Teaching

If you deal with young people and children, you are a teacher whether you choose to be or not. Today, these young ones are so bombarded on all sides by everyone and everything that it is little wonder that they take their peers as their role models. I can’t be bothered with trying to figure out why, but I was not that way when I was in my teens.



I went to O’Keefe Jr. High in Atlanta, for 7th grade. I was the only girl in two classes who did not go directly to private schools from 6th grade. So I had no built in friends at O’Keefe. (In other words, we had done a lot of moving around until after World War II, when we settled in Atlanta. Because of a housing shortage, we had to live with an aunt for a while, so I didn’t go to the O’Keefe feeder school.)

I’ve had really awful teachers and really wonderful teachers. [Photo at left shows me during my teaching days]


My 7th grade homeroom teacher’s name was Mrs. Woods. She’d been an “old maid school teacher” until she’d recently married. That was about 63 years ago and I can still see her face vividly. She was ugly. Beauty may be skin deep but ugly goes all the way to the bone! My cousins who’d had her before me, talked about how wonderful she was. She managed to conceal any human trait she possessed from me. One morning, after arriving at school, I went into the bathroom and put on some pale orange Tangee lipstick, just a tiny bit. My stars! You’d have thought I’d walked into homeroom in pasties and tassels! That woman screamed at me all the way across the room and sent me to wash my face. I made A’s and B’s in her history class but I could never look her in the face again. I was 13 years old.

By contrast, my 6th grade teacher had been an absolute angel. Her name was Julia Clifton. I’m thinking she must have been in her late thirties at least, about then because she had a child in college [as well as I remember]. Somehow, she saw through the extremely awkward, shy child that I was, and found a talent that helped me the rest of my school days. Two or three times a week, she’d take our class into the auditorium for music. In no time at all, she had me singing alone for the group, and to my great surprise, they seemed to enjoy it. Yes, I sang all the rest of my school and college years.

When I started my own teaching career, I had great role models like Mrs. Clifton, but I also had to figure out my own way. Teaching in the late 1950’s was different than it is today.

After college, I taught 4th grade at Fowler St School, in Atlanta. My Area Superintendant was Dr. Rual Stephens, who had been my principal at Grady High, all five years. And guess what, my Language Arts Supervisor was Mrs. Clifton. She walked into my classroom one morning and announced that she’d come to observe my teaching of a penmanship lesson. I thought I would croak! My mind went completely blank and I was afraid I’d wet my pants. What she obviously observed was my utter horror. I had no idea how to teach a penmanship lesson and didn’t even know we had little booklets in the closet. She very kindly asked if I’d like her to teach it ---- and I was saved by her kindness.

I only taught through January that first year because my boyfriend said that driving back and forth from Augusta to Atlanta every weekend was putting too many miles on his new car. We married Feb.8, 1957. After that, I taught 5th grade, in North Augusta, S.C.

I used to say that some day I’d like to finish the graduate work and teach education courses in a college. With all the courses I took, no one actually taught me how to teach. Everything was so high flown and ethereal, you know, the psychology of education – nothing practical. Once, we spent weeks just on motivation and then the history of blah blah blah! No one told us what to do when we had two big boys rolling around on the floor in a fight to the death. What I did was grab my paddle and every time a bottom presented itself, I whacked as hard as I could. In a few minutes, they realized what was going on, and the fight was over.

My kids had to outline their geography books. Once they learned how to do that, they pretty much knew their geography, plus how to make a correct outline. Years later, a woman stopped me on the street and said, ”We thought you were such a hard teacher but after a year with you, Bonnie never had trouble in school again!” Made my heart sing!

My kids were allowed to move around if needed and to whisper as well. Total silence is really just not normal, for hours at a time now, is it? No, they could not talk during tests and they could not disturb people. Little girls, especially, often arrived in the mornings with some information they just had to tell their best friends and I always found it easiest just to give them a few minutes to visit .

My student load was between 29 and 35 children. There were no helpers, aides, music teachers, Phys Ed. teachers, etc. I had my class by myself all day and ate my lunch, sitting with them. We rotated play ground duty and early morning [bus] duty. One day, when the students were lined up to come inside after recess, a little girl whispered to me that a boy in the back of the line had a snake he’d found on the playground. I just backed up and closed the big double doors and locked them. I found the principal and he marched the boy out to the woods and released the critter. No, I did not want it for science class.

Every morning, we read a chapter from the Bible, most often one of the Psalms; then we said the Lord’s Prayer; then we said the pledge to the flag. After that, we sang 2 or 3 songs. Often, we sang later in the day as well, especially if we needed to wriggle a bit and wake up. I never asked but am fairly sure that we had several very different religions represented in our class. Many of the families in our school were from all over the U.S. because the parents worked for the Savannah River Plant, nearby. Nobody objected to reading the bible.

My class always had one or two slow learners, at least one or two very bright children, and the rest were all degrees in between. We had tables with books and projects all around the room for the folks who finished their work first. Boredom is the enemy of learning plus the beginning of discipline problems. Some of the parents built glass cases for the tops of our cabinets so that we had ant tunnels around the back and long side of our room. They were interesting to watch and provided learning experiences. My principal just shook his head and said if that thing ever breaks, we’re going to have to have the entire school fumigated.

Because I was the only teacher in the school who had taken and passed the Red Cross First Aid classes, I was also the school nurse. Quite often, I had a sick or hurt child at the front of the room, getting “doctored” while I was listening to a reading group in the back, plus explaining long division once again to a little fellow who had trouble grasping it.

My best piece of advice to a new teacher is possibly to whisper, don’t shout, if you want the kids to be quiet and listen to you. I never had to shout to control a class. Move around the room, too, don’t stay at your desk. Make sure the room is comfortable, shades adjusted. AND, if you need to turn your back, always spot a kid fixing to whisper, throw an airplane, or leave his seat, then turn your back before you call him down. That is how you assure them you have eyes in the back of your head!

My teaching career ended in 1959 when I became pregnant with my son. As soon as I started showing I had to quit, which was very upsetting to me. Teachers today don't realize how fortunate they are.

I resurrected my teaching skills recently when Dee adopted Michael. I tutored him in English that first summer, with Alesia's help, and we got him ready to start school after being home only a few months. After a lot of intense tutoring, he is now functioning quite well in the 6th grade - and he has been speaking English less than 3 years!

Once a teacher, always a teacher. I am happy now to just be a grandmama, though. [Dee and Alesia supervise homework now.]