacher was stubborn and lazy. He had no desire to succeed in this world, mostly because he didn’t see the point. He was appalled at the formation of society and the constant circles of success and money and high positions and everything associated with the concept of the American dream. He believed that there was something more that could be found in this world. He believed in peace and harmony and love and buried virtues. What would be considered anarchy by any other listener astounded me in a way that made me admire him more. My teacher was an intellectual beyond his years. As he continued his story, he related events that changed him late in his high school career. His senior year he had English first period, a class he had always hated not because he found that that too supported the current formation of a society he hated but because the work load defied his lazy lifestyle. On the first day his teacher said something to his class that he has yet to forget. Though she spoke to the entire class, he felt she was speaking to him specifically as if, unlike the world he had always known, she knew what made sense to him. She said that no matter what changes in this world in the areas of math and science and government, English will always be the watchful protector. It will be there to provide a world we can escape into through anywhere from classic literature to twenty-first century teen novels and ultimately it will be there to provide the oldest and most important means of communication: speech and writing. In a way, she said, English is the most virtuous subject known to American education. That may sound like a load of bull to the rest of us, but it touched him. He said she then commenced to give them three grammar booklets to be done within the next two weeks, and he had never worked so hard in his life. He believed he wanted to be an English teacher; he wanted to carry the torch of the most virtuous subject to many generations to come.                                                                                                                               
                      I was astounded. He seemed to notice and smiled back at me as he took another sip of his tea. Before either of us could utter another word, the bell rang its high pitched and often annoying voice announcing that another hour had passed. I couldn’t believe we had been sitting there for that long. He waved his hand to dismiss me. As I stood up and slung my satchel over my shoulder, he did not turn his head or stand up to walk me to the door. He simply said, “ Mañana, nosotros empezaremos Inglés.” (Tomorrow, we will begin English).                               

                    Today I look back at those endless weeks of hell with bliss and appreciation. As a senior in high school I already had a lot on my plate with school, colleges, and scholarships among other things, and I decided to take on the mastery of a language that had never been my specialty. No matter what I did in the past, nothing ever to seemed to suffice in hammering the language into my brain, until he came along.                                                                                                            The first few weeks he gave me a grammar packet with a recorder and the following instructions. I was to go home every night, work in the grammar packet, mark any words I didn’t recognize, and recite certain phrases he had marked in the back of the book into the recorder. Every day after school he would read over the grammar packet explaining any words I could not understand and checking my work. He would then listen to the recorder with a humor that irritated me.                                                                  The following few weeks he took the recorder but left me the booklet. Each night he would give me a passage to translate to the best of my ability. It was frustrating to the point of tears as I simply did not know how to translate certain phrases exactly as they were in Spanish to another language. After the first night I demanded a Spanish-English Dictionary that he adamantly refused stating that it was poison to my efforts. If I wanted to use the language in an effective manner, I couldn’t always rely on the dictionary. I found myself rearranging certain phrases and sentences in a way that I could translate them by simplifying words and sentence structures and minimizing the number of words used. For example, instead of saying, “I plan to attend college in the fall” I said “I will go to college in the fall.” He was impressed with my efforts.                                                      The final few weeks were the most difficult. I distinctly remember coming into his class the afternoon he greeted me in English for the first time. Every conversation from that point forward was conducted completely in English to the best of my ability. He tried to speak slowly and simply, which I appreciated.                                                      He told me a lot about America. Specifically he talked about his life in America. He talked about going to Sonic at 12:00 am, hanging out with his friends, dealing with parental constrictions, and going to college. He compared and contrasted the traditions of mine and his countries as well. He also said he always felt that America had a culture that the world never understood. I had always wanted to go to America when I was little but like the rest of the world I never truly understood it. If there’s anything that I gathered in the transition from Mexico to America, it’s that one cannot fully understand a culture until one experiences it.
                                                                                                   
                    I arrived home uncommonly late one night, and my mother insisted on knowing where I was. I told her like all the other days that I had a lesson with my teacher. Fear stole into her eyes for a moment and she sat down at the kitchen table and motioned for me to sit too. She looked at me with her concerned but firm brown eyes. “ Hija, necessitamos hablar.” (We need to talk). I hesitated for only a moment and sat down opposite her. “ No creo que toques lecciones de Señor Andrews.” (I don’t think you should take lessons from Mr. Andrews).                              
                  As you may have imagined I was indignant and a tad bit irrational. “ Por que?”                              
                  “ Por que? Sabes que hora es?” (Why? Do you know what time it is?). Now I was furious.  Sports and other activities that she had encouraged me to get involved in the course of the year had kept me out just as late before. What was her deal? I made this known to her immediately, but I didn’t keep the control I wanted to as most people fail to do when their patience is challenged. After that I demanded to know the real reason.                                                                                                                       
                  She looked down at her hands and fiddled with her apron for a few moments. Then she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and looked off to the side for a moment as if looking for advice from an omnipotent observer, and she looked back at me. “ Me Parece que lo amas.” This one cut me deep (It seems that you love him).                     Stillness more deadly than poison settled between us. I opened my mouth to say something and nothing came out. It appeared by her expression that she wasn’t truly behind her accusation. Sadly it seemed that she was depending on my denial to confirm her own doubts. My hesitation did not help the situation in the least.                              She stared a hole through me and slapped her palm to her mouth. “Dios Mio.” (Oh My God). It pisses me off to this day that I didn’t say anything after that. The hour that followed had the potential for a fight like none other. I could of screamed, proclaimed my love for the man and insisted that there was nothing she could do to keep us apart. Instead, I sat there in silent submission.                                                                                                                                  
              She stood up and smoothed out her apron and headed for the kitchen without looking at me. When she reached the stove she paused for a moment and came back to the table. “ No lo verás nada más.” She almost whispered. I know it sounds foolish now but I cannot describe to you the depth of the depression that seized me at that moment. I stood in a haze that was only worsened by the tears that began to fill around my eyes. After I ascended the stairs and opened the door of my room. I ran and collapsed into the pillows on my bed and burst into heavy sobs. Out of all the conversations I had had with Mr. Andrews that week and the memories that would last a lifetime and stay with me through college and the beginnings of my career, there was only one line of dialogue that stuck in my head at that moment: my mother’s ultimatum. “ No lo verás nada más.” (You will not see him anymore).                                                                                          
                  It is next to impossible to avoid seeing your teacher everyday unless you’re of the skipping tendency. Ironically it was my mother who nipped that in the bud early in my life. Unable to avoid attending his class, I walked into the classroom feeling as if I were breaking every law in the book and just waiting for my mother to jump out from behind the door and drag me home. However, he wasn’t there. We had a substitute that day and she was accompanied by the head master.                                                            Within less than twenty minutes following the start of class the head master told us that Mr. Andrews had been called home on a family emergency. He would not return for the remainder of the semester. In less than twenty-four hours it seemed that everything in my life had collapsed. I finally had ambition and a teacher who believed in me and my mother and my headmaster had practically taken it all away. After wishing us a good morning he left the classroom.                                                                                Cecilia was our substitute for the remainder of the year. She was training to be an English teacher herself, and perhaps she gained the best practice and training she could possibly get by spending time with us. I must admit that I liked her, but no matter how long she was there she never registered in my mind as my English teacher.                              One day I stopped by her desk after class to ask about Mr. Andrews. She said that with the exception of sending her weekly agendas she had heard very little from him. Every day when I got home I checked the mail box. Again, I know this sounds foolish, but I seriously expected to hear from him. I believed that he wouldn’t leave me without further instructions for my English lessons.                                                                                                                                  
                After a couple of weeks I sent him a letter myself, and after a couple of months of waiting for a reply I gave it up entirely. I then decided to stop being angry with my mom; now it wasn’t really her fault that I would never see him again. Following the months of awaiting a letter from him, I sat down to dinner with my mom. Dad was out with some friends for game night. After dinner we sat in the living room for some tea.                                                            
                Mom was curled up on the couch when she turned to me and asked a question I had not been expecting. “ ha escrito a ti?” (has he written to you?). To be honest I hadn’t said a word to her about waiting for anything from him. Looking back it should not have shocked me in the least that she asked me about it. She would have had to be an idiot not to notice my constant attention to the mail box and my moping.                                                                                          
              “No.” I almost whispered fingering the rim of my mug. She released a sigh, but it wasn’t from disappointment or frustration. It was a sigh that nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was a sigh marked by the realization that her fears had come true. She came up from her crouched position on the couch and gave me a hug.                                        “ No quise que tú tienes doler.” (I didn’t want you to have pain). After a few more moments of holding me in her loving embrace, she went back to the kitchen to clean up the dishes, and I sat there. Within the next two hour my mom went to bed, my dad returned home, watched television for a bit, and he also went to bed. I continued to sit there until the moon was high in the sky and the stars speckled the velvet night, and I realized something. Without knowing it I had moved on. It didn’t matter to me anymore that he had not written me or that I had wasted a perfectly good amount of stationary and my own time perfecting a letter to him. My mother had no reason to worry. Unbeknownst her I had no pain. I then smiled and went to bed myself.                                                            

              I graduated high school early that summer and attended college the next fall. Despite the fact that I didn’t receive anymore instruction from Mr. Andrews I continued to use some of his techniques to perfect my English. Going to school in America continued to benefit me. I also did not hesitate to enjoy the culture associated with the American college experience, and I have to admit that they were without a doubt the best four years of my life, just as he said they would be.          
              At my college graduation I had the opportunity to speak on the most inspirational people in my life. Of course my parents made the “A” list – and so did he. I spent hours the week before graduation composing my speech, and it made me think about all that he had done for me and how he had suddenly vanished as if he had never been there in the first place.                                        
              I decided that he needed to be at my graduation. It wasn’t that I wanted him to be there. After nearly four years of being practically abandoned, I still had a pretty low opinion of him, but he needed to be there to hear my speech. However, I didn’t know where to begin to look for him. He spoke of his hometown without giving it a name, and who’s to say he returned to it for his family emergency. He could be anywhere across America for all I knew. The night before I attended graduation I lay awake wishing that I had at least tried to find him. The internet has everything these days. Maybe it would have been simpler than I thought. In any case I got up the next morning and downed my cap and gown only dreaming of seeing him there.                                                                                                                                                               
              To this day I can barely recall my speech, but I do remember my mother smiling knowingly when I mentioned Mr. Andrews. I only mentioned how he helped with my English and that was it. Perhaps that was why Mom smiled knowingly. After all there was no reason to mention my infatuation and his disappearance and how much I wished he were there.
              The night of my graduation, a few of our parents decided to throw a party. It was the most fun I had had in the longest time. We listened to so much good music and not necessarily the happening today kind of music but the music that we grew up with and knew all the lyrics well enough that we could stand in a crowd in the middle of the dance and floor singing at the top of our lungs with margaritas in hand. Perhaps I had too many of those because I could have sworn I saw him there that night. I went to the bar to grab another one when I think I saw him talking to some parents. Then I rejoined my friends on the dance floor when I thought I saw him dancing with some girl a few paces away from me. The worst occurrence, though, was when a slow song came on, and I thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye eyeing me to see if I had a partner, but he wasn’t there – not at the bar, not on the dance floor, and not out of the corner of my eye.                                                                                                                                  
              I was the first to return to the dorm room that night, and that was when I found it tucked in a pristine white envelope without an address and without a seal. It lay in the basket my roommate and I fastened to the outside of our door for little notes or fliers for our fellow students to file away. My roommate came in two hours after me and found me asleep with tearstains on my face and pillow. She said at first she was amused believing that I had passed out from all the alcohol, which would have been a first for me. However, that was before she found the letter on my cluttered side table. It was worn and slightly smudged showing that it had been read at least a dozen times. The following morning I nearly chewed her head off for reading it without my permission, but she confessed that she didn’t really understand it. It was written very poorly in broken English.                                        Though she did read the letter I had written to him many years ago, she didn’t read the other slip of paper in the envelope – the one I tucked under my pillow and held in my hand as I cried myself to sleep that night. It said simply, “ Lo Siento.” (I’m sorry).