Substitute Teacher James Edwards Past is the Reason He Shares His Well-known Saying

Credit to Kaitlyn Snyder

Edwards writes an inspirational quote on the dry erase board. When class started, he has the whole class repeat it after him.

By Anna Lindquist, Copy Editor
Published: December 13, 2017

James Edwards stands outside the door of a classroom, as he does every time he substitutes for a teacher. His palm is outstretched, and he shakes every student’s hand, asking for a name. Students call him the ‘Handshake Sub’ and smile as they walk into the class.

The saying is penned in red on the whiteboard, his neat handwriting visible from every seat. When every student is at a desk, he asks them to repeat it back to him.

“I’m quick! I’m sharp! I’m bright! I’m smart! I’m rich and good looking and a major blessing!”

“I have this feeling that I want to reach kids with this,” Edwards says. “I’ve had numerous chances to work full-time somewhere, but I’d rather do this.”

He can remember back to one moment in 1949. One moment that specifically influences why he prints those words on the board of every classroom he substitutes for.

Edwards sits in a classroom at Greenbriar Elementary School in Northbrook, IL. Wooden chairs are in rows in front of a black chalkboard with writing scrawled along the surface, the classroom looking like one out of “A Christmas Story.”

“You’re stupid,” someone says.

After one student says it, others follow suit. The kids around him repeat the phrase throughout his time in school, and it doesn’t take long for him to start believing it.

“I was buying the lie somebody had told me way back when,” Edward says.

A few years pass and “stupid” becomes his trademark. He plays to the old insult by being goofy and pretending not to care. In sixth grade, the school attempts to fail him, but with his father on the school board, they can’t. They decide to give him time to redo his tests and quizzes for two weeks over the summer with no air conditioning. He spends most of it longing to be with his friends, at the pool or on vacation. He’s 15, and his report card comes out, Ds covering the sheet. The only classes he excels in are band and gym, but he does poorly in every other class at Glenbrook High School. It doesn’t bother him.

“A single thing that my mom told me monthly, I never listened, but she said, ‘Jimmy, you better start getting better grades or you’ll end up digging ditches or in the army,’” Edwards says. “She said that over and over and over.”

It isn’t until his last semester of his senior year in Algebra II with Ms. Burgmann that he questions what people have been saying to him for years.

He bonds with his teacher, enough so that Edwards and the rest of the class challenge her and her bowling team to a tournament. Edwards and his team win by one pin. That class makes him realize he isn’t stupid.

By the end of the year, he has a B. It’s his first one in a core class.

“That second semester of my senior year when I found out I wasn’t stupid, I looked to my mom and said ‘Mom, you know, if I don’t get going here, I’m going to end up digging ditches or in the army and she said ‘Really? How about that?’,” Edwards says. “She told me that later. Eventually, it wears through your thick skull.”

Graduation passes, and Edwards is amazed that he has been accepted into Kendall College in Evanston, IL after graduating in the lowest quarter of his class. After years of believing he wasn’t smart enough, he is determined to do well in his postsecondary education.

Later in college, a professor named Keith Moore makes his students repeat a phrase, one with the purpose of raising students’ morales. The saying soon spreads across campus, eventually to Edwards. It resonates with him, and he decides to write it down.

I’m quick! I’m sharp! I’m bright! I’m smart! I’m rich and good looking and a major blessing!

After graduating from college, getting his master’s and working as a choir teacher from 1965-1979, he works as a salesman until 2004. After 2004, he becomes the substitute teacher that students at FHN knows him as.

“He makes sure that everyone is recognized, and he appreciates everyone for being who they are,” junior Riley Lawson says. “He is hands-down one of the best people here.”

Edwards hopes that, with this saying, he can positively influence the kids he sees every day. He wants them to think better of themselves so they can do better as a result, unlike how he was in his childhood.

“I just think it helps everybody,” Edwards says. “I love seeing all these people. I love the whole bunch of them. I am crazy about the kids. My goal is to have kids feel positive about themselves so they can have a positive life. I just want them to do well.”