My High School Hogwarts English Teacher Curse

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

The recurring motif in the Harry Potter books about the cursed Defense of the Dark Arts professor job at Hogwarts always fascinated me. The English teacher role at my old high school seemed jinxed with similar unfortunate turnover.

I attended St. Joseph Catholic High School in Ogden, Utah from 1975 to 1979. It was an excellent but tiny school, with very small classes and usually only one teacher in each subject matter area. 

Sisters from the Congregation of the Holy Cross started the school in 1954, and staffed it for the next quarter century. Along with Jesuit priests, the good sisters were the institution’s heart, soul, and backbone. In 1977, they left, right in the middle of my time there. Their order no longer had enough nuns to support the school. 

This seismic shift shook the school’s foundation to the core, and the place almost closed. Facing the existential crisis head on, alum and new principal Paul Willard mobilized local Catholic families, students, parents, and boosters. 

The community support was wide and deep. With a big fistful of three year pledges of financial help, Willard and the rest of the Ogden community convinced the local Catholic diocese to leave the school open. (see: A preview of the future Church )

The tumult, however, also unleashed a number of other unintended consequences. One was that I had four different English teachers in four years.

The first was Sister Elizabeth Marie O’Connor—last in a long and distinguished line of Holy Cross sisters who taught English to St. Joseph students like me. Sister Elizabeth Marie was a formidable woman. (see: The Fabulous Irish O’Connor Sisters of Ogden )

She was an Ogden native, and graduated from the local Sacred Heart Academy, St. Joseph’s predecessor school also run by the Holy Cross nuns. She earned a teaching certificate from another esteemed local Holy Cross institution—Saint Mary of the Wasatch College in Salt Lake City—and joined the Sisters of the Holy Cross order in 1933.

Sister Elizabeth Marie happily spent the next 40-plus years in elementary and high schools in Chicago, Los Angeles, Nevada, Idaho, and eventually back in her hometown of Ogden. At not much more than 5 feet tall and 100 lbs., she often was the smallest person in her classroom on any given day. 

Yet, during my first two years of high school, she commanded our undivided attention while teaching about classics like Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome and Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. And woe to anyone in her presence who dared say “beCUZ” instead of “beCAUSE.”

When she left in 1977, school leaders had some big figurative shoes to fill. They made a valiant effort by hiring Dr. Andrew Wiget.

Dr. Wiget had just finished his doctorate studies at the University of Utah. He was a Catholic, and wanted to make a contribution to the school. So, he stepped off the academia escalator to teach high school English.

He was hip and cool, sporting stylish dark rimmed glasses and a black goatee. He also was an amazing teacher. 

I’ll never forget one of his lectures to our junior class. It was about The Pardoner’s Tale from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, written in Middle English in the late 1300s. The Pardoner, of course, sold forgiveness (indulgences) for sins. 

In his tale, three young men set out to kill death, but instead encounter an old man. He directs them to a nearby tree, where they find treasure and decide to guard it overnight. During the night, they murder one another out of greed and lust for the riches. 

Dr. Wiget acted the tale out—loudly and with great vigor—in the front of our classroom. He translated the Middle English conversation of the climactic murder scene into terms we could understand. “Here, have a beer,” said one avaricious young man. The other man answered, “Here, have a blade!”

The decision to hire such a highly-credentialed English teacher had mixed success. At the end of the first quarter, Dr. Wiget endured many long and emotional parent-teacher conferences as he tried to adjust his college grading habits to fit high school students. 

And he did not stay the full school year. A prime college teaching position lured Dr. Wiget away from us after just one semester. Once again, the St. Joseph English teaching job was open, for the second time in about six months.

I still feel great sympathy for both the school and my third high school English teacher about what happened next. I’ve now served on three Catholic school boards. I understand it is very difficult to fill a teaching position mid-year.

Although I do not know any behind-the-scenes personnel details of the next hiring decision, at first the school seemed to find a capable replacement for Dr. Wiget. To respect her privacy, I will call her Miss M.

She grew up in Ogden and was a young recent honors graduate from a local university. The St. Joseph’s job, however, may have been one of her first teaching gigs.

Unfortunately, it did not work out well. Miss M tried hard, but lacked the experience or savvy of Sister Elizabeth Marie. And the charismatic Dr. Wiget was no easy act to follow either.

Frustration built, both for the new teacher and her students. Confrontation and name-calling ensued within several of her classes. It turned ugly, awkward, and uncomfortable for all involved. Miss M left the school after a very short tenure. 

She probably never will read this article. If she does, however, I want her to know that I apologize on behalf of my entire class for our own immature contributions to that failed educational relationship.

The school went back to the basics to hire a new English teacher for the third time in a year, and chose a well-known quantity. Her name was Dolores Obuszewski. 

From her many years teaching at the St. Joseph Middle School, Miss Dolores knew almost every student at the high school. In addition to teaching senior year English, she also coached us in the annual state forensics competition, a contest involving advocacy and argument skills. 

With her help and encouragement, I competed in impromptu speaking. We had to give a five minute speech on a topic announced only a half hour earlier. I won the state championship—three full decades before I ever kissed the Blarney Stone in Ireland.

My favorite memory of Miss Dolores, however, has nothing to do with English Class. 

During our senior year math class one day in October 1978, the school PA system announced the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła from Krakow as Pope John Paul II. We heard Miss Dolores’ proud Polish squeals of delight echo all through the hallways.

Having four different high school English teachers in four years certainly resembles the Defense-against-the-Dark-Arts curse that afflicted Harry Potter and his fellow Hogwarts School of Magic students, Yet, I do not feel jinxed.  

I learned something important from each teacher who passed through that classroom revolving door.

From Sister Elizabeth Marie, I noted the value of rigorous academic study. She was not entirely no-nonsense in the classroom, but she was close.

From Dr. Wiget, I learned how good story-telling can make even five-hundred-year-old words seem relevant and enthralling.

Under the tutelage of Miss Dolores, I honed my ability to think on my feet and quickly analyze something. Those skills came in quite handy during my 40-year career in the law.

I never saw or spoke with Miss M again after my junior year of high school. Curious, I did some recent research to learn something about how she fared after those difficult days at St. Joseph in the 1970s. 

Unlike that early teaching gig, her life seems to have worked out quite well. She successfully raised children and grandchildren, continued writing (and perhaps teaching), and won prizes for her poetry. 

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try all over again. Perhaps that was the lesson she was meant to teach to us all along.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.