Mike Leigh, my friend, and a caring Educator

prolog: Mike always told me that I would have to write a serious piece ( Instead of my usual funny stuff) when He died. I didn't know that I would have to write this piece this soon. I wrote it and read it at his funeral last Saturday March 1st.

Mike Leigh, my friend, and a caring Educator

Over the years, I had the pleasure of working with and coming to knowing Mike Leigh. Mike spent 36 years educating students with Haywood County Schools. We worked together as we served as leaders in the education association. Mike spent hundreds of basketball games seated on my left side where his difficult job was to make sure that I kept the scoreboard correctly. For the last few years we finally got to teach on the same campus.

Mike had many of traits and skills that made him a fine educator. Some of these traits can be learned in college, modeled from other teachers, or even practiced in an empty classroom; however, he had one outstanding teacher trait that came naturally. He cared greatly about his students! I want to mention a few instances that illustrate Mike’s caring attitude and dedication.

Before I met Mike Leigh, I learned that he was a dedicated educator. My first HJH (now HMS) homecoming pep rally included a tumbling contest with twenty students. Many students could perform round-offs and back somersaults passes across the entire gym floor. When I congratulated the P. E. teacher on their skills, I learned that we were not teaching tumbling in our P. E. courses. He told me of a teacher at Sunny Hill Elementary who had volunteered to start a gymnastics club after school. That was the first time I heard mention of a Mr. Leigh. I didn’t know him yet, but I learned a couple things about Mr. Leigh that day. I knew he was a good teacher as the students had skills and were full of enthusiasm. More importantly, I knew he was a dedicated teacher. You know a teacher is truly dedicated when they are willing to stay after school for free to teach a club. He simply did it because he wanted our young people to experience success and have fun.

Another evidence of his caring heart appeared to me just this school year, Mike told me had a problem with his classroom projector. After taking the projector to my room, I found it worked fine, but his antiquated cord from the computer projector to the projector was faulty. Next classroom break, I returned his projector without a cord and informed him he needed one. He told me to buy him whatever he needed, and he would repay me the next day. I joked about it might cost fifty dollars or more. He said, “Fine buy it! The class learns better when I use it.” Mike, like many of the teachers I know, was in a habit of supplying classroom needs with personal money. Since he didn’t recognize my attempt at humor, I then had to confess. I had several cords in storage, they were inexpensive and didn’t cost me anything, and that his projector would be working the next morning without him having to reach into his wallet. However; his willingness to sacrifice his own money for the needs of students shows another glimpse into his committed teacher character.
I saw evidence of his compassion toward teaching and his students at basketball ball games. His former students would come by the table to say hi to Mr. Leigh. He would ask me about these students to find out if they were learning and staying out of trouble. Those who had gotten in trouble would be summoned to the table for a conversation about why they could not behave at the middle school. If you sat up in the cheap seats far away from our scorer’s table during Haywood Middle Basketball Games, then maybe you never learned a few of our secrets. Secret one, Mike would not use plastic mechanical pencils. He preferred old fashioned wood pencils, and I always had many sharpened ones on hand because on those rare occasions where the Warriors or Lady Warriors were not playing well, he would break a lead and reach for another pencil with every sloppy pass that created a turnover. Secret two, he and I would devour more than a few bags of popcorn on game nights. It was not a secret to the concession stand operators or the janitors who could count the empty bags around our table at the end of the evening. The third secret displayed his great dedication; Mike would grade stacks of papers during the ballgames. He graded if we ate out before the game, during time outs, and in the intermissions. If a team was not in their full court press, he could do a small amount of grading during the game itself. He would grade homework and quizzes all night and not fail to mark the proper baskets or fouls. At the end of the night he would have two completed basketball stats books on top of a pile of graded quizzes ready to be returned to his students. Several years ago, he was reviewing his history quizzes at the end of the night. He found the scores and level of learning a little too low. He felt that his lectures might have been too boring. He handed me a black quiz and ask for computer favor. He wanted me to find a video on the Internet that would cover the same material and be more interesting to his class. Mike showed that video, gave the quiz again, and then had to grade even more quizzes. Other teachers would have just entered the low grades and gone on to teach the next chapter. However, Mike cared deeply about his student needing to learn.
These are just a few of the instances where Mike proved that he cared about the students of Haywood County. If we had a very large meeting room and the time to hear from each of his more than 3000 former students, I think they would all agree that Mike E. Leigh was a teacher who possessed a wonderfully caring heart.

Ray W. Clark