Yesterday, I published an article about my former dreams of being a basketball coach and my unexpected one-game stint as a baseball coach when I was in high school. While it is the case that I once wanted to be a basketball coach, I never once wanted to be a teacher, despite my success in teaching a middle school student to not be too reliant on his calculator for math homework. You may be wondering where I am going to this. What does my once having wanted to be a basketball coach and my one-game stint as a baseball coach have to do with wanting or not wanting to be a teacher?
Let me tell you a story: The story of that one time I proctored a high school New York State regents exam when I was still in high school.
This story takes place in my senior year of high school, after my brief “career” as a baseball coach and during the year when I was student editor of the school newspaper and a math tutor to middle school students on Fridays.
My high school was located in Brooklyn, New York City. In New York, there was a set of exams called the Regents Examinations which were required for a “Regents” high school diploma. In order to obtain a basic regents diploma, students had to pass Math A, English, two science regents, and global and U.S. history exams. The basic Regents were easy. They are probably still easy, but New York politicians were embarrassed by the pass rate and recently decided that they are no longer required for graduation to avoid future embarrassment to State authorities (sad!).
I scored well on most of the Regents (we need not talk about Math B “take one” here) and would have been in line for an “advanced” Regents diploma had I taken a foreign language. But foreign languages are neither here nor there. I will offer one digression: My best regents were the history Regents, on which I scored a school-best 99 on both global and American history (I took them in 10th and 11th grades respectively), no small feat I dare say because we did not cover all of the course material in my global or American history classes and I did not study (perhaps unsurprisingly, the music question did me in on the American history Regents). It was actually a small feat – those exams were easy. Before my senior year of high school, my greatest Regents accomplishment had been not scoring 99 on my own Regents exams, but what I did for others.
Back in the day, New York offered an alternative exam to the regents called the Regents Competency Test (“RCT”), which was supposed to be easier and designed for students with learning disabilities Some students in my school took the RCT in lieu of the Regents. The school speech therapist was helping a girl in my year prepare for the RCT during my 11th grade year. The speech therapist did not have an answer key. To compensate, she summoned me from class so I could answer the multiple-choice questions on the RCT (that would have been my junior year). I recall quickly answering all the questions and not having any doubts about my answers (to the best of my recollection the multiple choice questions struck me as being similar to what I remembered from having sat for the Regents in the previous year).
But enough stories of my 11th grade heroic deeds. Let us look at my 12th grade heroic deeds.
I was walking down the hallway one afternoon when I did not have class. I walked by a room where the 10th graders (two years below me) were taking a history Regents exam (I think it was a Regents exam and not a regular test, but it was a while ago). The proctor had taught a couple of my classes. When he saw me walk by in the hallway, he got my attention. He needed to use the restroom and had not seen a teacher go by. He asked me if I could watch the exam while he used the rest room. I of course agreed and replaced him in the teacher’s chair at the front of the classroom.
In just a year, I had gone from sitting for my Regents to proctoring – all without having yet graduated high school.
My brief stint as a proctor was uneventful. One smart aleck immediately tested his luck and raised his hand and ask if I could give him the answers. It never hurts to ask. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for the integrity of the system, I said no and motioned for him to look down at his paper. He complied. No one cheated or caused an incident. The real proctor returned after about 10 minutes and relieved me as global history Regents proctor. I left and returned to whatever it was that I was doing (I do not recall what I had been doing).
Had I thought that I would never again proctor a high school exam, I would have been entirely correct.
Many people accomplish great things in life after high school. But I was not one to wait. In the course of one year, I served as a global history RCT answer bank, high school baseball coach, newspaper editor and designer, and, finally, a New York State exam proctor.
If you are fan of The New Leaf Journal, you can now brag to your friends that you are reading the musings of someone who was a renaissance man before graduating high school.
