THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

"I Hate Poems" Gladstone High School My creative writing class in 1975

by Phil Staudt February 15, 2010

Teacher of the 20th Century - Dorothy Kembel Sawyer

Written by Phil Staudt
February 15, 2010

Here is a story I have told to many people I have met many times over the years, but it has never been written down. That in itself is ironic, since the story is about a teacher I had in high school, who was a writing teacher. I think I have the story fairly accurate, even after a few decades.

About 35 years ago, in the small town of Gladstone, Oregon, I was a student at Gladstone High School. I was not a good student, by any stretch of imagination. I hated school. That hatred began in the 4th grade, many years before I met Mrs. Sawyer, but unfortunately for her, she was affected by my deep-seated dislike for the educational establishment.

During my sophomore year in high school, I picked "Creative Writing" as my language course for one semester. Mrs. Sawyer was the teacher of that class, and she was highly esteemed by all the students and teachers at school, and both of my older sisters liked her. So I was thinking to myself that I was going to enjoy this class, because I loved to sit down and write things in my journal, and I was always writing long letters to friends I had in far away in places. (That is what people did before Facebook.) I had even written a play, and produced and directed it, for the church I belonged to when I was growing up. Since I was forced to attend school, I felt good about being enrolled in a creative writing class.

In the first week of that class, Mrs. Sawyer explained what we would be doing throughout the semester. As part of that creative writing class, we would be spending most of our time doing poetry and putting together a poetry book. As this was being explained, my blood started to boil. I did not want to be in a poetry class. I wanted to learn about writing short stories. A little bit of poetry would have been fine, but not for the biggest segment of the class. I was not happy at all. Why wasn't it called "Poetry" instead of "Creative Writing"? What a rip!

Since I did not care about grades, and had already concluded that school was a big waste of time any way, I decided to protest; not by arguing or whining, but by being aloof. Day after day I went to that class and was instructed to spend time with others in the class putting together this poetry book, which was supposed to be such a big deal. Instead, I sat in that class and did my home-work for the other classes. My policy was not to do any home-work in my spare time, so this class became my study hall for getting home-work done. I did not do one bit of work on my poetry book in the class-room.

My sister, Christy, happened to be in that same class with me. There were only two classes in school where I ended up in the same class as my sister, and that creative class was one of them. My sisters were both straight A students, which was one of my reasons for being so rebellious in school. Christy asked me several times about how I was doing on my poetry book. I let her know I would get it done, sooner or later. It was due to be turned in right before Thanksgiving. The night before it was due, my family attended a church meeting, and when we got home, I sat down at the dining table with crayons, a stack of blank pieces of paper, and the list that Mrs. Sawyer had given us as to what needed to be in the poetry book. My sister looked at that scene, and she was quite disgusted. I was getting ready to knock this thing off, and I was shooting for a solid C minus.

I stayed up almost all night long working on the poetry book, because I was enjoying my protest. Somehow, I made an exception on this project of my policy of not doing home-work in my spare time, because the value of protesting this one project superceded my rebellion against the entire system. There was a theme for my poetry book, and I applied it to every poem that I wrote; the theme was simply, "I hate poetry". Every single poem I wrote was about how I hated poetry. The next day, I turned it in, knowing it would not be received well or appreciated, but also knowing that I had fulfilled every requirement that was laid out for the poetry book. I had completed the project without doing any of it in class.

The day came to get the poetry books back with grades on them. I expected that there would be a few remarks on mine about not living up to potential, bla-bla-bla, which I was accustomed to seeing. Mrs. Sawyer got in front of the class and explained to the students that she had taken a train trip over the holidays so that she could grade the poetry books from her students in her classes. She explained that she enjoyed having time to go over the poetry books on the train. She also said, that after a while it did get a bit monotonous doing all the grading, even though she enjoyed the writing and art-work. Then, she said, she came across one poetry book that got her attention. She was not sure whether she should cry or laugh. 

When Mrs. Sawyer said that, I thought to myself, "uh-oh". Maybe I had gone a little bit over-board on this one; okay, maybe a long way over-board. But this was just school. She couldn't give me a failing grade, or could she? I began to worry about whether I had gone through the entire list of what was to be included in the book. About the time I was wondering if I would have to do the whole thing over, or get a failing grade in the class, she announced that she gave my poetry book an A++. 

She passed out the graded poetry books back to us, except for mine. She asked me if she could keep mine. I had no problem with that. She saved me a trip to the closest waste bin. Furthermore, I guessed she may have had a dart-board at home that she could pin it up on, to throw darts at it. But what she did was get my attention. She was not just a teacher, but a psychologist, and she knew how to deal with kids like me. She knew that if she did what I expected her to do, that I would never remember her class or the poetry book. She burned that memory in my mind.

A couple years after that class, I began writing songs, because I liked playing the piano and composing music. Of course, that involved poetry. I would always smile to myself and think about Mrs. Sawyer each time I was done writing a song. I have not written a poem for decades, but today Mrs. Sawyer added me as one of her friends on Facebook, so why not?


It was entitled "I hate poems",
My poetry book in high school.
I did the whole thing in one night,
Because I was a stupid fool.

My teacher knew I was a rebel
And she had seen this one before.
She treated me with respect.
She should have kicked me out the door.

My future was her main concern
And salvaging my wasted mind.
Instead of ragging and nagging,
She was thoughtful and kind.

She made such an impression on me
That it made me always appreciate,
That it is better to give a little praise
Than it is to retaliate.

Mrs. Sawyer gets my vote for Teacher of the 20th Century. 

However, my sister was not exactly ecstatic about my good grade.

Oh well! You can't please 'em all.

Written by Phil Staudt
February 15, 2010

by Phil Staudt February 15, 2010

www.ccsso.org/projects/national_teacher_of_the_year/State_Teachers/1987