January 24, 2026

“I challenged my students because I was challenged.”

Part I:

Our English teacher welcomed us into his English IV class. We each had the swagger of seniors entering our rite of passage- a stress-free year-long social event. One final year before we entered the world. Five minutes into class, it was erased.

In the last hour of our first day of class, he assigned a 35-page paper due the morning we returned from Christmas Break- over four months away!

Despite our attempts, he never addressed the paper again except to update the days due in the corner of a cracked chalkboard. My assigned paper was on atheism vs. deism. What?!

Over the next three months, we endured the monotone droning of concepts we had studied in previous years. We progressed through the fall. An exciting football season, the start of swim season for a state-champion team, and my friends who played for this teacher on what would be a trip to the state finals. He would stroll through the locker room we shared after practice and comically inquire how our break was going. We murmured a growing repertoire of expletives as he whistled out the door.

Of course, many of us did not start the paper until the start of Christmas Break. Of course! In the days before the internet, nee computers, I furiously typed, on a typewriter, in the locker room, on the pool deck, and on buses to meets. I pulled my piles of disconnected notes, flashcards, dusty books, and handwritten outlines into almost three dozen pages of gibberish. I thought about this paper in my dreams, out on the town with my boys for a rendezvous, and lap after lap in two-a-day practices. I had no idea how this paper would be finished, let alone be completed.

I climbed out of the pool after morning practice, the morning it was due, wrapped a towel around my waist, and ambled barefoot across the school to the desk outside his classroom. I shoved it in the middle of a growing pile with relief and dread.

January 26, 2026

“I challenged my students because I was challenged.”

Part II:

We entered class at the end of the day to our teacher’s rye smile. He casually lumbered around the room full of sleep-deprived seniors, rhetorically asking about our holiday season. We all murmured in consternation. He reached outside the room and grabbed the pile of papers. He flipped through a few papers strewn with mistakes and clumps of crumbling white-out.

He hummed around the half circle of the class, our furrowed brows despising his facetiousness.

He walked across the room and dumped the stack into the garbage! We sat erect, gaping with shock. He walked to the center of the room, “If you think I’m grading that pile of crap, you must be out of your mind!!”

We mumbled amongst each other in disbelief. Before we could comment, he exclaimed through his teeth, “Did we cover sentence/ paragraph construction in September?! Grammar/mechanics, in October?! Thesis development, source evaluation, evidence citation, and outlining in November?!! Editing and drafting in December?!!!”

We nodded in confusion.

He calmly addressed a group of students directly, “Did you evaluate research and cite evidence?” They nodded.

“Did we construct a thesis based on evidence?” Another section nodded.

He addressed me, “Did you develop and edit your argument?” I nodded.

He turned and walked to the middle of the room and slowly turned to face us. He stressed each word, while pointing at each of us, “Did-you-receive-grades-for-all-that-work?”

He puts his hands on his knees, “All that work is the grade for this paper.”

Someone managed to ask, “Then why did we have to write that paper?”

He smiled as we had never seen him smile. He swallowed and half chuckled, drew a deep breath, and said, “If you can write a 35-page paper for me… You will have no trouble writing a 10-page paper in college.”

It took a beat for all of us to digest what he just said. We glanced at each other as smiles began to curl our once sour lips- an unexpected emotion ending our months-long dread. As each of us looked at him, collectively arriving at a slow realization, he proudly shook each of our hands and sincerely said, “Congratulations.”

This was not a paper; it was a rite of passage.

Aside from intensely honing our writing and research skills, this prolonged period of stress, anxiety, confusion, and defeat taught us perseverance.

Not only did we feel pride and exhausted relief, but we collectively realized that we were ready for college. We walked differently; we talked differently, and we were sworn to secrecy.

Our teacher pulled out a stack of notecards and read them. They were from the previous year’s seniors, congratulating us on the assignment. Each writer stressed the absolute importance of keeping this assignment to ourselves as we wrote our cards for next year’s class.

Decades later, I still talk about this assignment with my students.

Was there a teacher who taught you a lesson you still carry with you?