And While on the Subject

My biggest fan and only reader has taken pleasure in my turning comments back on, so much so that he has commented on each posting I have made since. 

I turned it off when someone commented and called me a racist. I did not have the heart to turn it back on until my dear Reader urged me to do so. 

To the person who said it: It really hurt my feelings when you said it. I forgive you. 

To my dear Reader: you said the other day you like my ordinary blogs, or something to that effect, so here is one that is as ordinary as they might come. 

The latest post, "Throw the Bums Out," by Garrison Keillor, refers to his algebra teacher. This took me down memory lane, a very shady lane these days, bordered on each side by bracken and undergrowth. (Overgrowth? What's the difference?)

My first grade teacher was a horribly strict women, Mrs. Revere. I did not revere her. I was terrified of her and spent well over half my first year in public school on a high stool in the back corner, facing the sink and a window. The faucet drip, dripped as I sat there wondering what I had done so wrong. 

I had a habit in those days of finishing my work early and getting up to show my neighbors how to do it. She must not have done such a great job to begin with or they would all be done like me, so I helped them, not in a cheating way, but in an open and friendly sort of way. Every time I did so, however, I wound up on a high stool listening to that drip, drip. 

My fourth grade teacher was the mother of my vbf, Lana London. It was Lana who broke the Code of Ostracism when I skipped up into another grade. All the girls pushed me in the bathroom and made me sit alone in the lunchroom. No one would play with me on the playground, either. Finally, after I sat for several weeks under a large oak tree on the playground, sticking the stems of Johnson grass down into the holes in the ground to catch Chicken Chokers, it was Lana's turn to hold the end of the rope for jumprope, and she chose ME to hold the other end. From that day forward I was a-okay with everyone else. And-- from that day forward I was beholden and pitifully grateful to Lana.

Mrs. London was an okay teacher, I guess. I can only remember that she was a bit permissive and we had tons of fun at Lana's house every Friday night when I slept over. 

Mrs. Cumbee was fifth grade. I remember two things about her. One, her hair was styled into a French Twist and she had buttons up the back of her hair. 

Two, she was quite Socratic in her teaching, although at the time I did not have a clue what that might be. I only knew she taught us in a way I had never been taught before, and I responded to it well . When we all, (as fifth-graders will) wanted to rearrange the room so that girls all sat on one side and boys on another, she let us. Then we had a discussion as to why we might want it that way, and how we could keep permission to have it divided. She didn't tell us things; she asked us and we actually had to think. 

Sixth grade was Mrs. Knight, whose husband, the Great Orator,  was the principal of my junior high school. I loved Mrs. Knight, although I'm not really sure why anymore. I only remember she got fertile eggs and we hatched them in an incubator. Each day we used colored pencils and drew pictures of the chick's development for that day. I felt attached to them, though they were as yet unseen, and it was my first inkling that I might want to be a vegetarian. TYVM, Mrs. Knight. 

The ensuing years exposed me to teachers who taught because they loved kids, teachers who taught because they had to earn a living somehow and education classes in college were pretty easy, teachers who taught because their parents had been teachers and they had never really felt they had a choice to be anything else. There were good teachers and really, really bad teachers. My 8th grade math teacher was a man with anger issues who broke "The Board" on boys' behinds more times than I care to remember. 

Mrs. Davis taught me Algebra I, and I thought of her when I read GK's article. She taught us well, as evidenced by my ability to resolve quadratic equations to this day. When I was enamored with a fellow who sat beside me, and spent too much time passing notes, she took me on a walk after class and said, "I know he's tall, dark and handsome, but you need to do your work." I was embarassed and hastily rearranged my priorities. 

The only teacher I can tell story after story about was Miss Laura Johnston, who retired the year we graduated. We wore her out. She taught because it was what she was meant to do. She required the highest respect and we gave it to her (a) because she deserved it and (b) we were scared to death not to. We lined up outside the door to her office (none of the other teachers had offices, why did she?) to recite lines upon lines of Shakespeare or Chaucer at 7:00 in the morning. We patiently stood there in the hall, those who had studied up front and those who had not lurking at the end of the line, furiously reading the verses and then looking skyward to repeat them back. For the record, I spent time at both ends of the line for just those reasons, and time right in the middle as well. I loved her. I loved the way it made me feel to succeed in the hardest class in the whole darn school. I made a B in her class only once and kicked myself around the block for it while I was happy to make C's in Spanish II and a D in Econ. Actually I was lucky to make the D in Econ; I probably deserved lower. My average, however, for the semester was a B and I was lucky to get that, too. The teacher was a creepy guy who walked up and down the rows of desks and dropped his pencil in front of any girl wearing a miniskirt, just so he could lean over and pick it up. Ick. 

So I read the homeschooling reports from my sons and thank my lucky stars that CSM and CIA don't have to go through the same experience. 

BTW, if you haven't read the Keillor piece, please stay on and read it -- it's just below, and will certainly make you chuckle.