Praise be to the ones who wake us up to ourselves, to the things we maybe know but haven’t yet named, or forgot… for those who showed us how to really care and what to read, who are CURIOUS in front of us, teachable themselves… the ones who help us find the flavors we love, the corners of our being, the unique-to-each-of-us exciting and precious Stuff of Life.
Praise be to the teachers.
Praise to Mrs. Bachelor, with her ironic name, who loved me in first grade, who was beautiful and kind in her floral print blouses, who gave me extra books to read, whose soft voice was like warm milk after harsh Mrs. Foreman made me cry every other day in kindergarten.
Praise to Mrs. Dawson with her southern accent, taking over mid-year for a bunch of squirrelly fourth graders… she was patient while we passed our notes and wrote our pacts of friendship and whispered our first gossip under her gaze.
And Mr. Bonavita, sweet and round in his tan suit, the Abbondanza of Numbers with a drawer full of candy, you’d get three for an A, two for a B, one for C’s and, “You can take the test again, honey, no worries” for everyone else… “Math Around the World” with a Nerf basketball on Fridays, a wire hoop right on the wall above the multiplication tables and, “This is a happy time, okay? My name means, “The Good Life,” and I mean it. Now we will learn base 10, my friends. Let me draw it for you on the board.”
Then so much praise to Mrs. Schectman, my first ARTIST art teacher, who showed us HER work, including unfinished things, who gave me the tools but didn’t make me add a fence in the empty field, who loved her daughters out loud right in class as if she was just a person… who joked about bodies and society and real life, who gave us some feminism, who was surprised and delighted by our choices, never threatened… who gave us the good stuff and some of the secrets, who never let her ego get in the way of the MAKING. I love her still.
And one terrible gift from Dr. Strober, who gave many good and sweet gifts too, and who whispered when he told me and Tina that maybe not everyone found our “Sharon and Mona” overprotective-mother character voices funny, and walked away so as not to shame us as we sorted out our new self-awareness. Other than sporty Jenny and cute smart David, I didn’t know any Jews, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And Dr. Strober didn’t hold a grudge. Praise for all of our second chances.
One huge second chance came through Reva Kazman, praise her, a goddess of public speaking, a big deal for a shy naive kid who maybe wanted to teach, whose Dad worked at home when she was sixteen, so she heard HIS radio all day, Focus on the Family… Rush Limbaugh… hours on end. Young me, what chance did I have? Suddenly Dad was IN on my education, had strong views about public speaking… my opinion papers. He came to the kitchen with a legal pad, told me to take notes. He said, “Write about abortion. You need a dramatic opening. Like… MURDER. Murder is defined by Webster as the killing of one human being by another..." and he was off to the races. I gave the speech. We got an A+. Mrs. Kazman wrote, “thorough, good transitions, well done!” and made time to chat with me after class. I hung back, mixed about the praise, but knowing Dad would be happy and confusing my scholarship with my paper’s thesis. Mrs. Kazman said, "Well, in my religion, not all abortions are considered murder." She pushed her glasses up on her nose and smiled at me, calm. I was shocked. With all the sensitivity and respect of an ignorant teen with a dominant worldview, I blurted, "What religion says you can kill your baby?!" She paused, looked me in the eye warmly, and said, "I'm Jewish, love." And that was it.
Praise her for not explaining further, for not defending herself. She took the long view, knew by one look how little I knew of my own body, let alone the lives of my sisters and other women, she saw my mind and gave my heart the benefit… hell, she probably saw my father in the kitchen behind me and knew I hadn’t yet learned how to REALLY listen. I was struck, as the kids say now, I was SHOOK. I had made a case in direct conflict with her own values and beliefs, and I had been rude to her very face, and still she gave me an A+ and treated me with respect. I had no idea that I had no idea how I Really Felt about abortion. But the big lesson was about who I wanted to BE, and that was driven all the way into my future heart as a teacher, into my quaking dumb core as a young human being. Praise her.
And finally for now, let’s praise Mr. Meert, who back in middle school leaped onto desks and spit while he spoke and flailed in his passion for Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ both having, “SUCH a huge impact on history…AND the same initials!” I see him clear as day, forty years later, throwing his flyaway combover back over his head while he ran from one side of the room to the other, grinning, calling out, “but WHY!?” and pointing to someone in the back row of our class so forcefully that the back of the OTHER classroom (only 15 feet away in the 70’s open-class format) must’ve turned their heads from the sheer vibrations, the other teachers no doubt also asking themselves WHY so much loud joy was pumping out of that one corner every day while they tried to teach, too… they must’ve picked up so many bits of broken chalk from that carpet, white and yellow crumbles flying every day, busted by Mr. Meert slamming those notes up onto the dark green board so fast, yelling over his shoulder, “ya gotta THINK!” while he telegraph-tapped a hundred dates and events in a chalky staccato, impossible to read, much less translate that night and then study. I couldn’t keep up, but OH how I wanted to, that was the thing, I WANTED to follow so I could understand why this lunatic loved “Social Studies” so much…I mean, WHY? I wanted what he was having.
And that’s when I decided: seventh grade, shy in the back, forgetting for one period my awkward clothes & Jamesway shoes. If Meert made me care this much about a subject I was so bored by before, then… what was happening? It’s not that HISTORY suddenly became important to me (though that’s probably when it got its foot in the door), it’s that TEACHING did. I sat there, stunned by how this sparkly-eyed scholar was laughing maniacally over the Magna Carta of all things, and not giving one shit about whether it was cool or not. He was totally rapt by his own curiosity, and I got curious too, couldn’t help it. He MOVED me. For the only class that year, I cared more about what was being taught than what my crush was doing in the row right next to me, and for a 13-year-old who filled notes to her best friend Alyson with hopeless romantic longing, every damn day, that was pretty impressive.
I was ready. Any minute I would be called on. For the first time, what I learned in a class inspired a kind of personal research: I flipped to the back of my notebook for a blank sheet, and scrawled at the top: Things Good Teachers Do.
And so it began.
I loved your praise of your teachers!
I had very few good teachers after first grade. It was not that they were bad at their craft—with one exception of a 4th grade teacher who shall remain nameless… but it was more the fact that after first grade, something shifted in me and i would have probably done better in a Home schooled situation. I was so extremely, painfully shy, that if I had to be excused to go to the bathroom, I would only quite literally walk up to the teacher when all other students were busy with a task and whisper in her ear my request to be excused. Otherwise I would hold it until I got home off the bus late afternoon.
My day dreams took me many places while sitting still in a classroom barely passing with D-minuses.
It wasn’t until my younger brother told my mother that the Nuns were hitting us, that she snatched us out of that parochial school so fast they needed to scramble to fill the paying slots us three Sawyer kids had just vacated.
Thanks for the reflection.
Public school was a little better, but I probably learned things I shouldn’t have.
Coming from a family of teachers that has gone from one generate to the next ,
and then one more so far, I love this. I was so proud of my parents up until the time I started teaching. Once in the field I was so confused by peoples dislike towards teachers I realized how important it was to defend teachers all the time. All a teacher has in defense of what the do every day in and out ,is others option of them. No other profession is so constantly criticized for trying to do what they love best- teaching our children.