I don’t remember much about my education in the first six grades-maybe some kind teachers, some early crushes, and failing to make the boys’ softball team–but the day I will never forget is the day Mr. Glaser made me into a celebrity for uttering eight words in his fifth grade class.  The moment shines like a precious stone on a beach of gray pebbles.

I loved to write when I was ten, but I didn’t speak much in class. I was shy by nature and very worried about giving a wrong answer, so I remained silent for the first four months of the school year. I was a good student and did well on my report card, so Mr. Glaser had no reason for concern. He seemed more preoccupied with some of the bad actors in class, and he eventually had a reckoning with them. But that’s a different story.

We were discussing a reading about Scotland, and, sitting on his desk, Mr. Glaser asked something like “Why was sheep-herding a good resource for Scotland?” There was a prolonged silence, and Mr. Glaser observed it respectfully. If three or four hands shot up, one of them would not be mine, because I would not compete for attention, but the question was too specific. Silence reigned.

So I raised my hand, and Mr. Glaser pointed at me. “They’re adapted to the ways of the land,” I murmured.

“What did you say?” he jumped up from his desk and stepped toward me.  I thought I was in trouble, but I repeated my answer.

“They’re adapted to the ways of the land,” he echoed and started around to the back of his desk. “Where’s a piece of paper? I want to write that down.”

He grabbed a scrap of paper and breathed the words as he wrote them. “They’re adapted to the ways of the land. That’s great! I want the other teachers to know a student of mine said that.” He looked at me seriously, as though I had just rewritten social studies textbooks of the future.

I just sat there and basked in my momentary celebrity. I can not say I have had a more glorious moment in my classroom existence, even the day in eighth grade when I was the only one who knew that Byzantium was the former name of Constantinople and gained 99 discussion points at a shot.

I think I was convinced of my brilliance in social studies through junior high school, because of that moment. Not until I began to train as a teacher did I realize that Mr. Glaser’s performance was just that– a performance. He opened the door for me to speak up in class. I am sure I did after that, but any further participation was far over-shadowed by that moment.

That moment seems like my first response in a class discussion, because of Mr. Glaser’s performance. Whatever else he did, and there were some turbulent moments in his class, that moment changed my life in the classroom, because he knew what to do for a first responder.  He gave me the confidence to join the academic conversation to the point that I now teach teachers to do the same.

When were you a “first responder” or a teacher for a “first responder”?