Ms. Hale: My Great Teacher

With the ongoing debate about whether or not schools in America will reopen this coming fall in the news, it got me thinking about all the teachers who really had a great impact on me. 

I am the product of the American public school system and the state public university system of the U.S. More specifically, most of my school years took place during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. That means, I had to learn during the time when the No Child Left Behind act, and it's ramifications of lower school funding based on standardized test scores, were truly impacting American schools, and then Obama's repeal of that law, by which time, it was too late for my generation. Yet, despite that, as Mark Twain said, "I've never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education."

I've critiqued American Public education a fair amount both on this blog and on my podcast--especially in recent weeks--but I wouldn't be where I am today without it. No matter what quality of school a young student attends, the ones who want to learn will gleam and absorb what they can from it; in time, what they gain from that schooling will serve as the bedrock on which they will build their true intellect. An education system is only a failure if it stifles the imaginations, dreams, and, most vital, curiosities of its pupils. 

The best of the schooling I got was due to the fact that I had such great teachers.

My greatest teacher was the teacher who got me into writing: Ms. Hale.

Ms. Hale was both my 4th and 5th grade teacher while I was an elementary school student at Mullanphy ILC here in St. Louis. She loved her job, and she loved teaching us, her students. She loved it so much, in fact, that when she was informed she'd be teaching 5th grade the year after we'd completed 4th grade (this was between 2002 and 2004), she asked the school if she could, at least, have her old class back. And she got us.

As a teacher, Ms. Hale took her job very seriously, and she was very young while I was her student. What she lacked in experience (which might be why she asked to teach the same students two years in a row), she made up for in creativity in teaching. She found a myriad of ways to get us, her students, to learn. She had us play games to get us to learn all the state capitals and the state names.(Sadly, I still don't remember all of them. Yesterday, someone reminded me that Wyoming was actually a state). She had us do big presentations to learn about the Civil War; we created mini-one person shows to learn about the great African Americans in our history (and none of us wore blackface, because we weren't idiots, unlike some people). Then of course, there were the books. Ms. Hale was the first teacher who read whole novels to the class. Lois Lowry and Roald Dahl were particular favorites. She also read us Charlotte's Web and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM. 

It wasn't all fun of course. We still had math homework (eww), and spelling tests, like any other elementary school class. However, she made those as fun as she could though. During tests, she'd give us each a roll of smarties to chew while we took the tests, and she's play Soul and Motown songs in the background (one of the reasons why two of my favorite songs are "Please Mr. Postman" and "Respect" as sung by The Marvelettes and Aretha Franklin to this day). 

Three projects still remain vivid in my mind. 

The first was our lesson on fairy tales, where we each had to bring a part of a fairy tale to life; my little group on that project made a model of the houses of the three little pig (and no they weren't very good, but we were 9). There was also the Spring when the whole class performed the musical Sleeping Beauty. That's where I learned that I could ham it up when necessary in front of the crowd, but that it was probably best I never sing again in my life. 

But most of all, there was the time she asked us to write and illustrate our own fairy tale. I can remember the set up well. She'd just finished reading Roald Dahl's The Witches to us (one of my favorite children's novels, don't @ me), and she dismissed us from the reading circle. As we went back to our desks, she started explaining how she wanted us to write and illustrate our own fairy tale.

She then handed out this sheet, which if you looked at it now, would remind you of a primitive outline. We had to write down who our main character was. Next, we picked our setting. Then, we had to decide on our inciting incident. Finally, our antagonist. The end result for me was a fairy tale titled Merlin and the Magic Monster. It was my first story, and I found that I loved the process. 

It seems, in hindsight, that Ms. Hale was almost bent on producing at least one writer out of all her students. Not only did she read to us, but she encouraged us to read a lot and mark our progress using reading lists. My 5th Grade year, she had us do something similar. Except this time, she wanted us to write our own Tall Tale--similar to the stories of Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, and Pecos Bill. Not only that, but during some days, after we'd come back from lunch and recess, she'd have a writing prompt waiting for us, just the beginning of a sentence. One that immediately comes back to me is, "I didn't used to believe in magic pencils, until..."

I wouldn't be where I am now, or doing what I'm doing, without her encouraging and pushing me, and the rest of her students, into learning how to express ourselves on paper.

I would love nothing more than for students to return this coming year to school. No matter the city or state where they're receiving their education, there are magnificent teachers out there, shaping minds every year. However, I also don't want either the students or the teachers themselves to risk their own lives in the process, until we find a definitive solution the the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a few promising developments out there right now, but until they truly become certainties, and we know the risk is minimized, do we really want to risk a whole generation of both students and teachers?