This story is almost 25 years old, and fortunately I still had the privilege to meet him and his son by accident a few years ago before he passed away, to thank him and tell his son how important the lessons he taught were for me and the person I am today.  It was not what he taught though, it was how he did it.

Now that I see it through the eyes of an adult, his system was brilliant.  The only thing that had a scheduled time of the day was dictation (obviously), the rest was our responsability.  Yes, he gave eight year olds responsability.  He’d write up on the blackboard the day’s chores and exercises on the various subjects, and transcribing it to a specific notebook was the first thing we did in the morning.

It was then up to us to follow whatever order we wanted to accomplished the set tasks.  If we finished everything before the day was over, we had a bookcase full of classic comic books we could read (Tintin, Asterix, Blake and Mortimer, Lucky Luke, etc.); if we didn’t finish, whatever was left was our homework.  He changed the amount of work from day to day, both in amount and complexity, to allow all students to experience the excitement of not having homework, and to slowly goad us into greater productivity; other days he gave enough work that nobody could ever avoid taking it home.  He was quietly present in the background, correcting the previous day work, there to answer all questions we might have.

At the time we couldn’t really understand the value this system had, it was more of a drag (even with the possible reward) than anything else.  It was only years later that I realized how much of a difference those two years made on everything else later in my life.

Thank you, Mr. Reis.