Thoughts about J. R. Polen and South Middle School

The janitors at South Middle School always told me there were ghosts in that ancient building and I learned long ago that it is never smart to ignore the words of janitors.

They talked of unexplainable noises, lights that came on with no one in the room, hushed whispers that belonged to people who had received an education at that wonderful old school decades ago.

It was six years ago, the last day at a school I never wanted to leave. Less than 30 minutes earlier, the final South Middle School Talent Show and Awards Assembly had been held. Now the halls were almost empty. A KODE reporter was interviewing a couple of teachers about the final day of South. They did not need me around, so I walked up the stairs to take the remaining items out of my classroom.

I looked above my door at the wooden room number 210 that had greeted me every day for six years. Though we were leaving, the building was not going to be vacant- renovations were scheduled to begin at North Middle School so the room numbers would be needed.


But I wanted that Room 210. It was attached by screws, so I momentarily thought about getting a screwdriver and taking it down, but then decided against it. I went back downstairs to attach a note to my podium which had been used in the talent show so that it would be shipped to East. When I reached the podium, I could not believe my eyes.

On top of the podium was a screwdriver.

Who am I  to ignore a sign from God?

As I used the screwdriver to remove the Room 210 sign, I had a brief attack of conscience. Would the North students get lost wondering what was between rooms 209 and 211? Were cameras recording my every move and my next stop be a cell in the Joplin City Jail?

As I placed the sign on the top of the last box of belongings, I took a few moments to take a last look at Room 210.

My thoughts returned to the first day. I was not sure I was going to be able to cut it as a teacher in the Joplin R-8 School District. Confidence is a hard commodity to come by when your last school had just put you on an unpaid leave of absence due to budget problems and the superintendent had said that I was chosen because "your absence will least affect the kids."

The first class I taught was a two-hour block class of communication arts and reading. As I was introducing myself to the class, an eighth grade boy with long black hair was turned around talking to a friend.

I stopped talking and within seconds, the only thing that could be heard in the classroom was this young man's voice. I still said nothing. When he realized that everyone was looking at him, he looked in all directions, milking the moment for all it was worth.

"I bet you'd like me to be quiet," he said.

I never had any problems with J. R. Polen from that day on. It was not that he was always quiet, but he knew how far he could go before it was time to pull back and allow the learning to commence.

I remembered that first day. I had a problem getting my advanced class, the fifth and sixth hour block to quiet down that day until I looked at my gradebook and asked two of my students, Paige Curry and Paige Strella, to stand up.

"Now, turn around."

They were baffled, but they did as I said. ""Now that we have turned the Paiges," I said, "let's get to work."

Why that worked, I will never know, but it did.

I thought about those first kids, J. R. Polen, Steffan Mock, the student he had been talking to, Sarah McDonough, who drew the green frog that highlighted my Writers' Wall of Fame, the Paiges, Kristin Carter and her poetry, Lindsey Hamm, wonderful writer, nominating me for the Golden Apple (I did not win, but I still have the Golden Apple ornament she gave me, Melissa Summers who at one time had me four hours a day (the block class, the TA home room, and multimedia), Mark Medlin, Jessica Johnson, the Monroe twins, Derek Rider, Travis Kunce, Kristin Haddad, Jordan Hudspeth, and so many more.

It was one of the best years I ever had and those memories  kept flowing back to me as I took one final glance around the room, closed and locked the door and ended my time at South Middle School.

As the years passed, I drove by South from time to time and each time I did, it brought back wonderful memories, sometimes of that first year, sometimes of the later years, memories I would not trade for anything.

When the tornado destroyed a large part of Joplin three years ago, I learned that East Middle School had been hit and my first thought was that I might have an opportunity to return to South. That hope was short lived. South had also been hit and was beyond repair.

A few weeks after the tornado, I decided to return to the school for the final time. When I arrived, I pulled my car into the same parking lot I had used when I arrived at work at 6:30 a.m. each day.

It was shortly after noon on a Sunday, but there was no one in sight. Mine was the only car I could see for blocks around. The wind whipped through the broken windows and rattled the blinds, creating a macabre symphony.

It was broad daylight, but my thoughts returned to the ghosts that the janitors had told me about three years earlier. And in my feverishly overactive imagination, I imagined that in that 80-year-old structure,thousand of students were still learning lessons from long ago.

A 13-year-old Andrea Steete was applying her impeccable writing to another Wall of Fame paper, Cheyla Navarre sat on the hardwood floor where she was most comfortable when she was writing, Quinton Fenske was just beginning to see the possibilities of writing, and Katy Polen was asking a younger version of me if I could look over her paper.

And somewhere, somewhere in that wonderfully haunted school, Katy's brother J. R. was cracking a wisecrack and his teacher was trying to suppress a smile.

That was my last stop at the school that meant so much to me and to so many other people.

Those memories came flooding back once more when I read that J. R. Polen,was a favorite student that I would never see again, dead much too early at age 24.

I had not seen J. R. in quite some time. The face that stared at me from the obituary was not the way I remembered him, but of course, time changes everyone.

J. R. Polen is no longer with us, but he, like South Middle School, will live forever in our memories.