Vague, Sham, Redundant

Irvin Goldstein

Yesterday my sixth grade teacher Irvin Goldstein passed from this life to the next, and today Facebook has been filled with fond remembrances from former students.  He was one of the most influential teachers in my education, so it is natural to consider what words come to mind when thinking of him.  Several do, actually, and in this order.

Vague

Sham

Redundant

Verbose

Articulate

Gregarious

Mediocre

Magnificent

Loquacious

Although "articulate" and "magnificent" may have described him, the others do not, so you may ask why they come to my mind.  Each week Mr. Goldstein put a new word on the chalkboard in addition to our regular spelling list.  For extra credit, we could list each word and its predecessors  on that week's test.  The first week the word was "vague," the second week "sham," and so forth, and I have remembered the first nine in order for nearly forty years.

It is not so much that I have a prodigious memory as much as the fact that nearly everything Mr. Goldstein did with his students was memorable.  He read to us each day after lunch, and I still recall the excitement of Black and Blue Magic and Mrs. Coverlet's Magicians and Escape From Warsaw, which whisked me away to another place that stayed with me so keenly that I checked it out of our local library and read it to my son when he was young.

And then there were the pickles.  Yes, we made pickles.  And root beer.  In Mr. Goldstein's room, science took on a practical flair, which made sense, given his passion for helping his students engage with the world around them.  For example, he took the entire class to his farm for a field trip and designed a camping program for fifth and sixth graders that lasted for years in our district.  I remember lying out under the stars one evening at Otter Creek Camp, and Mr. Goldstein walked by.  He saw my friend Phil and me gazing at the stars, and he said with a gentle laugh, "They almost seem to move, don't they?"

The two things that had the most significant effect on my education and general life, however, were his instruction in creative writing and his preparation for later stages of learning.  He regularly gave us writing prompts, and that was where I came alive.  I could not wait for the next writing assignment and began to fill notebooks outside class with my own stories.  It was in Mr. Goldstein's room that the writer in me was born.

As for sending us on to junior high and high school, no one could have prepared us better.  He treated us as young adults and held us to the highest standards.  He equipped us to take notes and organize our time and materials so that the transition to seventh grade and beyond was a smooth one.

My memories of Mr. Goldstein are vivid and far from vague, for when it came to teaching he was no sham, but the real deal.  I could go on and on, but at some point my stories would become redundant and my writing would become verbose instead of concise as Mr. Goldstein taught.  I hope that this meager eulogy has been articulate enough, however, to give some insight into a teacher who, while not particularly gregarious, was beloved by all, for never would he accept the mediocre or anything less than the best from his students.  He made us great, and in so doing was the living definition of magnificent.  Since experiencing sixth grade with Mr. Goldstein would make even the most taciturn loquacious in recalling precious memories, I will end with a simple shalom to one who will always be one of my best teachers.



Update:  One of my classmates shared this picture from our sixth grade class with Mr. Goldstein.

Mr. Goldstein is center left at the top next to our principal, Mr. Gene Miller.  Yours truly is the young man in the upper right corner.