Community Voices: Long ago career still bringing smiles

Bruce Stewart

I started teaching mathematics in 1949 at Salem’s Parrish Junior High.

I had graduated Linfield College earlier with enough credits to teach grades 9-12.

After an interesting interview, the principal and vice-principal recommended me to teach ninth-grade mathematics. Only two courses were offered then: General Math and First Year Algebra. My assignment was to teach six classes of General with 36 students in each class. Over the next 10 years I was privileged to  teach many wonderful students.

I usually began classes with a joke. Many were “guffaws,” others were poems, one-liners or groaners. My intent was two-fold. First, to encourage students to be on time, and second, to help settle them to be ready to learn. Generally, it worked!

Occasionally — inadvertently, or on purpose — I’d miss telling a joke for a while. It didn’t take long for a student to say, “Hey, Mr. Stewart, where’s our joke?” I would promptly go to my vast collection to try to catch up. Eventually students began bringing jokes for my files. To this day I have four folders filled with jokes, stories, cartoons, poems and pictures.

Eventually I made the move to North Salem High School. My Parrish students gave me a parting gift, the book 10,000 Jokes, Toasts & Stories, in hopes they’d hear new jokes if they had me as a teacher in high school. The real treasure? The notes from the 27 students who signed the flyleaf.

Bruce Stewart retired in 1985. Now age 95, he lives with his wife Evy in McMinnville.