School should be out, but it's not. We are paying a 90 degree summer rate for stolen snow days. Teachers, bookbags, and sneakers, fresh and new in August are tired and frayed, ready for a respite.
I cried every single day of first grade, even the last day of school. I was moved from classroom to classroom, my teachers passing me along like a white elephant Christmas gift, where the wrapping looks cute but the contents are not as expected. My brothers alternated the duty of escorting me from school bus to class as silent tears poured down my cheeks. After I was delivered, they bolted for refuge in the junior high building. I. Hated. School.
It got better along the years. I finally realized school played to my nerdiness. That along with the abundant library where you could read as many books as you wanted was almost a fair trade for the caged confinement of desks and chalkboards.
Now that my daughters are in school, I relive my formative years one grade at a time. Other than the major passage rites like learning looping cursive in 3rd grade and multiplication tables in 4th, I don’t often recall when I learned what, but I do recall my schools with the high ceilings, huge hallways, and tall teachers. I remember the lunch ladies and the silver cooler piled high with milk. I remember the fire drills, bathrooms, and offices ... all those smells and sounds training my naïve senses.
I attended the same school as my four siblings and my mother. I have friends who went to school beside me for 12 years. They are all part of my memory’s landscape much like the janitor, Mr. Winfred Hampton, aka Wimp, and the principal, Mr. Gene Bowen, aka Tinkerbell.
Below are some images from the wooden desk of Emily Jean Dunlap ... whose permanent record states that she usually made As but could focus better, was too talkative, had trouble being still, and was always laughing with that little red-headed girl named Mary Ann.
I remember ...
Jean Bennett, Jean Prickett, and Gladys Marion propping open the classroom door with a cinder block while they stepped outside to have a smoke break.
The silent panic when Amy Duncan’s mom, high on a liquor buzz, charged into 5th grade during science and jack-slapped our teacher, Alice Hill.
Shirley Hooker quizzing me on The Red Badge of Courage.
Coach Lionel Williams hugging me when I got excited about a basketball game and won our team a technical foul.
Cynthia Bell, young and mysteriously unmarried, writing me a letter to explain that whether a rose was red or yellow, it was still beautiful and still a rose. It took me years to realize she was telling me to be myself.
Karen Griffin sherpaing us as we dissected frogs and microscoped pond water.
Jean Schmidt asking us to please, “Stop the talking.” Donna Wideman yelling, “Silencio Emilia!” Martha Frye boring us unconscious with algebraic equations as we passed notes behind the back of her polyester dress.
Carl Salmon making us revive “Resuscitation Annie,” who though swabbed with rubbing alcohol, smelled of bacon and onions.
Laura McFayden with all things dreaded and mathematical. Richard Satterwhite with all things comical and chemical.
Marvin Carriker telling me that he hoped I would re-consider my college major of Biology. In his words, “Biology would not be a good direction for your potential.”
Writer and English teacher, Stephen Smith, panting out the rhythmic poems of James Dickey.
John Foster West showing me that words could walk or march on the page but the magic was when they danced from your end of your pen.
When my mother relayed the news that Frances McKeithen - the only teacher to ever give my brother, Andy, a "B," and that was in handwriting - had died. Andy replied, "I am sure she went straight to the itchy part of hell."
Now I sit in parent conferences and listen to reports about my talkative daughters with their positive and challenging traits as they rise and fall from teachers’ graces.
I am grateful to teachers, in the business of making and molding beyond the scope of their subject. It is their character, decisions, acceptance, love, and actions beyond the call of difficult duty that students remember. The reality that we each hold is as the book Fierce Conversations puts it, “our piece of the truth.” It is that truth, strongly influenced by what we learn and how we learn it, that guides us to center ourselves, find our balance, spread our wings, catch a current, and soar.