By Sean Arresto This was written in 2003 on the occasion of Jack Rice’s retirement: Close your eyes and think back on your most vivid childhood memories. What comes to mind? Cook-outs with the family? Playing freeze-tag with your closest friends? All the cool toys you used to get for for your birthday? Going to the local bowling alley with your English teacher? Wait, your English teacher never took you bowling? Well my teacher did, and to this day it is one of the fondest, and most lucid, childhood memories that I have left (college erased a good portion of everything pre-’95). I had the good fortune of having Jack…
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A Teacher
by Ivan Sayles My father was a teacher in Brownsville, Brooklyn for 30 some odd years. We’re all teachers in a way: we teach our kids, employees and underlings everyday. But to teach as a profession, now that is something wonderful. Then every once in awhile there is that “needle in the haystack,” that special teacher that took the tests, passed the classes, has all the credentials hanging on the wall, but has a gift. Do I remember Mr. Rice? Of course I do. Who wouldn’t? Bright orange hair and a beard, bouncing through the hallways, wearing jeans, a smile and patchouli. But that’s not why I remember him. I…
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What a Teacher is…
I have been a teacher for 54 years, and the most joyous time I have had in education was working with Jack Rice. I had heard about him for years from his students. They loved him, admired him, and respected him, and when we worked together I soon understood why. Jack was an extraordinary teacher—he made English interesting and fun for the kids. But much more than that, Jack was an extraordinary human. He cared deeply for the art and craft of teaching, but more importantly, he cared about kids. He saw what was special in each one, and helped them to see it too. Karl Menninger said, “What a…
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The Ripple Effect
Recently, one of my stepsons was home from college for a weekend and Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” came on the Pandora station we were listening to. We started talking about relationships between fathers and sons, about how fortunate my stepsons have been to have their father in their lives and how that is not always the case. All of a sudden I flashed back to music Fridays in Mr. Rice’s seventh grade English class when we dissected the song, as well as on another Friday, when “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens was the focus. Mr. Rice offered thirsty students not only a framework for analytical thinking but…
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“The Dimension of Imagination”
It’s been 22 years since I sat in his classroom, but the impact that Jack Rice had on my life transcends time and space. His kind nature, his laid-back presence, his willingness to take that extra moment for each student. These are the reasons that any person who ever stepped foot in his classroom was one of the luckiest. In the opening of each “Twilight Zone”, Rod Serling exclaims “A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.” That is what each day in one of Mr. Rice’s classes were; A journey into the imagination. There was no such thing as a stupid idea, or a comment…