About my sophomore year in high school, I had developed a pretty bad attidude.  I don’t remember exactly why I was so negative but I do remember the mindset of being anti-establishment on any/every issue whether it made sense or not, and the ultimate goal was to get away with being as lazy as possible.   Then I got a lecture from Mr. Cramer.

Actually it wasn’t just me that got the lecture, it was the whole class, but it was because of a lame comment I had made in class – something to the effect of “what’s the point of doing this?”

Mr. Cramer was just trying to teach Algebra II and I was getting in his way a little bit.  What happened next is something I’ve remembered for over 40 years, so he must have felt this was the time to seize the opportunity.

We were only about 5 minutes into a 45 minute class when I shared my unwelcome question.  I remember Cramer then stopped writing on the board and turned around and said “Well, let’s talk about that.”  From that point on there was no math lesson that day, just talk, mostly him.  He pulled up a stool and abandoned the chalk board.

In a very calm manner he talked about attitudes that lead to success in life.  How he was coaching his own kids along these lines.  What he said was basically, put your mind in this place.  Think about doing what you’re asked to do plus a little extra.  People are impressed by that.  If your mom asks you to take out the garbage, take out the garbage and sweep the patio.  If your dad is expecting you to mow the lawn by Saturday, mow it by Thursday and pull a few weeds too.  Do a little more than asked.

He spent the next 40 minutes ditching his entire lesson to talk about life and attitude and what will get you ahead vs. what will not.  And he did it in such a calm manner that was basically a discussion with us.  He didn’t preach.  I was captivated and probably a little embarrassed in the moment, but I always remembered that he seized that moment and felt it was a good use of time to get our minds straight at the expense of a day’s lesson.   In retrospect, that was pretty visionary of him because I remember nothing else about that class.  Just that one day when he was willing to reach out and try to touch our mindset and appeal to our inner good.  He was also intelligent enough to know that if he had yelled or taken a different approach to the discussion he would have lost me.

I not only remember that ‘lecture’ that day, I’ve tried very hard to apply it to my own life throughout the years.  I can site several examples where it has helped me tremendously at work and set me apart from peers.

Thank you Mr. Cramer.  That was one great math lesson.