FROMONLINE | 2013-08-04

  • By Tami Lange
  • August 4, 2013
  • 366
                        
HED: The 3 Rs are only the beginning SUMMARY: If you thought summer was exhausting as a parent, remember the job teachers do Last week, on the way back from a trip to Massillon, I felt the need to take the Nipper on a cruise ‘round the ol’ hometown. I’m could almost hear the sighing from the backseat as I pointed out (probably for the umpteenth time), the church where I got married, the church where he was baptized, the house I grew up in, the softball field where I played Little League. And last, the elementary school I attended. North Lawrence Elementary, closed during a district restructuring in the late 1980s, is all overgrown and dilapidated. Brush obscures most of the old façade, the basketball court is long gone. While Nipper sat silent, I regaled him (well, I mostly regaled myself) with stories of my youth. I guess I am now at the age where I am going through bouts of ridiculous nostalgia. On my first day of first grade, I went down the sliding board during morning recess. I was wearing a little brown “Heidi” dress with matching knee socks (photos bear this out) and the really bad haircut that became the hallmark of my pre-teen years. The sliding board was slick. I went down so fast, I didn’t get my feet under me and instead, slid across the gravel on my rear end. As I tried not to cry, my teacher – a lovely young blonde named Mrs. Carlin – came over, took my hand and led me back inside. It was her first day, too, and I’m pretty sure she hadn’t planned to spend her first recess duty picking gravel out of the tush of a sniveling first grader. Mrs. Carlin made it all better. That is often what teachers do. I spent some of the happiest years of my life in that little elementary school – being taught to memorize poetry by Mr. Gailey, trying out cursive writing with Mrs. Chidsey, hoking away on my first cornet for Mr. Ferris, and rehearsing the Christmas pageant with Mrs. Wilkinson in the cafegymnatorium. It never, ever occurred to me that those teachers would want to do anything but teach. Most had a classroom of 30 kids, no aides, no real technology (unless you count the film projector) and no air conditioning. We were mostly from working class families and I’m sure there with personal traumas and crises – but the teachers loved every single child in their charge, no matter how difficult that charge was to love. By the end of each summer, our parents happily set us on our way to that school – pretty exhausted after three months trying to both entertain and keep the peace. But the teachers always seemed happy to see us – all 30 of us – who would be in their care for the better part of nine months. So, as I happily prepare to send the Nipper off to seventh grade, I am reminded of the awesome task teachers have, especially in a system that seems increasingly broken. Today’s teachers are faced with not only filling young minds, they also get to be counselors, social workers, and even referees. They are forced to spend way too much time on ridiculous standardized tests that will tell you nothing except that some students are good test takers and others freeze at the very thought. More than ever they face an uncertain future, especially if they teach subjects like art or music or history, the subjects lawmakers consider irrelevant – since they do not appear on the All Important Achievement Test. And for all their efforts, we tell them they are underworked and overpaid. I suppose I never fully appreciated the teaching profession until Nipper entered school. He wears me out after one round of homework. I can’t imagine how teachers stay sane after lots of kids, every weekday. My child requires extra time and extra care and no teacher at my child’s school has ever backed down from the challenge. I know I couldn’t do it and I also now know the value of those who can. Last week, after our trip down memory lane, I drove past another school and saw a young lady wrestling boxes out of her car and cheerfully walking across the parking lot to the door. She looked really happy. Maybe this is her first year in a classroom. Maybe not. But if she should manage to help some little girl in a brown dress up from her first fall, take her to the restroom and wipe away her tears – she can rest assured her kindness will be remembered for decades to come.


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