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BY KWAME DAWES
The funny thing is that had I gotten a better A Level grade for History than I did for English I would probably not be a poet. Everyone, including me, was sure that I would do better in History than English. I liked History, the journey into the past, the dates, the analytical. I got it.
My History teacher was sure I would have a distinction and that was the expectation right until the afternoon I walked through the bougainvillea festooned garden path that led to the principal’s office of my high school. The secretary gave me the slip of paper with my grades, smiling. She knew I had done quite well—gotten all my subjects with good grades. But the English grade was the distinction.
The History was a solid grade, but it was lower. Now, I regard this as something of a flaw in my character, one that I have come to accept and sometimes to turn into a strength: Things can change my mind. Until I saw the grades I was going to university to study History, and after a year I would transfer into the Law program and work my way towards my dream of great wealth, fame and power as a big time lawyer. My fall back plan was more History. I could teach History in high school or even at university. I had never had a History teacher that I did not like.
Mr. Mills was a cool campaigner who opened up history to eleven and twelve year olds in remarkable ways. He spoke as if he had a mouthful of cotton, but he spoke with an easy facility with the material and he would even get passionate as he told stories. He had an afro, he was cool, and he taught history. Mrs. Sobers also taught history. You could sense beneath her petite, smiling veneer, a ramrod of rebellion, resistance and political consciousness. She taught us slavery and took us there. Once, our anger about the slavery system almost stirred a race war in class. This is an exaggeration, but in my imagination, something had shifted in me—people had histories, we came from somewhere and the world that stretched in the past was fascinating and limitless.
English was different. I read books. No one had to push me there. I did the assignments. It came easily to me. English in school was not about discovering something I had not known all along about books and how they could transport. My teachers were good, very good: Mrs. Holmes, a grammarian British woman—short, soft-spoken and one of that generation of English folks who came to the “islands” to find work and usually did in the best high schools. This generation was passing and I was being taught by the last of the lot.
My generation would probably be responsible for reminding them of the colonial nature of this arrangement. My generation was breast fed on reggae and rebellion so it was always clear to us that something historical was being enacted in a classroom of black boys led by a white teacher. But she was good. And so as Mrs. Mayne who was tougher and more clearly grounded in Jamaica, having married in Jamaica and made a life here. She taught us Roger Mais’ Brotherman and seemed appropriately unimpressed by our gleeful relishing of the rude passages in the book.
In class after class, through the five first years of high school (we start at age eleven in Jamaica), I liked English, did it well, but remained clear that this was not going to be my path.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harr...07/08/teacher/
Mrs Holmes was "Maddy"
BY KWAME DAWES
The funny thing is that had I gotten a better A Level grade for History than I did for English I would probably not be a poet. Everyone, including me, was sure that I would do better in History than English. I liked History, the journey into the past, the dates, the analytical. I got it.
My History teacher was sure I would have a distinction and that was the expectation right until the afternoon I walked through the bougainvillea festooned garden path that led to the principal’s office of my high school. The secretary gave me the slip of paper with my grades, smiling. She knew I had done quite well—gotten all my subjects with good grades. But the English grade was the distinction.
The History was a solid grade, but it was lower. Now, I regard this as something of a flaw in my character, one that I have come to accept and sometimes to turn into a strength: Things can change my mind. Until I saw the grades I was going to university to study History, and after a year I would transfer into the Law program and work my way towards my dream of great wealth, fame and power as a big time lawyer. My fall back plan was more History. I could teach History in high school or even at university. I had never had a History teacher that I did not like.
Mr. Mills was a cool campaigner who opened up history to eleven and twelve year olds in remarkable ways. He spoke as if he had a mouthful of cotton, but he spoke with an easy facility with the material and he would even get passionate as he told stories. He had an afro, he was cool, and he taught history. Mrs. Sobers also taught history. You could sense beneath her petite, smiling veneer, a ramrod of rebellion, resistance and political consciousness. She taught us slavery and took us there. Once, our anger about the slavery system almost stirred a race war in class. This is an exaggeration, but in my imagination, something had shifted in me—people had histories, we came from somewhere and the world that stretched in the past was fascinating and limitless.
English was different. I read books. No one had to push me there. I did the assignments. It came easily to me. English in school was not about discovering something I had not known all along about books and how they could transport. My teachers were good, very good: Mrs. Holmes, a grammarian British woman—short, soft-spoken and one of that generation of English folks who came to the “islands” to find work and usually did in the best high schools. This generation was passing and I was being taught by the last of the lot.
My generation would probably be responsible for reminding them of the colonial nature of this arrangement. My generation was breast fed on reggae and rebellion so it was always clear to us that something historical was being enacted in a classroom of black boys led by a white teacher. But she was good. And so as Mrs. Mayne who was tougher and more clearly grounded in Jamaica, having married in Jamaica and made a life here. She taught us Roger Mais’ Brotherman and seemed appropriately unimpressed by our gleeful relishing of the rude passages in the book.
In class after class, through the five first years of high school (we start at age eleven in Jamaica), I liked English, did it well, but remained clear that this was not going to be my path.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harr...07/08/teacher/
Mrs Holmes was "Maddy"
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