Sophie's Stare

As many of you know, I taught adult education for 23 years. One of my favorite students was Sophie, a woman who had returned to academia in her sixties to finish her high school diploma. She had had to quit school as a teenager to work to help her family, and wanted the achievement of a diploma. She worked diligently and earned her sheepskin.

But perhaps the best thing she ever did for me as my student was help me maintain discipline. You see, while we catered to adult students we took in regular high school students who needed to make up credits to graduate on time. They didn't necessarily have the best work ethic (they would not have been making up credits if they had) and could at times be as disruptive as high schoolers could be.

One evening two young men were sitting at the back of the classroom while Sophie had taken her usual seat front and center. The guys began to whisper to each other and chuckle lowly, and soon become enough of a distraction that I had decided to say something to them. Yet right before I could, Sophie set down her pen and turned around to glare at the guys. It took a few seconds, but when they noticed her staring them down they picked up their pens and got back to their schoolwork.

This pattern repeated itself two more times that night. The guys would get a bit rambunctious and Sophie would turn to face them, whereupon they'd sheepishly return to task. And after that night they never gave me any more trouble.

I had to ask Sophie how she did it. The elderly Polish matron squinted her eyes at me and said, "I give them the grandma stare."

I had never actually faced the Sophie Stare myself. Judging by its effect on those two lads, I'm glad I never did.

Dead Frogs and Sad Clowns

Teaching adult education for twenty odd years now has been fun, and occasionally rewarding. Yet certain moments are bound to stand out; two of the funniest have only just happened.

While grading a short essay for an Economics course, the student was asked the difference between stocks and bonds. In an obvious yet hilarious cut and paste off the Internet (a practice we frown upon and grade accordingly), the answer began: "Stocks were medieval devices of public humiliation and torture." It went on to explain, in some detail, the exact nature of certain forms of torture. Reading this challenged my attempts to stay calm and professional, to not laugh out loud at my desk in a room full of students. I was under control until the last sentence: "Bonds are government issued interest bearing securities."

Well, the student was half right in his answer.

But the funniest to date was last night. In picking out an English assignment to grade I went on to completely lose my composure in peals of laughter. I had to leave the room for ten minutes initially, leaving the other teacher (there are two of us at all times in our teaching arrangement) to lament my difficulty. Lucky it was a slow night.

The assignment was to make comparisons in the form of analogies. The first prompt read: "Tom's car was old." Expected responses were along the lines of, 'Tom's car was older than baseball.' Instead I read, "Tom's car was older than a dead frog."

I was okay; I stifled my giggles, although it took it a few seconds of tongue biting to maintain myself. But I was good.

The next prompt was, 'Abby was hungry.' Harmless enough. Until I read the student's offering.

"Abby was very hungry, like a sad clown who had fell off his bike."

I immediately roared uncontrollably. Shawn, the other teacher asked what was wrong. Giving him the paper I replied, "Read the first two sentences and I'll be back in a few minutes."

On my return, finally beyond any wild laughter, the first thing Shawn said was, "I can see why you didn't give credit for the first answer. The frog may not have been dead that long."

I returned after another twenty minutes. Good times.