We Make a Difference--A Teacher's Job is Never Ending

I don't know where this story begins, whether at the middle, the beginning or end or even who the heroine or hero might be. 

1911 fifth grade, Mrs. Donnelly teacher, Eastside School/Jefferson Elementary.  

I do know that for over three decades I have been collecting stories from students and teachers who went to Jefferson Elementary school in Norman, Ok. Our location is the original landsite school for Norman. The doors of Eastside school (1-12) opened in 1894 years before statehood.  

Of the one-hundred and fifty stories we have collected one stream flows throughout. Students recall when a teacher said or did something that made a difference in their lives. It may have been an art teacher who shared her paints and personal brushes with a girl who showed talent, a music/drama teacher who helped students stand in public and speak or sing, all school plays and programs that let the students shine, archeology digs, a story of failure in a grade only to be uplifted the next year by a teacher who understood him or her. Very few recall learning specific skills but they do recall the difference the ability to read, write, compute math, compromise, make friends, and understand how to problem solve made a difference in their lives.

Some even recall the memorizing "prepositions" in order: aboard, about, above, across, after, against......Over those first hundred years at Jefferson students memory work came full circle--memorizing Bible verses and poetry, to the Fifty Nifty United States through music, dance, and drama or times tables by flash cards. Oh, my!

Out of nowhere we may recall "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on." Thank you Carl Sandburg. 

I joined the staff at Jefferson Elementary in 1978, and recall enough stories from working there until 1995 to fill a book, but it is the lessons I learned that come back to me most often.

I had already worked two years in a public library and three years as a school librarian in Greensburg, Kansas before moving to Norman in 1978. With a master’s degree in hand and five years’ experience, I thought I knew something.

Our library was the hallway in the 1958 blonde brick building with two bathrooms on the west end, ten sinks for each classroom, the heating units and water pipes ran under the library creating three steps down to each classroom.  On the floor in the hallway there were heavy steel cellar doors that could be lifted by two people, so students could step down in the hallway basement/cellar for shelter. It was dark and smelly under that hallway and most likely not even safe in a storm.

Audio Visual equipment being used in the library..1979. Molly O'Dea, John Satterlee, and Wes Hall. Behind Molly are the steps down to the classroom. 

The two ceiling to floor bookcases acted as walls between the classroom and library hallway and as shelving for books. There was no AC, but we did have windows and doors. On the East end a thin wall divided the library and entrance office for the secretary. 

Suddenly, I found myself in the center of the best learning experience of my life. I knew what every teacher was teaching, and could easily help them with various topics and studies. It was a two way street, as I learned. My strength came from my love of literature, and teaching children how to travel through time in books. Using storytelling and puppets opened doors for many of the children’s imagination.

So imagine my surprise when on a winter day a first grade teacher marched up the steps and stood in front of my desk. “Mrs. Rains, a young boy in my class who cannot read at first grade level keeps checking out books for older boys and girls. You mustn’t let this happen.” I nodded and took the book.

The next day, I presented a plan, "Mrs. Searcey, if you would allow Floyd to check out one book of his choice and one book on grade level would that be sufficient?”

Frances didn’t smile, but nodded saying, “We will see how that goes.”

Not long afterwards Floyd checked out a fantasy book that had won the Newbery Award for excellence in children’s literature, along with a large print reader on fist grade level.

It was the second or third time he had checked out that book. Later that week, I walked down the steps to his room and peered over his shoulders as he read and mumbled to himself. All along Mrs. Searcey kept her eye on us. “Floyd,” I asked, “would you show me or tell me what you are reading?”

Floyd looked up at me stoically and replied, “Don’t you remember this book you told the kids to read? It has a medal on it, and it is about a dog.”

“True,” I smiled while recalling that I had mentioned that book last November to the fifth graders, and that his desk must have been right behind the divider I put up to make a reading corner in the library. He had heard me talk about it and had seen it on the poster. “Isn’t it hard to read?” I asked. “No,” he replied. Then he opened the book and using his index finger he read every Dolch sight word on the page and the next page. I was humbled and nearly cried.

Floyd loved that book and I only hope that one day by fifth grade he was able to read and enjoy every word in it.

After school I explained what had happened. Frances looked at me rather solemnly then smiled ever so slowly, “I think Floyd taught us both a lesson today.”

The Rains of Ranchipur Recalled

For the last month central Oklahoma has received 12.5 " of rain, the most rain recorded in April since 1942 and May is by all accounts our rainiest month!  (Update: May 6 between midnight and noon we've received another 1 1/2" of rain.) All records have been broken and ten of those inches fell during my flower planting season. Our home sits on a slight decline, not a mountain which slides into the river, which translates to our famous clay soil sucking up the rain and keeping the ground squishy.  It also causes plants to wilt and drown from too much water, but it does not cause earthquakes.

Wilted perennials sitting in rain soaked clay, mud. 

 

Only droughts in Oklahoma cause the ground to split wide open, revealing baked red clay. 

Two weeks ago, with my never call it quits attitude I dug my first hole for the Purple Salvia. Water, not black oil, bubbled up and laughed at me.  Then it began to rain for days on end.

1900 spring rains in Norman, Ok before University Blvd was paved. 

My sister and I share a memory that we often recall during stormy seasons and heavy rains. Only a phone call away we recount the color of the skies before the storms, how high did the water rise, how many minutes or hours have we been hovered under a storm, what yard furniture was destroyed, windows broken, trees fallen or roofs peeled back. We talk in descriptions like yellowish green skies before the storm, howling winds, thunderous booms from lightning and pelting rains, but we didn't laugh when we were little children. 

One dreary winter day back in the last century when the Ford Thunderbird owned the road, when families watched black and white TV shows like "Gunsmoke", Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "I Love Lucy", and "The $64,000 Question" two little girls walked to the Coleman Theatre in Miami, Oklahoma to watch a movie called "The Rains of Ranchipur." 

With money enough to buy a large dill pickle each, we found cushioned seats toward the front of the grand theatre. Sitting under the large chandelier imagining royalty sitting in the two balcony wings we felt rich.

It didn't take long for the movie to go from a boring romance to torrents of rain upon rain until the earth began to move and shake causing massive craters in the earth's surface right in front of us. We screamed when we saw people running and falling into the abyss. The cracks became crevices and then ravines of raging water and death traps. We tried to stop the people in the movie with our directions, "No, don't go across the bridge. No, don't run blindly down the streets, they might open and swallow you!"  

Then suddenly the  mountains gave way, the dam broke, trees and buildings all washed in violent waves down the river busting the bridge wide open and sending people to their deaths. Someone in the movie we liked must have fallen into the river at that point, because I remember us crying. 

When we stepped out into the Saturday afternoon daylight cold rains just shy of icy pellets were pouring down,.  We stood under the Marquee in hopes that our mother may have paid attention to the weather and rescue her little girls from the long walk home.  With the blaring moo cow horn we saw our mother parked up the street waiting to take her girls home and any neighbors we saw along the way. Our bodies crawled into the station wagon and held each others hand. 

To this day I don't recall any of the plot even though great names like Lana Turner, Michael Rennie, and Fred McMurray starred in the show. If anything, the movie has sealed the relationship between two sisters. It has been our benchmark on a deluge of rain, and it does rain in Oklahoma most often in dramatic fashion. 

The security for us was that we didn't live in India, so of course, what happened in the movie wouldn't happen in Oklahoma.  For years the term earthquake brought brought back visuals in black and white of people screaming as they fell into the earth's innards.

When our family bought a set of 1959 World Book Encyclopedia's I earmarked page 2168 on earthquakes. It reads: Earthquakes are among the most terrible things that can happen on earth. They have toppled huge cities and started great first, killing thousands of persons. They have started tidal waves that have swept up cities on seacoasts. Sometimes the earth itself splits open. (I think perhaps that statement created more fear than the movie.) 

Seventy years later an internet description reads: An earthquake is a sudden shaking of the Earth's surface caused by the release of energy in the Earth's crust. Not nearly as terrifying as the WBE in the 1950's.  

This weekend the sun is shining. I will gather my tools and my flat of flowers to plant before more rain returns on Tuesday. For two older and wiser women we will not drive into water on the roads, nor do we worry about earthquakes, but we do take cover from tornadoes.