Mr. Kuck
Many of us have that one teacher who when we look back, had a major impact on our lives and helped set us on the course to success in life. For me, that was Mr. Kuck.
In fall 1983, I started fifth grade, and although I was an avid reader, I was still very much an average student. I specialized in never doing much more than was necessary to get by. I was more concerned with rushing through my boring homework so that ironically, I could go to the library to read! I also loved playing Pac-Man with Betty on the Atari 2600 videogame system our parents had bought for us and watching Michael Jackson videos. Mom continued to encourage Betty and me to try our best in school, but I thought why should I try harder? I can pass everything just fine without much effort, which leaves me with more time to do the things that I actually want to do! That attitude of minimal effort soon came face to face with an immovable object that demanded my maximum effort... Mr. Kuck, my fifth-grade teacher.
There were two fifth-grade classes in P.S. 18, one conducted by Ms. Spano and the other by the notorious Mr. Kuck. The fourth-grade students prayed to get Ms. Spano, as she had the reputation of being the easy one of the two. Mr. Kuck had the reputation of being somewhat of a drill sergeant. I wasn’t too concerned when I learned I would be in his class because I had always done my homework and reports on time, for fear of getting in trouble with my parents. However, from the very first day of class, it was apparent that Mr. Kuck’s class was NOT going to be easy.
As was the practice in elementary schools, we stayed in the same classroom with the same teacher for most of the day except for lunch, art and music classes, and gym. I had the good fortune to have joined the school band in the fourth grade and was learning to play the trumpet, which allowed me to escape from the class a couple of times a week for an hour of band practice. When we ventured out of our classroom for an assembly or lunch, it was always in columns of two. Our drill sergeant, Mr. Kuck, was always there to keep us in line, literally. To say that Mr. Kuck was strict was an understatement. His physical presence alone was enough to strike fear into even the most wayward of students. He was about six-feet tall and had a thick mustache that extended beyond the borders of his mouth, and a big belly that a tight polo shirt barely restrained. He always wore jeans and sneakers and was never without three things: his pointing stick (which was about the size of a pool cue), his packet of chewing tobacco protruding from the back pocket of his jeans, and his little plastic cup into which he would spit his chewing tobacco all day. I was intimidated by him from day one and wondered what I had done to get this completely unreasonable teacher. He didn't tolerate any misbehavior in class. He would slap his stick loudly on his desk if anyone was not paying attention, and had a loud, booming voice, which scared the living daylights out of me.
One of Mr. Kuck’s favorite tools of discipline was giving anyone who had not done their homework or other such misbehavior a writing assignment, where they had to write out the same phrase, five hundred, one thousand, or even two thousand times, and it would always be due the next day. He demanded neatness in writing and quiet attention during class and was a strict disciplinarian. I realized quickly that any attempt on my part just to get by would have dire consequences in the form of one of those writing assignments that everyone dreaded.
I told him about my dream of becoming an airline pilot, and he told me that my goal could be reached only with a lot of hard work and study. What amazed me the most about this whole situation was that some kids in the class did not do as Mr. Kuck told them! Weren’t they afraid of getting a writing assignment or worse yet, having Mr. Kuck calling their parents? I thought. As for me, I was trapped because I knew that if there were ever any bad reports from my teacher, my parents would take his side. I had no choice but to work harder than I had ever worked before in school.
After the first few weeks of class, Mr. Kuck did something that looking back as an adult, I realize started me on the path towards actually being able to fulfill my potential and achieve my dream of flying. At the time, I felt even further persecuted by this tyrant of a teacher for this unwanted extra attention, with all the extra work it entailed. There were about twenty-five of us in class, and we all came into the classroom one morning to find that our desks had been rearranged. There was the main group of about twenty desks that still faced his, but five desks had been moved near the window, perpendicular to all the other desks, arranged side-by-side. He announced that I, along with four other students, would be sitting in those separate five desks, and that we would henceforth be getting extra assignments. My jaw dropped. The separate group comprised of me, a girl named Erica (on whom I had a little crush), and three other boys: Quaton, Raul, and Quiro. This seemed so unbelievably unfair to the five of us, but the other twenty kids were delighted that they would just be getting the normal level of assignments (which was already much more that Ms. Spano’s class). No amount of protest from the five of us changed this new arrangement, and so we resigned ourselves to being the victims of this unwanted extra attention.
The weeks and months that followed were full of all kinds of extra reading, math assignments and homework that seemed to have no point other than to torture us. Erica and I lived in the same building, with her one floor below me, and we often talked on the phone after school about how mean Mr. Kuck was. I told my parents about what was happening in class, but all they said was that I had to listen to my teacher, and that homework was good for me! They didn’t seem to understand my predicament. As I sat there day after day, doing homework for hours, I dreamt about when I used to be able to watch cartoons or go outside to fly model airplanes.
Spring 1984 rolled around and with it came the season of ultimate torture that all of us had been dreading since the start of the school year: New York State standardized testing. These were given to assess the progress of all students in the fifth grade across the entire state, to determine our standard of reading, writing, and math. We all took the tests and had to wait a couple of weeks for the results, sweating out our future, as the tests helped determine which junior high schools we would attend, and our eligibility for any special programs. When the results came, I finally saw why Mr. Kuck had been so hard on me and the other ones in that separate group. My reading comprehension and writing scores were on the ninth-grade level and my math scores on the eighth-grade level. This meant that I would be placed in honors classes in junior high. I could not believe it. Up until this time, I had always assumed I was an average student, but Mr. Kuck’s yearlong challenge had brought out potential in me that I hadn’t known was there. As I sat there stunned, staring at these test score reports, I noticed that Mr. Kuck was smiling at me. “You see, Steven”, he began, “THIS is why I was being so hard on you all year. I knew you had it in you, but I also knew that you hadn’t had to try very hard up to this point, because things tend to come easy for you.”
As I sat there nodding my head slowly in agreement, he continued, “Steven, you’re smart, but you can also be lazy, which is why I was pushing you, because things won’t always come easily for you. But what you lack in natural ability, you can always make up for in effort... that was the whole point of all that extra work.”
After I had been flying as a captain for a few years, I had the good fortune to get back in touch with Mr. Kuck and thanked him for helping me to see my potential. As we talked, he explained that having been both a teacher and a parent for many years, he had developed a keen sense for when a child with potential simply wasn’t applying themselves, which he sensed in that group of five. That was why he had singled us out for extra work. I talked to him about how those test results had led to me being placed in honors classes in junior high, which set me on the road to honors classes in high school, which in turn, led to me being accepted into a college that offered aviation courses... ultimately