At the end of a marking period, the Independent’s schoolteacher diarist pays tribute to the teachers who showed her the way.
Feb. 4, 2006
To Mrs. Larabee, Mrs. Davis, Ms. Capone, Nedra, and Jody—”
One of you will never read this because you’ve already died. And the rest of you probably don’t even know I do this kind of writing. But I wanted to tell you, because you are the five who changed my life, thank you.
You are my teachers. And now that I’m a teacher, I know it’s important to say thank you to your teachers when you’re a student. Yesterday was the end of the second marking period of my second year of teaching. I had a number of students thank me for what we’ve done together as a class.
I’m not sure I ever thanked you.
In second grade, Mrs. Larabee taught me to take care of our class guinea pigs. And not to steal M&Ms from the counting jars. She also taught me “fourth” from “forth” and I knew that the word “co-operation” didn’t start with the sound “coop.” I also knew that Mrs. Larabee used to be my mom’s student. So we had an instant bond. I remember her classroom, and I remember feeling comfortable in it. Thank you, Mrs. Larabee, for the comfort of a classroom. Mrs. Larabee was my best teacher ever.
The next year, Mrs. Davis read “The Secret Garden” aloud to us with a British accent. We made a class Christmas tree based on the Christmas tree in the Little House on the Prairie books. Jeff Palmer got a concussion one day after getting kicked in the head as he walked by the swings, and threw up in her classroom and she didn’t get mad. She gave me a peppermint stick for beating the teacher in a math contest. I knew my 9’s tables pretty well because a of her. Mrs. Davis taught me to be kind to the other kids in class, especially Amelia, who I embarrassed one day. Mrs. Davis taught me to love words—“all kinds of words—“and to write them beautifully on dotted lines in my cursive notebook. She convinced me I could act. I only wanted to please her; that’s why I sat so close to her desk. When I was in high school, she died. I wrote a letter to her daughter, Winnie. We always loved hearing stories about Winnie. Mrs. Davis was my best teacher ever.
It wasn’t until Ms. Capone that I realized I could be smart. Just yesterday, when talking with a colleague, I realized that the moment I knew I could be smart was during my junior year in high school when I wrote a paper about the interchapters in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Ms. Capone helped me feel unique; she helped me feel strong and smart and brave. She made me feel as if no one in the world had ever written about this novel and that I was an independent thinker. She also made me believe I could write well—“creatively and critically. Ms. Capone made me feel safe—“and able to go out on limbs to do some thinking and then come back. I made films in her film class that she showed for years afterward. She made me feel like I could do amazing things. Ms. Capone was my best teacher ever.In undergrad, after I’d transferred from Northeastern to URI, I met another teacher, Nedra Reynolds. She was my teacher for a class called Travel Writing. She was the one who probably thought I could be a teacher long before I thought I could. She would watch me when we students were in small groups and now, as I watch my own students, I realize she had great plans for me. I think her mind was turning about what I might do with my life after I left her class. Nedra was solid—“a pillar of strength and skill. She was a woman who taught me that I had a path to follow. She believed in me and took me under her wing. She supported me in my attempts to help her other students write. Nedra was my best teacher ever.
And in graduate school, I met Jody Lisberger. I don’t know how to find her now. I’ve tried to write her, but every time my mail gets sent back. Jody is the teacher who showed me that my body will tell me when it’s okay to write about things that mean a lot to me. She told me that my body protects me from writing about the things that still hurt. Sometimes I find myself telling my own students the same things Jody told me and my arms get shivers because I can hear her voice through my own. I want her to know what I’m doing and I want her to read my words. Every time I sit down to write I think of the lessons she taught me: be brave, write about the things that matter to you, choose your words wisely, writing is political, respond to writing specifically and deliberately. I think about George Orwell and Audre Lourde. I think about negative space and loaded words and motive—“the same things I taught my own students last year and will teach them again this year. Jody taught me to fight clich√©d moments. She taught me to find the truth in my writing when I want to take the easy way out of an essay. Jody taught me that my words can be beautiful. And sometimes powerful. And sometimes so precise that a single emotion could not be portrayed any other way than the way I’ve written it on the page.
And I can’t tell you what that kind of praise does for the soul. Jody was my best teacher ever.
So: Denise, Elizabeth, Adrienne, Nedra, and Jody—¬¶
I guess I’ve spent my life, so far, preparing for a moment like this. I want to thank you for the gifts you’ve given me—“the comfort, the creativity, the strength, the knowledge, the reality. All teachers deserve thanks. I hope I’m not too late in giving mine to you.