Posted by Michael N. Marcus
on April 2, 2008, 10:54 pm
In the early 1960’s Patrick J. Leone taught health and science at Sheridan Junior High. Leone preferred that his name be pronounced as a two-syllable anglicized “Leon,” and was obviously shaken if anyone acknowledged his Italian ancestry and pronounced the final vowel. (Another Italian-American teacher would deliberately piss him off by calling him “Pasquale” or “Patsy.”)
Unfortunately, Leone had lower standards for his own verbalizations than for others, pronouncing health as “helt” and science as “sines.”
His speech defect was complemented by a persistent memory problem. Every time my class entered his room — three times a week for ten months — he’d look at us plaintively and ask, “Division Eight, helt or sines?”
He did not know which subject he was supposed to teach us; and even when we confirmed that we were in his classroom to learn about helt, he frequently tried to teach us sines.
Unlike our friends who had other teachers for helt, or health, we had no textbooks. Leone blamed the problem on the “Board of Ett,” and for months he assured us that the texts would be arriving soon.
Leone gave no lectures. There were no discussions, and few quizzes. Most of our class time consisted of laboriously copying into our notebooks, the words that he had laboriously written onto the blackboard.
Sometimes one of us would notice an error on the board, such as a “to” that should have been a “too.” Usually Leone would blame “juvenile delinquents” who’d sneak into his room during lunch period and change his words. Other times he’d try to justify his writing and deliver a long dissertation on grammar, complete with parts of speech we never heard of in our English classes (“subdulated abominative”). A few times he blamed defective chalk that twisted in his hand.
Leone was a frustrated performer/producer/director; and parents visiting day was SHOWTIME.
Parents would be welcomed by the class singing the Brusha Brusha Brusha song from an Ipana toothpaste commercial (starring Bucky Beaver), and then he sailed an embalmed bat around the room like a balsawood model airplane. For his grand finale, he squirted the children with water from a hypodermic syringe.
I was not the only Michael in the class. Michael Zagranisky, whose name Leone mispronounced as “Zagransky,” got sick early in the school year and was out for many months. Leone confused the two Michaels, and frequently reported me for skipping class.
Throughout the year, there was a mysterious stack of cardboard boxes gathering dust in a corner of the classroom. In June, with summer approaching, the kids were feeling frisky, and one of them dared to sneak into the unoccupied classroom during lunch period.
He cut open the cartons and found our missing text books, which had been in the room since September.
The burglar noticed that one carton had been opened previously. It soon became obvious that Leone had removed one of our books. Each week he secretly copied a chapter onto the blackboard, and we’d spend three days copying from the blackboard into our notebooks. Apparently Leone found it much easier to copy, than to teach.
He was not a helty man.
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