A handwritten note was found by the computer in Mr. J’s room after he retired. The note read:
Hi, Mr J,
I came to say
Hello. I hope you remember me. I will never forget you. “The Tootsie Fairy” is real!
Mr. J was known for
giving little tootsie rolls as a reward for various things in class. He taught second through fourth grade. All year long he would tease his students about the “Tootsie Fairy” and toss them a tootsie when they did something right. Mr. J taught school for the love of teaching
children. Reading was his favorite. He loved to watch their eyes light up as the
year moved on when their new skill began to unfold.
He was a 60’s child and had lived in Haight Ashbury for a
while when the Hippies were at their peak.
The 60’s never left him and he always referred to himself as an “Inner
Hippy”. He told everyone that when he
retired he was going to grow his hair out and wear a pony tail and when he retired he did. He was an odd figure
teaching with a mostly female staff of elementary school teachers but he got
along quite well with women. He respected
women that were strong, intelligen,t and well educated like his mother. Mr. J was a good friend.
Mr. J’s father was a foreign diplomat who with his wife had
traveled around in Africa and taken his children with him. Mr. J was injured when he was twelve years
old while living in Africa. He was hit by a bullet in the stomach in a
hunting accident and was gravely ill for
a while. He showed me the scar once
when he was sharing that he had been shot.
Mr. J was a survivor.
Mr. J also liked to
travel. Whenever there was a school vacation, he was off to
some unusual spot around the globe. He went with his mother who was 80 to hike
up to Machu Pichu in Nicaragua, Another
part of that journey was to give children in that country books to read. He took a Mediterranean Cruise to explore ancient
Greece and Italy, or he went with some other teachers to countries in Africa to
teach reading and give the children books.
Mr. J was known for the large amount of coffee he
consumed. He always had his metal two
cup coffee mug in his hand as he taught, or on his desk, or in the faculty room
when he got a refill. Somehow that
coffee must have kept him going as he motivated kids to learn.
Mr. J always pushed reading and would have some kind of
contest in his room showing all the books his students read. One year it was a caterpillarr and each
segment had a book’s title and the students name that read it. The caterpillar would weave around his room
and out into the hall with all the books the children had read that year. Other years it might be kites, or a dragon or
cutouts shaped like books. He carried
this tradtion on all through his teaching career of 32 years. Those long rows of books were one of Mr. J’s
trademarks.
Even after he retired he would come back for readathons and
listen to and help young students to read. He was truly dedicated to helping student open up to the excitement and
adventure of the world through books.
His
gravestone should read: A great
teacher who taught children the love of books
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