AdvanceBlog

Author Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is an extraordinary literary perspective on change and those seemingly regular momentary events that alters everything that follows.

In my life, Eugene Grewe is a tipping point.

I had some outstanding elementary, middle and high school teachers.  My parents provided my brother and I with a grounded, supportive and loving home.  However, at that crux in life when adolescent choices can have negative reverberations into young adulthood – Mr. Grewe stood in his renown arms folded position blocking the path of less resistance and underachievement.

During high school, the dean of student’s office was my alternate homeroom. Being that I never started a fight, I surely had a penchant for ending them.  When also factoring in my numerous spontaneous acts of humor, it can be easily understood how the dean’s office became a regular hangout for me.  Of course, the Dean in the dean’s office was Mr. Grewe.

Our relationship started freshman year with his confiscation of my Walkman cassette player (now I’m telling my age).  That action and his baritone frequently bellowing my name down the hall, help earn him the “Mean Gene” moniker. Yet for all of his foil to my pubescent mischief, Mr. Grewe and I developed a peculiar rapport.  Even after chasing me down the hall for (insert illogical teen activity here), we could always communicate and laugh as he was issuing me additional detention hours.

However, the tipping point moment came early in my senior year.

I was enrolled in a class called Detective Stories – a remedial class in which it took two to three weeks to complete a short story (as an experienced educator, I often wondered if my enrollment in that class was evidence of having been “tracked”).  Although I have long forgotten what landed me in Mr. Grewe’s disciplinary suite that particular day, I remember the conversation moving toward an inquiry about my classes.  I shared with him that some of my friends were complaining about the magnitude of the assignments in his AP English class.  Then I inserted a bet.  I bet Mr. Grewe I could get an “A” in AP English.  The source of my unlikely bet was half bravado and half the ambition to be in a class with all the pretty girls.

While I can’t say if Mr. Grewe took my bet seriously, the following week I was transferred to AP English.  I was glad Mr. Grewe did not choose to cash in on the bet, because I only earned a “B+”.  Truly, the bet was of minor consequence.  By transferring me into his tediously challenging class, Mr. Grewe began to prepare me for the rigors of college.  Because I didn’t want to lose the bet, I began to study – an activity I had only sparsely dabbled in previously.  Mr. Grewe balanced Shakespeare with novels, poetry, and stories from other cultures, ranging from Homer to Elridge Cleaver and somehow weaved a common thread through each selection.  To participate in his AP class, was both stimulating and engaging.  Moreover, it developed within me an appetite for literature and a work ethic for advanced studies.

When I became an administrator, I attempted to channel my inner “Mean Gene.”  I would roll up my sleeves, fold my arms across my chest and administer his chin-to-the-chest piercing glare of redirection.  While my forearms will never be as muscular as his, I hoped to be able to engage students in relationships that were an amalgam of disciplinarian, friend, ally, teacher, supporter, confidante and guidance counselor.  So that maybe perhaps, their lives can be as enriched as mine has been … thanks to Mr. Grewe.

Do you have any “Mr. Grewe(s)” in you life?