Kept Promise Revives Memories : Teacher Makes Good on Vow, Returns Journals Kept by Former Students

In the Spring of 1981, Michael Johnson gave his ninth-grade students at John Muir Junior High School in Burbank an assignment--and a promise--that would follow him for more than five years. Last week, he did something about both: Johnson gave back the former and kept the latter.

Students in Johnson’s freshman English class entered his classroom each morning, read the topic for the day that was written on the chalkboard, then went to a file cabinet to retrieve their personal journals. Topics ranged from the ridiculous (“Pretend you are a flea: Tell me your life story.”) to the more profound (“If you walked into a store and knew that you never would get caught, would you steal something anyway?”).

For 10 minutes each day, the students wrote in the journals, then returned them to the file cabinet, which was kept locked except during class hours. They were not allowed to take the journals out of the classroom, and the teacher had pledged that no one else would ever read them. The students had Johnson’s assurance of privacy, he said, except in three cases.

“I let them know right from the start that there were certain things that could force me to break that vow of privacy,” he recalled.

Grounds for Breaking Vow

One of those subjects, he said, was if they wrote about physical abuse in the home. Another was if he believed they were entertaining suicidal thoughts. “The third,” he said, “was if I asked them to write about their summer vacations, and they said that mom hit dad with a frying pan and buried him in the back yard. I would have to say something about that, too.”

Students were not graded on what they wrote or the language they used but rather on the thought they had given to the topic at hand. His goal, he said, was to encourage students to write honestly and openly about emotions, relationships and the world around them.

At the end of the semester, Johnson realized that the journals were too precious to hand over to their owners. “I knew freshmen too well to trust them to hold onto these and knew they wouldn’t appreciate the continuity to your life that having something like this can give,” he said. “Their emotions are going wacko, their bodies are changing faster than their brains and their love lives are the most important thing to them.”

Gain Value Over Time

Johnson felt that, given time, the students would have a far greater appreciation of things they had written about and perhaps gain insight into the changes that had occurred in their perceptions.

And so he kept the journals, promising that after five years he would give them back. To ensure he would be able to contact the students, he asked them to tape a photograph of themselves on the inside of the journals, along with the full names and telephone numbers of their parents.

Johnson, 33, concedes that he had mixed motives for giving the assignment. Since students wrote during the first 10 minutes of class when he was required to take attendance and do “normal bureaucratic paper work,” the assignment bought him time. But it is possible that an incident in Johnson’s own past was a far stronger force.

When Johnson was 13, his mother and father divorced. Johnson, his twin sister and an older sister were separated when Johnson was sent to a foster home for four years in Modesto, where he and his family had lived. Photographs and other meaningful items linking him to his past were destroyed in the transition.

“I know what it is not to have that connection and to want that connection,” he said. “It’s very possible that, if I had been able to keep all of those things, I might have thrown them away myself. In either case, maybe holding onto my students’ journals was my way of giving back what was taken away from me.”

Johnson recalled that the semester he taught at John Muir Junior High School was his first job as a full-time teacher. At the time, he says, he still was completing his teaching credential requirements at California State University, Northridge, after receiving a bachelor of arts degree in English in 1979 and a master’s degree in theater and telecommunications in 1980 from California State University, Stanislaus.

Changed Schools Since

To fulfill his credential requirement, Johnson had worked as a substitute teacher at John Muir Junior High School for nearly a year. When an opening was created there by a teacher’s mid-term departure, Johnson was offered the position. After two semesters, he went on to John Burroughs High School in Burbank for one semester and later to Van Nuys High School, where he taught English and creative writing for three years.

In 1985, Johnson decided it was time to go back home. He now teaches English at Thomas Downey High School in Modesto.

In December, Johnson drove his pick-up truck packed with journal-filled boxes from Modesto to a friend’s house in Van Nuys to fulfill his promise to his students.

After placing an announcement in a local newspaper about the intended reunion and calling every telephone number in the journals, Johnson received more than 40 confirmations from students saying they would come. Others were unable to attend because of the holidays, he said, but asked that he give their journals to a friend or send them to a certain address.

Many of the students, he said, had been expecting his call.

Some Didn’t Remember

“A lot of them responded by saying things like, ‘I was just saying to a friend that a teacher had promised we’d get them back.’ So many of them remembered, but for many of them the time was foggy. They didn’t know exactly when it was supposed to be. Some of them, on the other hand, didn’t even remember having been in my class.”

As students entered the house in Van Nuys, they were handed the journal that belonged to them and ushered by Johnson to a cake and cookie-laden table decorated for the holidays. Johnson greeted each student by name, appearing to recognize each one instantly.

After greeting former classmates, the students settled down onto the sofa. Most became silent, leafing through the pages that they had written years before.

“I remember the day I wrote this,” said Denny Hooper, 20, pointing to an entry on the topic, “What worries you most?”

Nostalgic Entries

“I remember it because it was the day after I asked my girlfriend to go steady with me. We were sitting on the steps outside school, and I finally got up the courage to ask her if she’d go with me. She looked at me and said, ‘Where?’ ”

Maria Domenico, 20, smiled at an entry she had made on the topic, “What would you like to be doing in five years?” “I would like to be working with animals and to be a vet,” she read. Domenico now works as a veterinary technician in Van Nuys.

Other entries made by students brought up more painful memories. Armenih Abiedian, 20, had just come from Iran in 1981, during the time when American hostages were held in her country. Abiedian said that, besides struggling with a new language, she also was faced with ostracism by her peers.

“I can’t believe how angry I was then,” she said, reading an early entry into pages filled with tight, small handwriting. “I remember being angry, but look at this,” she said, pointing to the page. “I use very strong words here. It was a very painful time for me. I guess you tend to forget times that hurt that much.”

Delivered Nearly Half

Twelve students retrieved their journals that evening, and, in the days to follow, Johnson said that he was able to deliver nearly half the 80 diaries to their authors. Even if he is able to fully accomplish his task, however, chances are he won’t be free of the guardianship of other people’s journals for years to come. Journals appear to hold an attraction for the teacher--or perhaps the opposite is true.

Last year, Johnson purchased an old truck at a garage sale. Inside were 280 ledgers that had been written by a man in the late 1800s. The diaries spanned several decades and contained references to a murder trial near Sonora that involved a husband and wife and the wife’s alleged lover. Johnson was able to trace the author’s identity by poring over court documents that linked one man to three trials during those years, all of which had been described in the journals.

Hopes to Write Book

“I’m hoping to be able to write the man’s story as a book for sixth-graders, because it has so many historical references in it,” Johnson said. “When it comes to the murder of the lover, though, I think I’ll probably just write that there was a triangle, and let the teacher explain it from there.”

Recently, Johnson became the owner of a different, more permanent type of journal. When he moved back to Modesto, Johnson purchased a 22-room house that otherwise would have been converted into office space. Built in 1880, the house had had only two owners in 106 years--a man and his wife and, later, the couple’s son and daughter-in-law.

In the basement of the house, he found four pillars, each measuring about 3 feet by 4 feet. The pillars had been inscribed over the years by the owners, with significant events etched into the wood in small, neat handwriting.

“The inscriptions started in 1895, and had everything from ‘Matilda the maid came today’ and ‘Matilda the maid left today’ to ‘Baby Roosevelt was born today,’ ” Johnson said. The entries by the family ended in 1985.

To carry on the tradition, Johnson added an inscription of his own. “I went into the basement, sat on the floor and thought about what it meant to record events,” he said. “Finally, I wrote in small letters: On this day, Michael Johnson purchased this house. Hopefully, it has not left hands that will cherish its past and work to safeguard its future.”