Thanking Ms. Zika

When I was in high school, I had an English teacher named Ms. Mary Zika. At the time, I thought she was way old. I have no idea how old she actually was. (I looked her up recently, online, since in this era of accountability teacher records are available online. She's been teaching for 36 years. She's been teaching longer than I've been alive. That's amazing to me. I've only ever taught in one school that was that old.)

She was single, told us she woke up every morning at 4 to exercise , and she had an honest-to-God Velvet Elvis in her classroom. I'm told that she wrote murder-mysteries for the staff to participate in.

Above her door, there was a simple stenciled sign that said "105 North Tower". The place Dr. Manette suffered for many years in A Tale of Two Cities. Generations of Northwestern High School seniors have "suffered" in her senior English class.

One of the key components of that suffering was a research paper that Ms. Zika made us complete. I did mine on the appearance of aliens in movies over time. Not when they showed up, but how they looked when they showed up. Bit of a nerd I am. (see what I did there? Yoda phrasing in a sentence about aliens. Clever, huh?). This project was one of the hardest I had ever done. I spent hours poring over movie stills (especially from the early part of the last century). I had to go to a college library to get tapes of old radio Buck Rogers shows. She forced us to do actual research, but allowed it to be in a subject where we had actual passion. It gave me skills that I used over and over again to get through college.

In short, she taught me.

She was mean on the surface, but underneath she was kind and funny. If you gave her candy corns, she would use them to turn herself into a vampire. She didn't take herself too seriously, though she got a kick out of suffering. This was a woman who referred to the dead in Beowulf as "crispy dragon nuggets" and Madame Defarge's "knit list". Oh, and that 105 North Tower sign. The image you see at the top of this page is above my classroom door; the Children Here In Labor Despair sign is a little shout out to Ms. Zika.

I doubt very much that she'll ever read this post, in her honor, but I'm going to write it anyway. I'm going to write it because my Student Council kids are collecting teacher appreciation notes at school, and I realized that I never appropriately thanked the people who ended up as influences on my teaching career. Ms. Zika is not the person who inspired me to get into education. (those two men were Mr. Lindgren and Mr. Lantz.) She isn't the person who inspired me to teach what I teach, since I'm a Social Studies teacher. However, much of the success I've had as a teacher is because of things she taught me.

You see, one of the biggest things that teachers in the modern era have to do is communicate well with parents. More and more, that communication is in the form of email. Many times, principals will advise teachers not to communicate with parents via email, because of two reasons. The first is that they are scared to have you saying things in writing that can later be thrown in their faces. (Simple solution? Be honest and do what you say you will do.) The second reason is that many adults, even in education, are poor at communicating with the written word. Because of Ms. Zika, I'm a good written communicator. That has allowed me to build good relationships with my peers and the parents of my students.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank Ms. Zika, in public, using the tools that she taught me. Too often, we read appreciations of famous people, of the rich and famous, of the powerful. I'm trying to do my little part, to thank the  people who gave the most of themselves to help create me as the man (and teacher) I am today.  I just hope that I'm helping students the way Ms. Zika helped me.

So, I encourage you to do the same. Find a teacher who influenced you, and write them a thank you note. You think they won't remember you. I bet they will.

Thanks, Ms. Zika.