More Than Ever

Teachers are Forever: Mr. Ingram and Me

— Courtney Cutright

As a columnist, I enjoy feedback from readers, though I don’t typically receive much.

However, there is one I can usually count on: my sophomore English teacher and yearbook advisor of four years, Mr. Bruce Ingram.

We first met before I started high school. You see, I wanted to be on his yearbook staff, which was only open to students in the upper grades. There was no newspaper where I could continue my love for journalism (born in middle school). I did not want to fill an elective slot with something meaningless, so I had decided yearbook was meant for me.

It ended up that Ingram needed to grant me special permission to take his yearbook class as a ninth-grader. So, I, at 13 years old, went to meet him for what was essentially my first job interview. Ever. I don’t remember what I said or how I prepared, but he decided to take a chance on me.

More than two decades later, Ingram and I are electronic pen pals and occasional phone gabbers with a shared appreciation for writing and teaching. Ingram, 69, teaches in Botetourt County. He said he considered retiring but does not want this pandemic-crazed year to be his last.

His teaching career started in 1975, and he recently recounted how he was fired mid-March in his second year of teaching. In a nutshell, a disgruntled parent who conveniently also held one of the county school board seats, deemed fresh-out-of-college, unattached Ingram to be homosexual.

The accusations came after Ingram refused to inflate the failing grade of the school board member’s child. After the board ultimately voted to terminate his contract, more than 100 students walked out of school in protest. The students, who were reprimanded, later sued the principal for violating their First Amendment rights. All the events were covered by the local newspaper, Ingram said.

There are a couple of takeaways: First of all, Ingram was discriminated against because of an incorrectly perceived sexual orientation. (He and wife Elaine became engaged not long after he was dismissed.) But most notably, although he faced adversity and discrimination, he did not abandon the field.

“The firing made it difficult for years to even get job interviews to teach,” Ingram wrote in an email. “Turns out that the school board mom had used the ‘teacher is gay and is failing my son’ gambit the year before I came to get rid of another male teacher. Finally, the school board wised up and two years after firing me, apologized. The damage had already been done, though.”

Nonetheless, Ingram returned to the classroom and devoted his life to education – as well as to writing. He first reached out to me after seeing my column because he wanted to be sure I was getting paid. Ever the advisor, he warned against writing for publication free of charge. He also sagely advises his creative writing students to have day jobs and not to plan on subsisting on print journalism alone.

Ingram is a dual-career man, with more than 2,500 magazine articles and 10 published books. The writing income combined with his and his wife’s teaching salaries have allowed them to have a family and a country home with land.

We had pre-pandemic plans to visit each other’s classrooms during our respective spring breaks. I was going to address his students as an alumnae, ex-reporter, teacher, and freelance writer. Ingram planned to give a book talk about the realistic YA fiction series he penned, as well as play his infamous Bonus Points review game with my middle school students. Maybe those plans will come together next school year.

When I was Ingram’s student, I remember feeling a mix of pride and teenage mortification when he photocopied my handwritten five-paragraph essay and distributed it to my peers as a model. Today, of course, I am grateful to have had a nurturing teacher who praised my work and shared it for me. Talk about a boost of confidence!

In hindsight, Ingram taught me not only how to be a writer but also how to have the heart of a teacher, and for that I am grateful. This school year has been nothing short of tough. There have been some weaker moments in which I have questioned how long teaching will remain my chosen vocation. But what a reward it would be, if I stick it out long enough, to have students reconnect with me the way Ingram and I keep in touch.l

Cutright (courtcut@gmail.com), a member of the Roanoke County Education Association, teaches English at Northside Middle School.

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