Well, school has begun again. It seems as though we entered summer only yesterday. Nannie Summers was right when she told me, a doubting Thomas then, that time goes faster the older one gets.
But the start of a new school year always brings memories back to mind. Memories of starting a new year as a student myself. Memories of starting a new year later as a teacher. (I've been on both sides of the desk.)
Not all of those memories are good. Some (one in particular) are downright embarrassing. My first memory of school is of my initial experience with it--my very first day in first grade. (We didn't have kindergarten in those days.) I cried before the bus came. I cried on the bus. I cried as I went into the school building and found my classroom. I think I finally dried up after the day started, but I repeated that routine every morning for at least the first week of school. And my parents never let me forget it.
After a few days, I apparently ran out of tears and actually began to like school. Among my most vivid memories are of the big, fat pencils we used until our manual dexterity had developed enough that we could "graduate" to normal-sized pencils, the old No. 2s, and of the lined paper on which we learned to write, complete with slivers of wood imbedded in it. (The photo here must be of more modern paper because it lacks the wood chips, but otherwise it looks the same.) Eventually, I began to look forward to going to school, reconnecting with friends after a long summer, and learning new things.
Shortly after school began, we usually had picture day. From the time my older brother Dale and I were old enough to cause trouble at home, our daddy, a self-employed brick mason, required us to go to work with him anytime school was out, so we worked with him in broiling heat throughout the summer. By the resumption of school in the fall, we were the darkest-tanned boys in the school. We hardly recognized our own photos in the school yearbook when it came out near the end of the year. (Apparently, I was not yet a troublemaker when my first-grade picture was taken because I lacked that burnt-to-a-crisp look that year.)
I can remember infinite details about Halls Elementary School. The look of the building. The creak of the wooden floors and stairways. The distinctive smell of the oils (or whatever it was) that Mr. Baker, the janitor, used on the floors. The eerie feeling I always got whenever I passed Mr. Lakin's (the principal's) office.
I have generally fond memories of each of my elementary school teachers. My brother and I had most of the same teachers. And our parents seemed to know all of them well, so we knew better than to misbehave in school. At least I did. "If you get into trouble at school," our parents warned, "you'll really be in trouble when you get home!" I didn't want to risk finding out what that would have involved, but I learned vicariously from watching my brother suffer the penalty.
There was Mrs. Zachary in first grade, the patient, longsuffering lady who, after a year of great toil, finally succeeded in teaching me to tie my shoes. In second, it was Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Then, in third, Mrs. Bailey, who regularly sent me down two flights of stairs to the lunch room, where my grandmother worked, to fetch her a steaming-hot cup of coffee every mid-morning.
Mrs. Porter, my fourth-grade teacher, had suffered a heart attack the year before and wasn't allowed to climb stairs, so our classroom was on the ground level near Mrs. Smelser's music room, where I never quite learned to carry a tune but could whop sticks together in time with those who did know how.
In fifth grade, Mrs. George taught me to enjoy reading, especially history, forever blessing (or cursing?) me with an addiction to collecting and reading books. And in sixth, it was Mrs. McMillan. That year, I won the DAR Good Citizenship Award and was chosen to be a member of the Safety Patrol--a "patrol boy."
(Many of my elementary and high school memories are included in my book Look Unto the Hills, available on Amazon).
The excitement I experienced at the start of a new school year when I became a teacher was of a different sort. And I certainly didn't cry. (That usually came later in the year!)
As is so often the case for teachers who are sure of their calling, school was never really far from my mind, even when I was "on vacation." I had spent much of my summers thinking about, planning for, and anticipating the next school year. Shopping, browsing, and reading always seemed to reveal ideas for use in my classes. I've seen the same characteristic in my wife--only amplified several times over. Even after she "retired" two years ago, she still is gathering things she might use in school. And no wonder--she is in high demand as a regular substitute teacher for two schools.
You can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can't take the classroom out of the teacher!
I'm not quite as bad (or good?) as my wife in that regard. I just channel that tendency into my writing.
But since leaving the classroom, I've found myself for the last seven years helping out with the teacher in-service training program of our church's Christian school. Some of the teachers sitting before me as I present have taught more years than I did, so I'm more than a little intimidated, knowing they could certainly teach me a thing or two. But the rest of the teachers seem to be getting younger and younger--just like my doctors seem to be.
I don't think it has anything to do with my getting older, does it? At least in my memories I'm young, too.
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