Advice From a Teacher

 "Gee, even among misfits, you're a misfit!" That hilarious line was from the TV version of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer. That can be the way it feels sometimes, when you realize that you don't completely fit in with any particular group. Last year I joined a local political group after becoming concerned about some things happening in this country. It was the first time that I had ever become personally involved with politics. I was eager to participate in an activity that involved mailing post cards to representatives, until I read the front of the cards. "Our four main issues are..." I didn't agree with one of the statements on the card. Really? That's what I'm supposed to believe to be part of this group? What does that mean? That I don't really belong here? I found myself unable to process that with anyone else. I couldn't trust anyone to understand - not the people in the group, nor those outside of it. It was such a polarizing time, with little tolerance from either side for people caught in the middle. I felt unsettled for a while, until I thought of Mr. Repella. Then I knew what to do.  

Mr. Repella was my 12th grade English teacher at Nativity BVM High School. I having been thinking of him lately for several reasons. Nativity will soon be celebrating its 70th anniversary. Mr. Repella was a teacher there for fifty years. He recently celebrated his 90th birthday. Mr. Repella's class was one of my favorite high school classes. It was a very small class. There were only about ten or fifteen of us in it. Perhaps the size contributed to the level of sharing and feelings of connection that we had there. 

We began our last high school English class in 1984 with a vocabulary book, a literature book full of short stories and a steno pad. We would read a story and then, with a prompt from Mr. Repella, write a reflection about it in our notepads. It's the same thing I do today except that most of the stories are from real life rather than a literature book. We would read our reflections out loud and have a class discussion about them. Mr. Repella showed a genuine interest in how each student felt about the topic at hand. Never would he say that we didn't know what we were talking about because we were only seventeen. 

There was plenty of laughter in that class. Once when we were reading a story out loud, one of the boys paused when he came upon the word "bitch". "Can I say that?" He asked Mr. Repella. Mr. Repella just stared at him while half the class began cracking up. Another time Mr. Repella asked us to sketch a twentieth century opportunist. Most of us understood that he meant to write a description of an opportunist in our notepads. One girl, however, began to literally draw a picture of an opportunist, until she realized what he meant. For the rest of the year, whenever things would get too quiet, Mr. Repella would just randomly throw out the words, "Sketch a twentieth century opportunist" or ask, "Can I say that?" and the whole class would start laughing. At the beginning of the class, he gave one of the boys the task of giving the "hippie dippie" weather forecast - which was the same every day - "Tonight its gonna get dark!" At the end of every class he would say, "Let's call it a day", and the class would respond by shouting, "A day!".  

Mr. Repella addressed us as "Dear Hearts". During our class discussions, he shared many of his own thoughts. "People say, 'How can you work with kids?' I tell them I love it! I say to a bank teller, 'How can you work with money?' People are different. You have to find the thing that you love, and do it." "Further your education," He told us. "You don't have to go to college. Go to a business school. Go to a trade school, but further your education." He once listed all the things that an engaged couple should talk about before they get married, including sex. "She might like to wear boots," He said, "And he might want to be covered in whipped cream, so they need to talk about it. He can say, "I'll put up with the boots, if you'll put up with the whipped cream." 

In the final stretch of the year, Mr. Repella gave us a more challenging assignment. We each had to get up and give a persuasive speech on the topic of our choice. Public speaking is difficult enough without picking something highly controversial to talk about, but at eighteen I was on a self-appointed mission to try to change the world. I dared to speak out against capital punishment to a class full of students who appeared to be mostly in favor of it. My classmates looked up at me with empathic support when I first stood up to speak, but the looks on their faces were not so positive as the speech went on. At one point, I glanced over and saw Mr. Repella with his head back and his eyes closed. I made a joke, asking, "Am I that boring?" As my speech hit its peak, I could tell that it was stirring up some negative feelings in some of my classmates. When it came time for questions and answers, quite a few of them raised their hands to challenge some of the things I said. I remember how foolish and defeated I felt afterwards, having been unable to convince anyone of anything.

Mr. Repella could sense how difficult it was. As we rose from our seats at the end of class, he said, "Dorothy, I would like to give you a hug," and he did it. He said that he didn't want to be accused of favoritism, so if the rest of the class wanted to came up front, he would hug all of them, too. Then he spoke to me individually. "Your speech was really good." He said. "The reason why my eyes were closed was because I was meditating on what you were saying. It was that good, and I want to tell you something, if you were to run for public office, I would vote for you. You know why? Because you stood by your convictions."  

What Mr. Repella said to me on that day stayed with me throughout my life. I reflected on it often, but never so much or so profoundly as I did over the past few years. In a political environment that has become so polarized, it is hard to imagine voting for someone just because they stood by their convictions, but isn't that what it means to have character? It's amazing how the memory of Mr. Repella's words from 1985 gave me direction as I attempted to make my way through the complexities of modern life forty years later.   

We usually associate "peer pressure" with teenagers, but peer pressure doesn't stop when you graduate from high school. No matter how old you get, there will always be someone or some situation that will pressure you to go along with the crowd, regardless of how you feel about what they are doing. You will be tempted to do so just to be accepted, or to avoid rocking the boat. Mr. Repella reminded me that the more important thing is to be true to yourself and to what you believe to be right.  However, I also concluded that being a little bit different doesn't necessarily mean that you do not belong.  

Not long after that, I overheard the leader of the group saying that we did not have to agree with every issue to belong to the group. By that point, though, I had already allowed common sense to prevail. Instead of worrying about the five percent of things that I disagreed with them about, I focused instead on the ninety-five percent of things about which I not only agreed with them, but felt really passionate about. I never again questioned whether I belonged there. I just made my own post cards for that particular project.

Mr. Repella said that he would someday like to have someone write on his tombstone "In life, he tried", but as a high school English teacher, he did much better than that. He succeeded in passing onto students the freedom to be themselves and the knowledge that they had value just as they were. I may never run for public office, but I hope to someday be remembered as a person that others could trust.