CLASS DISMISSED

Class Dismissed

Years later, a teacher will remember the excellent students and the trouble- makers. The rest seem to fall between the cracks. It’s the same when looking back at the teachers who have touched our lives. For some inexplicable reason, I recently took a gander at my high school yearbook. The inscriptions that classmates wrote were unanimous. In those days, I was a “swell gal.” Looking at their photographs, I remembered most of them, but not everyone---especially the girl who wrote, “Remember our year in typing.”

I fondly remember the only teacher with a Master’s Degree. Don’t know how he landed in the one public high school in my small Indiana town, but he valiantly tried to impart a love for Shakespeare and the English language to many students who could care less. But neither this fine man nor my classmates are whom I want to write about.

As Woody Allen so aptly put it, “My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.” It started in grade school, when the beautiful Miss Bowman (whom I adored) whacked one of the boys on his hands with a ruler. I heard the crack from across the room, and from then on sat on my hands and kept my mouth shut. I don’t remember any other teachers from those grade school days, but can’t forget some of odd birds from my high school.

The girls’ Physical Education teacher, Miss Barbarian wound a tight braid of hair around her head to prevent her brain from falling out when she was jumping around. Gum chewing was the worst offense in Barbarian’s class, and if she caught a culprit chewer, she’d make the hapless girl spit the gum on the floor, step on it, and then scrape it up with a spoon---a strengthening exercise for the forearm.

For me, participating in sports was an alien concept, and she tried in vain to make a jock out of me. Climbing a rope hand over hand was not my goal in life, and after getting my ankles bruised black and blue in field hockey, I volunteered to be a referee.

I then reasoned that Home Arts would be a safer class. Little Miss Leo, who wore her hair in ringlets, and washed her clothes in White Shoulders perfume, was my teacher. Between sneezes, I learned that everything you cook has to be smothered in white sauce, which, when thickened, could substitute for paste in art class. Miss Leo also taught sewing. I had trouble threading the spindle, spinning the wheel and pumping the pedal on the old sewing machine—all at the same time. I wasn’t surprised when she made me tear out the crooked stitches in the apron I had fashioned. I wasn’t upset, because the only time I planned on wearing it was to protect my dress from white sauce paste in art class.

Miss Tippler doubled as an English teacher and drama coach. She dyed her hair flaming red, and surreptitiously took sips out of a bottle, that she kept in a brown bag in her desk. She wanted to cast me as Mary in the Christmas Pageant, because she said, “You look the part.” I graciously declined, because neither of us had been in Bethlehem at the time, and consequently didn’t know what Mary really looked like. Besides, I wasn’t going to take any assignment from a teacher who was drunk as a skunk.

One of the best teachers I ever met was my son Josh’s second grade teacher, Mrs. McIntyre. Every child in her class achieved excellence to the best of his or her ability. For example, the children in her class gave “morning talks” that taught them to gather, analyze and present material in a meaningful way.  

Josh had a friend, Joey whose father was a physician. The doctor took the boys to the hospital for a tour, and while there, each of them were treated to a urine test, which they gingerly carried to Mrs. McIntyre’s class for a joint presentation. When they finished their talk, Mrs. McIntyre asked if any of the children had any questions. That’s when Sammy, in a jealous pique, said, “My Dad had a vasectomy. Can I bring him for Show and Tell?” For the first time, Mrs. McIntyre said, “No, but thank you.”

Good teaching is filled with ideas. The brain should be used for more than white sauce.

Here’s an idea for you from the author, Flannery O’Connor: “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There may be a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

Esther Blumenfeld (Hall Monitor. Do you have a pass?)