I know this post is late because Sidney Poitier died a while ago but I just watched To Sir with Love last night. I found out that he died when I woke up in the afternoon hours and checked my phone just after I sent my morning prayer. I did not post about his death until I spoke with my cousinT, Shannon.
I called her for a number of reasons. The first reason I called her was because I will NEVER be able to forget the summer we spent watching this movie over and over again! We sang each and every time we watched it! I was 17 that summer and I had already known that I was going to go to college to become a teacher. We watched this movie snd Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We sang along with that movie as well!
but I think the reason I CANNOT EVER forget that summer is the fact that we watched both of these movies on her TV in her basement that was on it’s last leg. So much so, the picture was just a thin line showing in the middle of the TV. The audio was working fine and we were not bothered by not being able to see the picture. We KNEW what was going on!
The second reason I wanted to talk to her was because she is one of the people I speak to regularly on the phone. We love to talk and we have always had easy conversation. I’ve known her for my whole life! I just had my virtual appointment with my speech pathologist and she told me that my conversational speech sounds better than reading the things she has given me to read. She modified our game plan and next week, I am reading two articles she will send me and we will discuss them together. Here is the trailer to To Sir with Love:
I actually cried when I watched this movie. I cried because I WAS a teacher, I took my kids on field trips, I think, overall, that I had a good rapport with my students. I had a flood of memories that made me think of teaching was extreme fondness. One memory that stuck in my head was one of my field trip to the Detroit Zoo. Go figure that the day we were going, it rained! It was beautiful the day before and the day after! Not only did it rain, it was cold! I had arranged for Little Caesars Hot ‘N Ready pizzas to be delivered to their pavilion but in the planning, I overlooked paper plates and napkins! I was in my manual chair back then and it wasn’t even custom yet. I remember commenting on their pink faces in the pavilion and I told them to get warm by holding the pieces of pizza with their hands because I forgot the plates!
The memory I thought of was toward the end of the day and I was by the entrance and the kids were coming to get on the bus, I saw A student with a soaking wet sweatshirt. He had his hoodie on and had his hands inside the sleeves. I apologized to him for our field trip being, “A COMPLETE FAIL” but as he approached me, he had a broad smile on his face and shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s better than being at school! The teachers who came with us told me that the students were not complaining and that made me feel better that it was not a fail completely.