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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468555837 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 144 |
| File size: | 440 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Touching Lives
A Teacher's MemoirBy Shirley A Kitner-Mainello
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Shirley A Kitner-MainelloAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-5585-1
Chapter One
Mr. Leo Johns, the new high school guidance counselor, hounded me every day of my high school senior year. "Come and see me," he said. "I want to talk to you about this." He pestered me until I gave in just to get rid of him. With his help and advice, I finally filled out the forms to take the scholarship exam. In that single act of determined caring, Mr. Johns touched my life and changed its direction forever.My parents were good parents. They were hard-working, kind, intelligent people who never had an opportunity to get an education beyond the one-room schoolhouse. They both began to work full time jobs about age fourteen. They could not give me advice about my own education because they simply didn't know what to tell me.
No one in my family had ever graduated from high school, let alone gone to college. The opportunity was not available for them to attend high school for it was a great distance away. They were children when people were still going about in horse and buggy. They both lived on farms far from town where the high school was located. Of course, there were no school buses, so they could not easily get to school in town.
My Dad thought the best and most practical job for a girl would be accountant or bank teller because the work was not physically difficult and you could pick up many jobs on the side, jobs that could be done at home or evenings or weekends. Alas, I was not a numbers person. It just never held the interest for me that reading and writing commanded.
People look back to the forties and fifties nostalgically and think that life was simple and easy then. In reality, these times were fraught with unbelievable prejudice, social turmoil, and unwritten rules.
Girls had limited career choices; they were locked into nursing, teaching, or office worker. If a girl wanted to be a scientist, mathematician, or veterinarian she had to plan for a very difficult entrance into the field and be ready to battle prejudicial judgments from every quarter. Girls who did not plan to marry were considered very strange. A boy could choose career over family, but a girl had no such choice.
My parents owned a small corner store and had I been a boy I would have probably followed in their footsteps. I knew the small business life. My friends took the business curriculum in high school so I took it, too.
I realized my mistake early. I hated nearly everything in that commercial curriculum. The accounting sets became my arch enemy; they never balanced. Typing was nerve wracking because this was the day of making copies with carbon paper and onion skin. My copies were rarely perfect.
I liked shorthand, which I thought was artistic; it seemed like learning and writing a new language. However, as one of the business teachers pointed out to me, shorthand was useless without typing.
I was great in English because I would read anything you put into my hands and I loved to write. I loved the classics and the poetry.
I went to the chemistry teacher and the foreign language teacher and begged them to see if I could somehow get into their classes, but the answer was always, "No, you are in the wrong curriculum. It is too late now to change. This is for college prep students."
They behaved as though I would bring a blight on their precious courses – too dimwitted to succeed there. There was no way one could change a decision I had drifted into years before.
In those days, at the end of the seventh grade you made the first curriculum specific choices. You were locked into a curriculum before the eighth grade. Many schools are still like that today, and there are children just like myself who, unfortunately, do not have a Mr. Leo Johns to care about them.
Like a leaf in the wind, at age thirteen, I chose not to go to college. No one in my family had ever attended. What did I know of college? I had never been on a college campus, except when we took a shortcut as we walked to school in the mornings.
Those years between twelve to fifteen are difficult growing up years. At this age kids don't know what they want out of tomorrow,
let alone, what they want out of life! I was just like that!
I chose the business curriculum because it was the only thing I knew. However, fortune smiled on me. Someone, somehow, cared enough to intervene and change what appeared to be my fate. There was a teacher who touched my life ...
I, who yearned to be done with school, never dreamed it would be a part of my life forever!
Chapter Two
Sometimes people say "... angels were watching over me ..." when something unexpectedly good happens to them. I have often thought that about my scholarship experience. It was such an unlikely chance that I would win this wonderful opportunity. Remember I had not had a college preparatory curriculum, but I competed successfully with those students for this scholarship.My father had to retire early from his business because of severe crippling rheumatoid arthritis. He was only in his fifties. College expenses would have been out of the question for us.
Then came the letter announcing that I had won a scholarship that would pay for four years at a nearby college. For me that was a turn in the road I had never dared to dream.
I was fortunate, astounded, ecstatic, scared to death. I said, "I can't do this."
Mr. Johns replied, "Of course, you can."
"I don't know anything about college."
Mr. Johns replied, "You'll learn."
With this letter my life took the road that I had peered down but never dreamed I could choose. I entered the educational world of reading, writing, mathematics, and learning that reached a thousand students, parents, and teachers who touched my life and I theirs.
Chapter Three
As a student teacher, I not only went back to my hometown, I actually student taught in the first grade in the same school and in the same room in which I, myself, had been a first grader.It was an old brown stone building, built in 1897, with beautiful woodwork and large sunny rooms. The wide stairways were beautifully polished dark wood which the janitor kept immaculate. Each classroom sat in a corner of the large square building and was well lighted by several large windows. Every room had a small cloak room with hooks for coats and floor-to-ceiling closets for extra supplies.
The years had gone by and once more, at age twenty, I walked up those front steps, through the door, and straight back the hall to that room. But wait! Did they lower the steps? They didn't seem as high as they once were.
I distinctly remember the blackboards were so high I could not reach the top. Who moved them down to my knees? Then there were the coat hooks. Obviously, someone moved the coat hooks down about a foot.
The reading books no longer had my old friends Dick, Jane, and little sister, Sally. Where were the pets – the dog, Spot, and the kitten, Puff?
My old teachers were gone; in their places were different faces. But, then, I noticed the smile was the same; the warmth, the brightness of the room had not changed.
I felt a tug on my arm and a small tyke was by my side. "Could you help me hang up my sweater? I can't reach the hook."
I had a gentle and compassionate cooperating teacher, Mrs. Climenhaga. She was of the Mennonite religion and wore very little makeup and no jewelry. Her hair was styled in a bun at the back of her head. She and her husband were a part of the nearby Mennonite college. I had no idea how old she was; I knew her for years afterward and she always looked the same.
The children loved her. She was a wonderful example of gentle kindness and love and dedication.
This school had a diverse mixture of students, some with very difficult home backgrounds. All of them interesting as only first graders can be.
One in particular, Stone, seemed as though he had already learned he needed to be tough and fight everyone for everything. His home background appeared to encourage this. It could have been that a show of temper got you your own way at his house.
Mrs. Climenhaga understood him immediately and would talk privately with him, quietly and calmly. She would whisper in his ear in her gentle way, "Now, Stone, get hold of that grouchy man inside of you and make him do the right thing." With unfailing patience she would succeed in getting him to cooperate.
I had nowhere near such success. For me he would turn backwards in his chair, refuse to open his book, refuse to answer, refuse to pick up his pencil, refuse to put it down. I had no reservoir of ideas to draw upon as experienced teachers have.
In her ever-positive style, Mrs. Climenhaga would say to me, "Oh, you are young. He sees me as a grandmother figure, as older and non-threatening. He probably loves his grandmother."
Several months later at the end of the semester when it was time for me to leave that school , Mrs. Climenhaga had each student draw a picture of me to take along. Stone drew me behind bars! I often wish I had kept that picture; it would have been a treasure forty years later!
While Stone was difficult, he was certainly smart enough, but Chad was clearly a very slow student. He was already a year older and bigger than the others in the room, but far behind them in mental development. I was sure that by the time he reached second grade, he would be a special education student with learning difficulties.
Conversely, his mother thought he was brilliant. She always told how smart he was at home and could do everything. In school, however, he couldn't seem to learn how to write or read.
Chad gave me a big first grader hug every morning and a winning smile. Chad loved me.
I worked for hours with him to help him simply copy a letter from the line right above. It seemed like a million times, I would say the same words to him. "This is 'L'. See how tall he stands? He is just one tall straight line." I would take his hand and we would make one together, but it was a long and difficult task for Chad. His L's fell over; they couldn't find the line; they looked more like bent over old men.
However, Chad could use the scissors better than most first graders. He would sneak out of his seat and cut anything he could lay hands on. One day, on my watch, he sneaked up behind gentle little Billy and cut large chunks out of his hair right to the scalp! Billy's nice thick dark hair looked like it had been chewed by some mysterious creature. His mother would never be able to make it look normal.
I was beside myself worrying what Billy's mother would say. In fact, she took it very well saying, "He is not hurt, and it will grow back." Thank Heaven for pleasant, understanding parents!
At Christmas time, some of the children brought gifts for the teacher. There were the usual bottles of perfume and hand crème. One child brought Mrs. Climenhaga a necklace made of huge bright red beads the size of large marbles; the ones that were called 'shooters'.
She unwrapped them, smiled at the child and said, "Oooh! How beautiful these are! I am going to wear them right now!" And she put them on and wore them all day. The child beamed.
These monstrous beads fit her wardrobe style like an elephant in a tutu. But the deed of wearing them all day was a demonstration of Mrs. Climenhaga's infinite kindness.
Very soon, it seemed, my semester at Penn School was finished and I was ready to graduate and assume a teaching position of my own.
Some of the sweet little girls cried when I left and I felt sad, too. It had been a learning experience for me, and I knew I would love teaching. Much as I would have liked to go all the way to the end of the year with them and see their progress, it was time to move on to my first real job.
Chapter Four
I had gone through college in less than four years by going summer and winter, so my first job began in the middle of the school year, January of 1960.At that time, there were few teachers and many jobs, so I had a number of offers. Wanting to leave home and be on my own, I chose a job in an elementary school in a nearby town.
When I had my interview with the Superintendent of the school system, he explained the unwritten rules I was expected to follow:
• You will not be seen downtown smoking or carrying a cigarette.
• You will not be seen in a bar or drinking alcohol.
• You will not go downtown in shorts.
• Your conduct will always be appropriate for a teacher in our system.
• If you are in the company of a man your conduct will be of the highest standard.
I might add, women were not paid on the same scale as men. My first salary was $3000 a year, paid over a nine month period. Today a teacher's salary is prorated over a twelve month period.
There were no teacher unions but there was yearly raise of $200 a year mandated by the state of Pennsylvania. The townspeople thought this was an exorbitant amount of money and complained endlessly in the local paper.
I was assigned to one of the oldest buildings that sat on the edge of the poorer section of town, but it had been renovated and was very nice. I taught fourth grade in this building for about four years.
My first room was in the basement, right beside the janitor's room. If I opened the windows, dirt, dust, and leaves blew in from the playground.
The janitor, Mr. Peters, had played for the silent movies as a young man, and he could sit at the piano for hours drifting seamlessly from one tune to another with never a piece of music in front of him. He had literally hundreds of songs in his head.
He loved John Phillip Sousa's music and he would end each "concert" with the same Sousa march. Then he would say, "Do you know what that is? It is Under The Double Eagle!"
Sometimes he would play as the students returned entertaining them for a few minutes. He loved an audience, and they were an appreciative and encouraging one. He would have played until three pm if I hadn't intervened. He was a very nice man and the students loved him.
Students in those days went home for lunch around noon and returned at one o'clock. We teachers ate our lunch in Mr. Peters' basement room.
The principal of the building, Miss Veram, was a older woman who began teaching before I was born. When she started teaching, you had to choose between marriage and teaching for you could not have both. She was unmarried, and lived with her maiden sister and her widowed mother on a small farm just outside of town.
She took her role as guardian of the moral character of her young teachers very seriously. Smoking in the school would have been the very last thing she would have condoned. She certainly wasn't going to allow the young women on her staff to fall into such a vulgar habit.
However, another young teacher and I would sneak a cigarette during lunch break in the basement. Ever vigilant, Miss Veram would patrol the building, and sooner or later she would arrive in the basement.
When we heard her footsteps on the stair, we would quickly put the cigarettes out and Mr. Peters would put his pipe in his mouth. Men were allowed, you see -not women! Women who smoked were hussies; men who smoked were just men who smoked.
Smoke circled around us like fog as she looked into the room, and there we sat looking innocent as lambs.
"Hi, Miss Veram. How was your lunch?" We smiled, making sure our hands were visible so she could see we would never indulge in such a filthy pastime as smoking a cigarette!
Did she ever realize that Mr. Peters' pipe was not even lit or that one pipe would have to be burning like a chimney to make that much smoke?
Chapter Five
The first class I had was an excellent group of students. Their minds were open to almost anything. These children were intelligent and creative.Classes at that school were divided according to reading level as scored on the last test. The first class I had was the best of the grade; nearly all of them were white.
We had class events that they planned themselves and they were very good. On Friday afternoons, they did 'shows' and programs just for our class in which different students performed. Sometimes they would sing or play the piano or tell stories.
One boy, Alfred, did a rhythm performance just using his hands on his knees and legs to the song "Hambone, Hambone, Where you been?" It was similar to today's rap rhythm. It was outstanding. The children liked it so much they often asked him to do a repeat performance.
The next year's class was the lowest tested reading level of the grade. More than half of the class was 'colored' as they were called then.
Of all the classes I have ever had, this was definitely one of my favorites. Academically, they were a world away from last year's class. However, they were funny, warm, and most loveable.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Touching Lives by Shirley A Kitner-Mainello Copyright © 2012 by Shirley A Kitner-Mainello. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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