Ellsworth

Regarding public school, if I had to pick one worst moment, it would have been in Elementary school.
And there are two "moments" not one.

In fourth grade, for over a month I lost every recess.
A new Administrator decided that as punishment for a playground fight, I would lose over a month of recesses working on perfect penmanship.
As a young boy that never could make the pencil and paper cooperate together.

The fingers could hold the pencil.
The pencil could find the paper.
But after that point, all writing was a scrawl.
Part of the undiagnosed learning disability that would make that Administrator's actions abusive, if done in this more modern age.

Thousands of attempts of writing a single sentence, to produce enough perfect examples.

"Fighting is a barbaric behavior, characteristic of those who are emotionally immature and out of control."
But, the act she perpetrated was a form of corporal violence upon my being: one of life's ironies.

Ironically I have grown to believe in the truth of that sentence she had me write, at least in most situations.
Because there are times where necessity dictates actions, where self defense is required, and both maturity / control are exercised.

The second worst moment was the year I sat in 6th Grade a second time.
It was easy for them to jump me from 5th to 6th for a year, within the same school.
It was the right sort of challenge.
It would have been more difficult for them to jump me from 6th to 7th grade, between schools.

A kid who can sleep through class, and when called upon by an angry teacher could either A) repeat verbatim what the teacher was saying for the last 10-15 minutes or B) summarize what the Teacher had been saying.
(I've long lost that odd skill)
That kid was difficult enough when the material was new.
But when the material was a year of review, enter class clown with a slight residual grudge with the system.

So 6th grade, in it's entirety, was a horrible year.
I made it hell for the teacher who was starting his career.
He in turn made it hell on me.
Male teachers in elementary school, rare as hens teeth back then (not much has changed to this day).

But I survived to move on to Jr High. And slowly I matured.

I matured to the point that about 5 years after graduating High School, I went back to my old Elementary School.
I figured that the man still occupied the same room that he had about a decade earlier, my guess was right.

I showed up at his door about 30 minutes after the schools release time, knowing that the timing was likely right for him to be there.
Ready to try again the next day, 10 minutes earlier if my guess had been wrong.

I knocked politely, and he opened the door.
Calmly, with sincerity, I proceeded to apologize for my behavior from a decade earlier.
I added no justifications, no excuses. I made an apology for words and deeds, for how I imagined they impacted the man in front of me, and the students who had been around me.
He accepted that apology with style and grace, we shook hands and I left never to see the man again.

It was perhaps 7 years later when my wife briefly worked at that same school.
That's when I learned from her, how much my 6th grade teacher still hurt.
For when I see resentment, I know it most often springs from hurt, fear, shame, feelings of inadequacy, et cetera.
Knowing that my apology did not heal... that extended the 'worstness' of my 6th grade experience, but it added to my understanding of life's seriousness.

Ever since then I have thought, should I go apologize again?
Would it help, if a second time I included more of an explanation, knowing it would sound like justification?

Would it help if he knew that later my passion for learning grew so great, that I graduated Cum Laude from a Jesuit Institution of higher learning, with a degree in Philosophy.
That it would have been Summa Cum Laude, except for two things: that old undiagnosed learning disability and a year studying a foreign language (it ruined my attempt at graduating with a 3.9-4.0).
That I once had a professor start day one by stating "I never give an A grade," and on the last day I became his first A (he had taught for at least 20 years).
That another professor, ended up telling me that he had never had a student get every question correct and also do every single extra challenge question (correctly), and thus had never before given a final grade of 115% (115% iirc, maybe it was 110% or 120%).
Would knowing that help the 6th grade teacher get over the results of a year long battle?

Now on to the bright spots.
An amazing janitor at that same elementary school.
Who that same year allowed me to perfect making shurikens from scratch using the tin snips and grinder in his small work area.
I must have made around 20, as I perfected size and form.
Can you imagine that, in this day and age?
He'd be punished for finding such a way to make a young man engage in learning.

A math teacher in Jr High, who spent more extra time after class than I can remember helping me try to figure out the arithmetic.
A history teacher in Jr High, who was from the south and helped me memorize the Gettysburg Address...
and helped me successfully lobby to change an annoying dress code, one that had treated men and women differently for no logical reason.

In high school there were many others.
One taught me science and driving, back when teachers could supplement their income with that second activity.
One who taught Political Science.

In 2024 I had the opportunity to say goodbye to my High School auto-shop teacher, on the night that he died of old age (natural causes).
If you ever have the opportunity to take such an action, I would strongly encourage you to do it.
The last lessons he taught me on that night were that living ears always hear, and since he had been watching the Lord of the Rings on that last night...
I spent a month or two learning about Tolkien with fresh eyes. That eventually led to me learning about the signal corp, casualty rates, and the 223 women of WWII.

Is running your hobby or is running your habit? If it's not one or the other.... next.
And from that hard reality, Hobbits were born.

He taught me a lot from his deathbed, without saying a word.
In this new era of the inter-connectedness of big tech's social media, perhaps such a thing could become a norm... saying a last goodbye to old teachers as they die.
Like it was in times past, when a person's world was mostly just a small town.

Looking back, public school versus private school is a mixed bag, just like every person's life.
I had a better experience in the former than I did in the later. but neither was particularly easy (in part because I was not a typical student).

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This was a big block of text to write.
I'm not going to edit / hone it, it'll stay as raw as it was written.

My father, Skip Ellsworth, attended Edison Technical College.
He attended with a couple of friends, as far as I know.
You figure that out if you're curious, because I happen to be unable to verify the exact veracity of that.
It's true, as far as I know.

Be careful the stories you tell your children, the ones like this.

He was a very disruptive student, so eventually a deal was struck.
If he was in class and did not disrupt, then he would get a good grade -- nothing more required.
He was proud of that win.

The private school that he selected for me had that as their formal policy, minus the disruptive part.

Evolutionary Psychology: it offers some explanations for how people recreate past experiences, and encounter the same types of people again and again.
Knowing the patterns allows for change, I absolutely reject hard determinism, and look askance at soft determinism.
Knowledge and motivation creates mountains of change.