The Best Kind of Teacher

Back to School Memories

“Back to School” season in the fall always triggers memories that come up swirling with the steam of my pumpkin-spiced latte.

My parents bought a little bungalow in Detroit in the 50s, a 10-block walk to the elementary school where my siblings and I went many years later. All the neighborhood kids walked to school, even at only 5-years-old.

Junior High was about a mile away, and we could walk home on the sidewalks the whole way, or we could cut through the path off of Fenkell Road that led down to the woods surrounding The Rouge River. We knew all the trails from the map imprinted on our brains at a very early age, an intuitive sense of direction at that time before GPS or cell phones existed to guide us. We usually took that route even in the winter so we could walk on the river’s ice angling through the middle of the woods.

One time, a friend of mine fell right through up to her waist and bounced back up to solid ground again in an instant. Thankfully, I didn’t have to fish her out, and I’m sure she was cold from her soaked-through clothes, but we simply continued the walk home, not even choosing to move to the banks for a safer, albeit frozen, walk.

In the ‘70s, the local high school was having trouble controlling the teenagers who were into smoking, drinking (the drinking age was only 18 then), and other more detrimental drugs. My sister and brother were quite a few years ahead of me, so I remember being only around 8-years-old when I saw a colorful kaleidoscope of little, square acid pills in the palm of a boy’s hand.

My mom coached girls’ basketball, so I tagged along and got to run around the high school during practices. The chains and padlocks securing the heavy metal doors, the bulky security guards staring people down without a smile, and the smell of ash and dirt in the bathrooms painted a rather daunting picture in my young mind. I also remember my sister arriving home from school one day carrying at her side a broken pop bottle, jagged glass points at the ready. When I questioned her, she said someone followed just behind her, ducking behind trees along the route.

By the time I was ready for ninth grade in the early 80s, my parents decided to enroll me in a private school outside of our neighborhood. They lamented the loss, for that was the main reason they chose this house: so we could all walk to school. Now we had to find a carpool for the twenty-minute drive.

The Catholic school where I ended up touted strong academics, religious values and an excellent working environment— “college prep.” My parents were not practicing Catholics, and neither one of them went to college or cared much about sending their children on to higher education. Rumors are that my brother got a scholarship to Michigan State University but turned it down to follow my dad into the trades, and my sister, let’s just say, was not into school and was happy to just graduate and get on with her adult life. So, my mom and dad didn’t choose the school for its college prep status, but choose it they did.

Each freshman got assigned to a homeroom class with a teacher who would stay with his or her group throughout the four years of high school. I was placed in one of the science teacher’s rooms; I’ll call her Mrs. C. She was motherly, in a way, but a really smart, nerdy kind of mom. Very gentle and approachable, scooping out wisdom for those who would eat. Her greying-black hair was long and always pinned back in a ponytail. Dark-rimmed glasses slipped to that perch just below the bridge of the nose, making her tilt her head down and her eyes up to look into one’s face. But that tilt never hid her kind smile.

I took her elective classes, like Anatomy & Physiology, and my interest in biology bloomed. Her husband was a researcher who worked on human bodies donated to science, and our class got the privilege of participating in the craziest field trip one can imagine.

The excursion gave me a couple stories to tell for years afterward. Like the one about my classmate passing out in the hallway; or another about several students vomiting upon entrance to Mr. C’s lab exposing bodies all laid out, uncovered, in various stages of dissection.

And the best one: our study of the internal anatomy of reproductive organs. To get to the internal part, Mr. C had to cut off certain appendages, if you know what I mean. Students gasped or screeched. He was probably used to that reaction, but the students who stood firm were quite proud of themselves. I always enjoyed telling that story to my friends, especially since I was one who did not falter.

And everyone knew Mrs. C was the best homeroom teacher who sort of took her students under her wing, like a familiar illustration of a mother swan gathering her chicks.

At home, it seemed my house was always shaking a bit, just on the verge of being lifted and spun in Dorothy’s tornado and set down somewhere else. I knew my mom and dad had marital problems—dad traveled for work much of the time, and mom always complained that she had to do everything alone. They both trusted Whiskey to ease their discontent, and we all know how unreliable a friend liquor can be. I was used to living on unstable ground, and I learned to step around the cracks and get to my destinations in one piece. School was a steady place—I had good friends there. And I liked learning. Mrs. C greeted me every morning as I signed in for the day. Sometimes she had tea or little treats as she sent her students along to 1st hour.

Teachers can be grounding in ways that the young do not fully appreciate . . . until they do.

One day, I arrived at school after a particularly difficult morning. My mom just didn’t seem right that day, and I knew something was different. During the time before classes started, I went to the hall phone booth; can you believe we had one at school?

I called my mom, and she admitted that the threatening storm clouds were, in fact, bringing in the inevitable: Divorce. While that could not possibly be a surprise, as I had run through these raindrops my whole life, it did hit me like a loud thunderclap.

I went back to Mrs. C’s classroom with tears pooling and strangely wobbly legs. Mrs. C knew I couldn’t make it to my next class, so she guided me to her office, adjacent to the classroom but behind a good, heavy door for privacy, and arranged a few hard chairs into something like a cot. She got me some water and let me lay there with a blanket for a pillow while she taught her class on the other side of the wall. She informed my teachers of my absence and reassured me that I could stay there as long as I needed. She didn’t pry. She didn’t lecture or offer platitudes. She didn’t tell me that everything would be okay.

She just gave me some privacy and time.

In fact, it never came up again in the years ahead, at least overtly. We did always exchange a knowing glance or a gentle hug.

This experience stuck with me for life. It is so utterly compassionate in my remembrance, and it inspired me to be that kind of a person. That kind of a teacher.

I hope you had a teacher like that in your life at some point.