Adventures of a Classroom Teacher

After teaching at Suffield and Field High Schools for 4 years I obtained a position at Ravenna City High School teaching physics and mathematics. At that time (1963) Ravenna High School was a high quality academic institution and I felt honored to be part of it.. They were regularly placing their graduates in ivy league colleges which was unusual for Portage County schools at the time.

Ravenna High School  c. 1963

When I started teaching at RHS I must have looked rather young, even though I had been in Korea with the military, attended graduate school, was married and had 3 kids. During our first fire drill I was guiding some students to the exit when an elderly business teacher mistook me for a student and told me to shut up and get in line. So… I… shut up and got in line. She was quite embarrassed later when she discovered her mistake.

During my first few years at Ravenna High School I had many students for 3 classes during the day. Because of this we had a very close relationship, and were almost like family.

Many of the students in my classes had a higher IQ than I did which made teaching challenging and kept me on my toes. I always had to be well-prepared because these guys were constantly “laying for me”, trying to find a crack in my knowledge. This turned out to be fun for me and the students. I could usually outwit them even though they were extremely capable, since I possessed more information and experience than they did. I have never enjoyed anything as much as the “give-and-take” with these students. It was really stimulating and we all had fun learning together. I couldn’t fake my way through if I didn’t know something, because hiding it from these characters  was next to impossible.

I had many students in physics class and the same students later in calculus class. I was able to teach the principles and uses of calculus in the physics class before the students had ever heard of calculus. For example, we would plot the graph of the speed of a falling object using a home-made timer made from a door bell clapper, ticker tape, and carbon paper. We then tediously measured the slope of the graph and area under the curve in various places in order to find the velocity and distance traveled. This is what is done mathematically with calculus, and the students were doing it without knowing anything about that subject. In the following class when we did the same thing using calculus it made much more sense to the students since they had previously done the same procedure graphically. When the school increased in size and became departmentalized this was no longer possible since each teacher had to teach in his own department – math or science, but not both.

I never believed in using complex digital instruments in the lab at this level until the student had done the experiments with simpler equipment. Although not as impressive to administrators or in science fairs, this was much more informative and easier to understand than was some black box with digital readouts and wires hanging out. The doorbell timer mentioned previously was an example.

Other examples:

A timer made from a funnel full of water which drained into a graduated cylinder.  This measured time in ml. of water. (This is how Galileo did it!)

For a strobe we used a slotted hard board disk which was rotated in front of one eye.

After developing some wave theory with ripple tanks made from window panes we were able to measure the differences in wavelengths of red and blue light using blackened microscope slides and two razor blades.

Bob is studying wave motion with ripple tank and simple strobe

It is amazing what one can do with simple everyday things. Later after obtaining some understanding we could drag out the whiz-bang digital stuff and get more accurate readings.

Studying motion using a high speed camera and strobe light. Abe is dropping a golf ball and Tom is ready to fire the strobe and open the shutter

This group of students was deadly serious about obtaining knowledge and pretty much all business and on-task, that is, until a visitor walked into the classroom. They would then go into “attack mode” and try their best to embarrass me by doing something really outlandish. I couldn’t scold them because I would do similar things to them. It sometimes appeared to the other staff members in the school that all we did was have fun and goof off. They were only half right – we did have fun!

I remember the time Mrs. Hulbert, our very proper librarian, came into the physics lab to talk to me about some event. The next thing I knew, a student (the valedictorian) had exited our second story window and was standing on a ledge, other students were holding the window shut, and Mrs. Hulbert was about to have a major heart attack. I told her not to worry, they do this all the time. After she left they settled down and everyone went back to work.

One day we were having a lab where the students were measuring a magnetic field using a large piece of paper, a bar magnet and some small compasses. The students were in groups of four. I decided to see how well one group of boys could think on their feet and handle unexpected data. I had a very strong magnet from a klystron tube that I obtained from a war surplus store, and unknown to the group I placed it in a drawer under their lab table. Of course this violently affected the expected results. Their small compasses would come to a certain point and then snap around and point straight down toward the floor. The boys worked for over an hour and were completely frustrated and befuddled. Finally in a fit of desperation one of the boys opened the drawer and found the klystron magnet. The gaze of all four guys immediately fell on me, and I saw blood in their eyes. I was standing by the door, so I gingerly exited the lab and ran down the hall with the four guys after me. I quickly stepped into principal Jim Call’s office since I knew they wouldn’t follow me there. I then asked his secretary for some staples, tape, and paper clips, killing time until the bell rang. They would not have done anything to me other than maybe mess up my hair, but I didn’t want to give them that option.

At the time Ohio held a mandatory state-wide exam for physics students. That year one of these students placed fourth in the state. Three others were in the top 20.

The physics lab was on the top floor and immediately below were some English classes. When doing experiments we were constantly dropping bricks on the floor or running roller skate carts across the room causing large amounts of racket. Unfortunately this noise transferred to the classrooms below. I was aware of the problem but had no way of controlling it without jeopardizing the program.

One day a student came to my door with a note from an English teacher whose class was directly below my lab. It said,

“Could you please cut down on the noise up there because it is very uncomfortable holding class with all of that horrible racket going on overhead”.

I appreciated her problem and she was a good friend of mine, but I could not think of an immediate reply. I decided that the best defense was a good offense, so I sent the student back with a note saying:

“SHUTUP ABOUT THE NOISE OR FORGET ABOUT TONIGHT” ,

and stapled it closed so that the student couldn’t read it. I went down to see her later and after having a good laugh we worked out a solution with some schedule changes.

Carl was one of my better students and an avid note-taker. I noticed that every time I spoke he feverishly wrote in his notebook. It looked as if he was really paying attention, and I complimented him on his note-taking. I mentioned him to the other students as being studious and well-organized.

At the end of the year Carl handed out a 20 page book to every student in the class. The title was “All of my Best – A Book Of Roliffisms”. The notes that Carl had been taking consisted of the sayings and jokes that I told during the previous two school years. He and 2 other students edited the notes, typed them, and printed them on our computer. This guy was taking all of those notes so that he could write this book about me!

He again handed out copies at his 20th year class reunion.

Roliffisms

I guess the book-writing incident didn’t hurt Carl intellectually because he eventually earned a PHD in computer science.

These were the days before calculators were common and we had to use  look-up tables to evaluate the trig functions.

One page of a trig table. Thank God for scientific calculators!

In order to use these tables efficiently one had to learn interpolation. Many of these students had no idea what that word meant, so I had some fun with it. I would say,

“Tomorrow we are going to interpolate, so everyone needs to wear old clothes. Furthermore, the girls will need to bring notes from their mothers giving them permission to interpolate in class”.

Of course they knew I was putting them on, so the following day I would get a pile of notes on my desk similar to this:

---

Dear Mr. Roliff,

Please allow Linda to interpolate.

Signed,

Mom

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One year I had a 7:15 AM calculus class consisting of 9 boys. Each morning I fired up the coffee pot and we all sat around drinking coffee and learning calculus. I was hoping the coffee would give these guys a boost and keep them awake at this early hour. Coffee was not allowed in the classroom, and Mr. Jim Call, then superintendent, knew that we were doing it because his son was in that class. Several times when Jim met me in the hallway he would harass me about it, but he never told me to stop.

These guys knew I had a Honey Farm and I jokingly told them that if they ate honey it would make them smart. One of the boys who was struggling with the subject came up to me one morning and asked me to bring him a pound of honey, which I did. Two weeks later he loudly announced to the class in an accusing tone that he had been eating the honey for the past two weeks and he didn’t feel one bit different. I replied,

“See there, you’re getting smarter already!”.

I got a standing ovation for that one.

On an evening near Halloween four students came to my house in Randolph to pay a visit. Elaine served them cookies and drinks and we had a pleasant time. Upon leaving I noticed that the boys were looking rather suspicious, so after they left the house I brought my Winchester 16 gauge shotgun out of the bedroom, loaded her up with bird shot, and quietly pussy-footed out onto the front porch. After a few minutes I saw a roll of toilet paper sailing way up over the tree tops. These guys were T-P-ing my house! I pumped the shotgun and fired a couple of rounds straight up into the air. The shotgun barked loudly and 3 feet of fire jumped out of the barrel lighting up the night sky. When the bird shot came down it sounded like rain coming through the leaves. I never saw people disappear as rapidly as those guys did.

the next morning we were all back in class doing the usual things. No one mentioned anything about what had happened the previous night.

More pictures here