I've been thinking a lot about the first teacher I ever loved. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the events unfolding in several states concerning attacks on public workers' unions. Some of it has to do with the hundreds of diaries that have appeared on Daily Kos in recent months concerning or defending teachers.
Sharing my experience about a teacher who showed me what a teacher was worth seems more than fitting right now. We must never forget that teachers aren't just that dated-fashion-attired man or woman who drones on at the front of the classroom about adverbs and acute angles. She or he isn't that person you're always shocked to see out at the movies with a date or at the bowling alley with their family because you have always assumed he or she recharges in a broom closet on the weekend and have never pictured their life outside of that building or in front of that chalkboard.
I was inspired by this wonderful diary written by Yorkie1280, "Gov. Walker: A Teacher's day".
I had moved from Newburgh, New York with my family two or three years before I ended up in Mrs. Lewis' classroom. I had been terribly intimidated by my kindergarten teacher which set the tone about how I was to feel about my next two classroom teachers. To be fair, it wasn't the kindergarten teacher's fault. I may have been a bit traumatized by other adults in my life.
I hadn't yet learned to read when we came to Ohio. It was agonizing to look at the illustrations and not know the story behind the pictures. I had a crazy, turbulent family with a really young mother who wasn't around half the time. My grandparents could hardly read. Even my teenage second cousin was illiterate. (That is a diary for another day, honey) Everyone was an alcoholic. They called me a "good girl" because I didn't make too much noise or complain about being forgotten while everybody fought or passed out drunk. I could make cereal and get dressed on my own, I just needed someone to read to me.
I was entering the first grade with not a clue how to write anything but my name and individual letters which I did, over and over, filling up the lines of that grayish-beige paper with the perforated lines in the middle so I knew exactly where to cross the "t". The first thing Mrs. Rosendale asked me was if I knew the difference between consonants and vowels. I had overheard another student point out that the vowels were the ones on the glossy strip of laminated letters that was above the chalkboard at the front of the class. I just repeated what that kid said; "Um...the ones in red?" Mrs. Rosendale giggled and patted my shoulder a bit. I felt as if she was laughing at me and I was slightly mortified. In retrospect, I think she was just delighted that I was cognitive enough that it may not be so hard to teach me to read.
Within a few months, I had left the lowest reading group, "The Sunshine Group" and had moved up the ladder, past the middle group to the "Rainbow Group", the highest reading group. I was proud of that. It was something I wanted very badly.
I was still underachieving. I wasn't excelling in any other area and I remained so terrified of Mrs. Rosendale and then next year, Mrs. Pottinger, that I had at least one "accident" in class each year starting with kindergarten because I was too afraid of teachers to ask to go to the bathroom.
Third grade year came around and I was assigned to a new teacher that no one had ever seen before except in another elementary school in the cluster. Mrs. Diana Lewis. She was young and smiled a lot and her hair was long, straight and parted in the middle, which was different than the other teachers I'd had. They had hair that reminded me of old Hollywood stars. Mrs. Lewis' hair looked like those people who danced around with flowers singing "Let the sunshine in...". What had happened to those people anyway? (I didn't realize I was amongst them in this artsy township/suburb who's logo was a tree. They had just stopped wearing bell bottoms! lol)
I'm not sure what exactly it was about Mrs. Lewis but I suppose I sensed her progressive nature a bit more because she appeared to be a symbol of something of that "long ago" (lol) time before I was born that seemed so safe, friendly and approachable as far as kids are concerned. Like Lady Aberlin from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. ;-D (Damn Hippies!)
Once, I needed to ask her something about a worksheet she had given us and I approached her as she was sitting cross-legged on the table. (she was NEVER at her desk, always sitting in the middle of us) I accidentally called her "Mommy". I was so embarrassed and wished I could take it back. Mrs. Lewis was delighted and she laughed heartily; "Why, how may I help you darling daughter?".
Who knows? Maybe that's when it began. Perhaps she had a revelation of her own. She was young, too. She was more than a teacher. She had melted a block of ice around my heart and made me feel comfortable enough to call her "Mommy". I would never be afraid of another teacher. In fact, I would regret not trusting the ones who came before her. They handled my "accidents" lovingly and discretely. A lot better than my mother did, who spanked me when I got home the first time it happened. But my mother was young. I wasn't afraid of her much because she did try to be different. She was younger than Mrs. Lewis, too young to have been much of a hippie.
Our school district was experimenting with split classes. Higher achieving 3rd graders and lower achieving 4th graders were in the same class. Higher achieving 4th graders and lower achieving 5th graders were paired in a class and so on. I excelled and shot to the top of the class. I had been an average achiever in my previous years, never believing anything special about myself. I was depressed most of the time about feeling left behind and confused in the 1st and 2nd grade. Looking back, I understand that I was missing a lot of help at home. But not now. I didn't need their help. I could read better than both my grandparents who were the ones I was living with. I had to write my own late excuses and sick notes. I had such confidence in my abilities that I took the times tables home, studied and learned them in one night. Even today when I'm multiplying numbers, I visualize those papers I carefully wrote those equations on as a study guide. And I always remember Mrs. Lewis.
I'm skipping around because so many things happened, I can't always remember the sequence but I remember every art project we did in Mrs. Lewis' class. We painted tiles, we made spice boards with real wood, and tie-dyed t-shirts. Mrs. Lewis went around with a camera and took candid black and white pictures of us doing various things around the classroom. She would sneak up and call our names as we were engrossed in writing. They were great pictures. We made puffy frames of fabric for them. We did needlepoint projects. I'll never forget mine. I made two of them. One said "Shalom" and one was my mother's name. It hurt my grandmother's feelings.
As I mentioned before, my mother and father were really young and lived apart from me and and my grandparents at different intervals. At this time, my mother wasn't around and my grandmother was the one taking care of me. "Every one of these crafts you make at school, you make for your mother, and she's not even here! I'M here!". To be fair, my grandmother was right but she was wrong. I didn't know any better. Kids made things for their mom in school. I was just doing what they were doing.
I went back to school depressed and withdrawn for days that I had hurt my grandmother's feelings and was so thoughtless. Mrs. Lewis noticed. She had planned to take us to her old school in the cluster on a field trip so we could meet her best teaching friend and the students she missed from the other school. She chose each of us an appropriate "pen pal" so we could exchange letters and get to know each other before the trip.
Mrs. Lewis was calling all the students up to her desk for a personal talk or something. I had no idea what was happening. She was never sitting at her desk. When it was my turn, I didn't know what to expect but what she said to me made tears spring to both our eyes. She pulled me in and said; "I want to you meet a girl who was very special to me at my old school. She's a sweet girl and a good girl, the best little girl in the world. I don't have a daughter yet but if I do, you and Jenny are the kind of daughter I want. You're my special girl." Her voice broke on the last two words and she hugged me. I smiled through my tears, took Jenny's name on the slip of paper and sat down to start my letter, excited to meet this special girl. I had never loved a teacher before and I realized how liberating it was.
I did meet Jenny. She was cool. I even talked to her on the phone some. She taught me how to divide in 3.5 seconds that day during the field trip to the other school. 'Okay, you wanna divide 25 by 5? Think how many groups of 5 are in 25!" Eureka! Every time I hear Tom Hanks say; "Me and Jenny was like peas and carrots", I think, "Yep. Haha!".
The next two years passed in a blur of field trips to Amish country and a cheese factory there, an farm with some funny-looking and hilarious llamas or alpacas, and a wonderful, wonderful trip to her house in another county where we walked on a trail in the woods behind her lovely home and ate berries off a wild vine. We even knew her little boy really well. We held his hand and walked him around and rolled in the grass with him. It was one of the best days of my childhood.
The next year, as my family problems escalated, I became withdrawn and my grades dropped dramatically. Mrs. Lewis had chose me again for her class because we were doing the split-level class thing again and she was moving up a grade to 4th/5th so she could stay with some of her students. When she introduced herself to us the first day that first year, she explained that she specifically told the school board she'd like to teach 3rd or 4th grade. That was the time she thought was most crucial to cognitive development as far as academics. I think she learned that it was also important to continue what you started in a student.
Mrs. Lewis and I fell out big time. She yelled at me. I was humiliated at being called out for my inattentiveness and I became stubborn. She wasn't having it. She took me right out of the highest reading group, put me in the lowest, much to my horror and humiliation and let me climb back up to the middle where I stayed. A long time. The middle.
I worked and worked and got back to where I was supposed to be but I wasn't grateful to Mrs. Lewis until it was much too late to tell her and I never saw her again.
Every other teacher I've had since Mrs. Lewis, I've viewed the same way. They didn't have to tell me I was their special girl, I knew that all of us were special or important to a teacher. Nobody takes a job like that because they like to drone on about The Revolutionary War. They study for that profession because they may have been enlightened by a teacher once. I think most teachers understand what they are or what they plan to be to those kids when they step into their first classroom. I think they eventually realize that they can be so much more than they thought they would be to a child. Either way, the intentions are good and a kid who never expected to be regarded as someone special can find endless inspiration in that. A lifetime's worth. I have never been turned away by a teacher when I was sincere about needing guidance, advice or a clue to understanding...anything at all. I could see them light up. "Yes. I'm here for that, too!"
Wherever you are, Mrs. Lewis, I hope you're happy and fulfilled because you had the right idea. I wonder if you remember me. I'm 100% sure you would. If you see me, don't be afraid to say hi. I still look the same. If the other classmates still know who I am, you definitely will after 30 years. Your name is too common or else I would have found you on facebook.
I have to run to work in a little while but I'll be back to respond. I get off work at 11:00pm ET so I always miss the busy time on DKos. Hopefully this will strengthen the resolve of any teachers that read this or any supporters of public workers who feel the weariness of slamming yourself against the brick wall of fascism but still won't give up. Don't give up.
(P.S.-- Might need some tag help)