Teacher Appreciation Week

I remember one day he asked me to stay after to wash blackboards. Now this wasn’t a punishment. This was a pleasure, because we all adored him. And while I was washing the blackboard, I’ll never forget this, he put on My Fair Lady and he asked me to make numbers and letters with this wet sponge. And I did. And I think that is where the code showed up. That’s when he realized I couldn’t do it. And that I wasn’t translating and reading, that something was wrong.

I remember he came up to me. His hand went in the center of my back. And as I’m telling you this, I swear to God, I can still feel the warmth of his hands. And he slid down next to me and said, “Oh, honey! I think you have something that has a name.” He said, “You feel dumb, don’t you?”

And I remember just bursting into tears and wanting to run away, because of all people, I wanted him to like me, and I thought if he knew I was dumb, he wouldn’t like me anymore. And instead, he opened the world up. He paid out of his own pocket for a specialist to work with me — and this was before we had reading specialists like we do now.

And I can’t tell you what method worked. We did colored acetates. We did balance boards. We did literally physical exercise, M.C. Escher paintings. You name it, we did it. But I will never forget the day that I could look at something on a piece of paper or in a book, get a mental image and something would come out of my mouth that was the same thing. This was a miracle! So I said one word and it was right. Then pretty soon it was a sentence — it was right. Pretty soon a paragraph. And then finally, an entire page. So he changed everything for me.

Observant teachers have the opportunity to influence students who may be gifted in areas outside of the standard academic curriculum — teachers can keep their eyes open and recognize that, you know. This kid might be acting out, but he’s also very talented in this area. Some of those class clowns might end up being great actors one day, or very outspoken people in whatever profession they choose. But it’s just a matter of finding, or keeping your eyes open, looking at kids and saying, well he might be a knucklehead in this instance, but I see that he’s very talkative or he’s very artistic, or he does these different things. Maybe I can steer him in this direction.

There is so much of Wild Things and King Kong in George Shrinks. I just took the idea that King Kong was too big for everything and reversed it and put George in a land of giants, which is basically what every kid goes through anyway — that, you know, the world is made for grownups, for tall people, for the giants. And once I shrunk him down, I even used some things that happened in King Kong and just reversed the situations.

I was invited to participate in the Open a World of Possible essay anthology. And so I really shared – I wanted to share a story I hadn’t shared before. And it was a story that this summer I had recently gone back to my elementary school to do some professional development. And walking around that library, it really brought back memories of Miss Potter, the librarian that I had at that school.

And when I was a third-grader, I was a precocious reader, but I was also kind of bossy and had my own opinions about reading. That clearly hasn’t gone away into my adult life. But we had SRA cards. My third-grade teacher tested us, put us in a box, put us in the box. Many of us remember that box. And we read SRA cards. And I hated those cards. They were so boring.

But I wanted to be an achiever also so I burned through those cards. Well, I finished them around Christmastime, the whole box, and my teacher would not let me move on to the next grade-level box because she said, “What will you do next year?” So, she asked me to tutor other children on SRA cards. Now, this was back in the ’70s where teachers would leave the classroom to go who knows where and leave children.

So, she came back from the classroom one day – from being out of the classroom, and I was standing at the front of the classroom with the chalk in my hand giving out answers to the SRA cards. She grabbed me by the upper arm and moved me quickly down to the office where I had never been. So, I was horrified. My mother had to come to the school, and I just knew that it was all going to come down on me after that.

So, my mom – I was crying so much my mom just decided to take me home. And we got in the car in the parking lot and she said, “Did you know that your teacher was standing there for three or four minutes before you saw her? She said you gave out about 10 answers.” And I said, “Mom, I promise you the other kids don’t mind that I gave out those answers.” And I said, “What’s going to happen to me?” And she said, “Well, I wanted them to move you to the fourth‑grade reading class, but they said no. So, what you’ll be doing during reading time now, during SRA time now is going down to the library to help Miss Potter.”

Miss Potter was our librarian, and I knew her from our weekly library visits, but I wouldn’t say I really had bonded with her at that time. And when I came down to be her library assistant, I thought I would just be shelving books, but she really took me in hand. And she would ask me about the things that I was interested in. And I was crazy for horses back then. And she said, “Horses? You like horses? Have you met Marguerite Henry?”

And she would take me to the Marguerite Henry section of the library, and I read every horse book, King of the Wind, Misty of Chincoteague. It’s still on my bucket list to go to that island and see those mustangs. And when I finished those books, she would talk to me about them, what I learned from the books, what interested me about them, and then she would start me on another path. She really was in my elementary years probably the best reading teacher I had for me.

But what she showed me was that reading wasn’t just a skill, it wasn’t just something that I did because I enjoyed it, but that reading was something that was powerful and that I could have power over my own education if I read. And that really changed reading for me at that time. It probably saved me as a reader.

I had a teacher in the fifth grade in Alaska. His name was Mr. Jennis and it was his first year of teaching. And I actually even mentioned him in an interview years and years ago. It was just something about, you know, how much I had loved being in his class and got a letter back from him, and he didn’t remember me. I was very embarrassed and I said, “Listen…” I wrote him back and it was his very first year teaching. It was Juneau, Alaska. He’s now a principal of a school I think in Anchorage or Fairbanks I believe he said. But he had a great passion for teaching. He was very young. He was probably 23 or 24 years old. You know, we thought he was so grown up, but he was just a kid.

And he read A Wrinkle in Time to us that year. I remember he would read it chapter-by-chapter and we could do quiet work while he read. I chose to knit a scarf that I still have. And I loved the book. It was such a beautiful story and so emotional and so much about a possibility that a child has within themselves to save the world really. And it was such a… It was a great year in school because fifth grade is — you’re sort of starting to become a real student.

He encouraged us to think for ourselves. He asked us what we wanted to, you know, what problems we wanted to solve in the world. What did we want to know about? How we would go about doing it. He allowed us to argue. I can remember arguing with him that the Burlington-Bristol Bridge was directly across from Philadelphia because that was how I remembered it because my grandparents lived in New Jersey and I thought that bridge went straight to Philadelphia and I was adamant about it. And he kept arguing that no, in fact, it didn’t go there.

But I still remember the argument and I mean he took me very seriously. Maybe because he was very close to my age. But anyway, he was really a remarkable teacher and he was probably my first male teacher as well so I’m sure that was pretty influential. But I had so… I mean, there were so many. I can remember Mrs. Neitenstein in the second grade and Mrs. Bevins in the third grade and Mr. Bruney in the sixth grade, the first person who asked us to write a term paper. You know, I’m sure the teachers… I hope the teachers know how influential they are and how much we remember them years later, you know.

And I see it now with my children’s teachers how meaningful they are to them and how much they have to do with their personal and intellectual growth. But it really is kind of amazing what a difference it makes.