Good morning. The weather seems to perch carelessly on the
denuded branches of the pecan, oak and dogwood trees. There is a
welcoming nip aimlessly floating in the air, enough to be kind to
breathing and moving. There's a crystal brightness to the darkness that is
friendly to thinking and feeling. As I stepped through five miles of
darkness this morning, I understood once again Keat's herald and adoration
of this delicious time of the year.
And do you know what I was thinking about this morning? Cheese
cake and peanut butter. No, I am not with child! Why cheese cake? Well,
this is the one time of the year--won't tell you why--that my angelic
Susan spends two days slaving into the late hours of the night to
magically conjure up one of her celebrated cheese cakes, a culinery
delight that any five-star restaurant would kill to serve, that causes you
to hear the heavens ringing with an oratorio of triumphant jubiliation as
it smoothly glides along your savoring palate. Yummy. Double yummy!!
I was thinking darkly in the dark of sticky, yukkie peanut butter
because of a "thank you" card a student unexpectedly and secretly slipped
into my hand as she left class yesterday. It read simply and deeply:
"Just for caring and being there." I'll admit it. Tears swelled in my
eyes and I breathed tightly. The card now rests with my other sacred
objects of my teaching.
That card called up memories from the very distant past and
reminded me humbly how powerful I am as a teacher.
Do you know how powerful you are? I asked that question of
myself as I walked the pre-dawn street this morning. Now I ask it of all
you good people.
That question is stirred by an incident that occured a while back.
I really can't let go of it. It started when a student, this student, who
hadn't been in class for almost two weeks suddenly reappeared.
"Where have you been?" I asked. I wanted to make some comment
about him being a stealth member of his community, but looking into his
eyes, I said to myself very quickly, "Can it."
"Out."
I thought I heard a tone of humiliation flood out from the single
word. I took more care.
"You missed the Dr. Seuss project and tidbits." I carefully
didn't color my words with recrimination or annoyance.
He whispered, "I know."
There is was again, a deep resonance of disgrace.
I told myself to step lightly. "Do you think 'I know' is good
enough to explain why you seemed to let both yourself and your community
down?"
"I had to go home to get new medication," she whispered in a tone
of reluctance.
Then, it came. "I'm bi-polar and the medicine I was on wasn't
working any longer. I was going into long depressions and fits of crying
and worse, and my parents told me I come to go home to get new medicine
and have my doctor regulate it right."
"No problem, then. Don't worry about the project. We'll work
something out somehow during the rest of the semester," I whispered back
"I was so embarrassed and ashamed to tell anyone."
"Why?" I asked as a sympathetic statement knowing full well the
answer to that question. "If you have a broken bone, you don't hesitate to
go to a doctor and get it set in a cast. If your brain isn't functioning
as it should, you also go to a doctor for treatment. No difference."
Of course, there is a difference, given so many people's
attitude towards such conditions, as in the next instant I learned.
"Tell that to one of my other professors," he quietly said with
eyes suddenly getting glassy. "When I told her about my sickness and why
I was absent, she told me that I would get even more depressed when I saw
my failing grade for missing a big test. I feel so small."
I went cold. The veins in my neck began to bulge, the steam poured out of
my ears, my muscles went taut, my face grimmaced. I could feel the nails
of my finger dig deep into my palms. I took a silent deep breath.
"You're not small," I quietly assured her. "It's that professor
who is small, smaller than small!"
So damn uncaring, so insensitive, so inhuman. So pitiful. So
medieval. Such a devaluing of two human beings. I guess having a Ph.D.
doesn't automatically mean you're educated and smart.
Suddenly I had a flashback of Miss Satchel. I haven't thought of
that diminutive, sharp-featured, dried up runaway from an Egyptian
sarcophagus in a long, long time.
It was an early November day of 1946 in the lunchroom of New
York's PS 160. I had just turned six. I remember the events of that day as
vividly as if they had happened a few minutes ago. It had been a
particularly harsh winter in wartorn Europe. There was near famine. Miss
Satchel, my first grade teacher--on reflection I use the word "teacher"
very loosely--always thundered in her eerily squeeky voice a pharonic
"waste not" pronouncement as we filed into the lunchroom that we had to
eat all of our food because of the starving children in Europe.
I always carried my lunch to school in a little silvery
"trainman's" lunch pail. Every day my mother placed my favorite lunch in
it: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whitebread and an
apple. I went to school this day. leaving the tenement apartment on
Orchard Street not knowing it would be the day peanut butter and I
would forever part.
This day, as usual, I entered the lunchroom, heard Miss Satchel's
command, got in line to buy a small box of milk. There at the end of the
line stood Miss. Satchel, looking like an unwrapped 4,000 year old servant
of Amon, telling each student, "You eat all your lunch! Remember the
starving children in Europe." When it came my turn, the "you" she hurled
at me was particularly, as it always was, harsh and pentrating. All I
could do was answer with a whispered and frightened submissive "yes, Miss
Satchel." Don't mistake that reply as a respectful one. I assure you that
it was all fear.
And boy, did Miss Satchel have it in for me. Being totally right
brained, an unrepentant southpaw, I wouldn't use my right hand during
penmanship even under the pain of her constant, hard, often blood-drawing
raps on my knuckles with a wooden ruler. With every swat, she angrily
reminded me that she was doing it for my own good to drive a defiant, in
her words, "Satan out of you!"
I guess her attempts at an exorcism didn't work since my angelic
Susan says constantly that there a little bit of the devil in me.
Anyway, back to this politically incorrect word of a "teacher."
On this particular day, I was not feeling very good. My bubba's chicken
soup had not worked its usual magic the evening before. I really didn't
have an appetite. I was too busy sniffling and listening to my stomach
gurgle to be bothered with food. I half heartedly first ate my apple, core
included as I always did and still do, painfully sipped all my milk, and
inattentively nibbled at my sandwich like a mouse. About half of my
sandwich was all I could stand. Knowing that Miss Satchel was standing
guard I carefully hid the remainder of the sandwich in my lunch pail from
those searching eyes as she drifted among the lunch tables. Just as I
thought I had gotten past this scrawny sentinel, a bony hand reached over
my shoulder, opened the pail, and pulled out the half-eaten sandwich.
I looked up in fright. Discovered. Silence. Glare. The next
thing I knew she grabbed the hair at the nape of my neck, yanked my head
back, picked up the sandwich, jammed it into my reluctant mouth angrily,
slowing saying, "children....in....Europe....are....starving," forced fed
me, made me chew and swallow. I almost choked.
Peanut butter has not since passed my lips!!
So, thinking of Miss Satchel, this professor, that student, and
myself, I say, "Take heed." Want to know how powerful you are? Things go
on in that classroom, words will be said, actions will be taken that will
be burned, for better or for worse, into a person's mind, heart, and soul
for a lifetime.
Take heed. You can be miracle makers. You can help each and
every student see that they need not be tomorrow what they are today. You
can help each and every one of them see and reach for the unique potential
that is within them.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of History www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta State University www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
/ \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \
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-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
