Memories – Faculty – Catherine Martin

Here’s what we remember about Mrs. Martin

Catherine Martin

From SchoolGirl57:

For those of you who never had her, Mrs. Martin was a smart, cynical, impatient English teacher with an extremely dry sense of humor. She was contemptuous of students whose work was inadequate and suspicious of those whose work was too good. In brief, she was not a lady who suffered fools gladly, much less ill-prepared students.

She was also the first professional I encountered who made a formal request for feedback from her “clients,” we students, which led to one of my happiest memories of high school.

It was the last day before classes were over for the summer. In that pre-air conditioning period at West End, the windows were all open, and within five minutes of the start of class, everybody was half asleep with the heat when Mrs. Martin announced that we had completed the coursework for the semester and were going to use our time that day to conduct an experiment.

She handed out a sheet of blank ruled paper to each student and said she wanted us to write on it a short assessment of her as a teacher. You could almost hear the collective groan. The assessment, she continued, was to be anonymous. She said we would have ten minutes to write something, even a line or two. She didn’t care how much, just that it be truthful. She assured us that she’d already recorded our grades and that nothing we wrote would affect anything other than her ability to improve her teaching. Furthermore, she said, she would read the assessments out loud for us.

At that point, interest picked up, and everybody began to write, some with a great deal of enthusiasm it appeared. Mrs. Martin collected the papers, sat down behind her desk and began to read.

Some of the students obviously hadn’t believed her as to the anonymity factor, and their entries consisted of a few words along the lines of, “Your teaching is wonderful. It couldn’t be improved on” and “You’re the best English teacher I ever had.” Occasionally, there’d be a slightly different note, such as, “You assign too much homework” or “You shouldn’t give pop quizzes the same day other teachers give announced tests.”

Paper after paper, Mrs. Martin turned over our opinions, reading each aloud to us even as she read them. Most of us hadn’t been especially creative. It was probably the first time any teacher had asked us for our opinion on classroom matters, and we didn’t know exactly how to react. Even Mrs. Martin began to look bored as a certain sameness settled in. Then it happened, the truly unexpected.

Mrs. Martin held up the next sheet of paper, which was covered in loose, obviously hastily executed writing. “This person was in a hurry,” she said. We all laughed dutifully, and she began to read.

I think if I was lost in the desert, dying of thirst, and I crawled up to you, begging for water, you’d give me a peanut butter sandwich and laugh.

I’m sure there was more, but we never heard it. Mrs. Martin hesitated, attempted to go on, but then gave it up. She literally collapsed, her head sinking onto her folded arms, her shoulders shaking, an odd gurgling noise the only sound. At first we thought she was upset, maybe even crying, but then we realized she was laughing. She laughed and laughed and laughed. Then she laughed some more. At last, she sat up, straightened her tiny body (she was physically small), and tried to compose herself, but then her face turned red and she began to laugh again.

It was a good way to end the year.

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