She taught in a country school house, in a one-room, outhouse kind of school when she was still shy of 20 years. She lost her job when she got married. The rulebook said her job was better used on someone who didn't have a husband and the Depression made what seems illogical and certainly discriminatory now, practical. She finished the year and went off to farm with her new husband. Years later, in 1967, after farming, raising three children and serving over a decade on the School Board, even as the first female School Board President, she found herself back in a teaching position, this time in her small town Monticello school and at the helm of a 4th grade class. She taught for years, going back to college while teaching when the district rules mandated that her "County Normal" teaching degree, which had cost $8 a semester, was no longer sufficient for teaching the young minds of that, more modern, time. She graduated Magna Cum Laude, shortly before she became eligible for Social Security, and had her final report card from college on hand at her senior apartment until past her 99th birthday. She still keeps a hand-written notebook of all of her students and classes, right back to her first class in 1933, in her living room, despite the fact that many of her first classes only have one or two names that remain without an asterisk (the symbol she has used to note when a student has passed away).
Above her kitchen sink today, I noticed on the bottom of a Kindness plaque that has been hanging in her house or apartment since before my birth, that she has a newspaper quote taped in tattered, golden aged scotch tape, "A teacher affects eternity. You never know when his/her influence will stop," by Henry Adams. As she munched her morning bun and sipped her coffee today, the same ritual we have every time I visit, I asked her if she ever thought about that quote and plaque and she said the most profound thing that I have heard her say since her stroke left her thoughts frequently, frustratingly, trapped a few months prior. She said, "Just be sure that whatever you tell the youngsters…if a teacher who the children respect and admire, tells them, it means more than mother or dad. If it is true that so many children have bad influences at home, then it's just that much harder for the teachers to overcome those…but, then again, teachers are that much more important. So important. Worth our utmost admiration and praise." I set down the dishes in the sink and started recording her on my iPhone, determined to savor her words, now fewer and farther between, and borrow her hard-earned wisdom.
Whenever my grandma and I would go out "into town," which used to be weekly, to do her errands and grocery shopping, she would inevitably run into former students, parents, teachers and families that she had known through her teaching career. Given that my grandma seemed to not only be ageless in mind, but also constant in her appearance, a round, white-haired, jolly woman that has been in the same face, body and wardrobe since the 1970's, EVERYONE recognized her. A local celebrity of sorts, but the approachable, huggable, giggling kind. I'm convinced it added years to her life, seeing those folks and hearing their stories of how she told them they could go to college and they DID, even when their dad had not finished the 8th grade and their mom was no longer "on this side of heaven," as she would say. She would ask for a half pound of baby swiss cheese and creamy cole slaw at the deli and the clerk would lean over and say loudly, "Lillian, you had my daughter in school. She still talks about how much she loved your class. I think she was a teacher because she loved you so much." She would run into students who said that she snuck her lunch into their bag when they didn't have money and they never, ever, forgot that. We would talk with her former student, now a middle-aged man, who had decades ago engraved a wooden sign with "Mrs. Hefty" on it for her classroom and she would proudly boast that it still hangs from her door at the apartment, to remind her of her pupils. As an avid obituary reader and lifelong member of a small town, she would go to random funerals and have a line waiting for her, people who wanted to also pay their respects to someone who made them believe that they could succeed and whose road in life had been altered, even if slightly, by her contribution, her time and, the most important part, her love of teaching and of them.
Even now, as my grandma adjusts to her new home in an assisted living facility, her apartment is adorned with classroom decorations, student gifts and quotes about teaching and children. Teaching is the part of her life that she said so incredibly, surprisingly, eloquently today, "made me feel like no matter what, I made a difference." I didn't follow her footsteps into teaching, but as I thought more about it today on my ride home, I realized that the difference I can make is to pay it forward and to give recognition to the teachers that don't have the small town butcher or banker or waiter to tell them that their life was changed forever because of that extra effort, the extra praise, the extra mile.
Teaching today is hard, I know it is. I feel it and see it. From absent role models to suffocating parents, from floundering, failing kids to uber-stressed college-bound teens, society's pressure on teachers and scores is the one constant. It seems to me that sometimes today's standards set us up for nothing more than underscoring, overstressing kids and drained teachers. My grandma certainly had her share of obstacles too. Her challenges, like no water or electricity, just a stove in the corner of the schoolhouse, and a salary of $65 a month for being the janitor, nurse and teacher to 27 students in 8 grades, were plentiful. And yet, I think she takes such pride and has such satisfaction in her teaching career because she has the benefit of seeing the fruits of her labor and looking back over a century and seeing that her life really, truly mattered because it mattered to them. To her students. To their kids and grandkids and now, even to their great grandkids. To their diplomas. To their careers. To their lives and to who they became as people and families. No one but a teacher can truly make that difference, so as my grandma said so earnestly today, I, too, believe that teachers stand nearly alone in deserving "our utmost admiration and praise."
I hope that maybe, just maybe, we can all take a minute to tell a teacher that their impact, like hers, is still, forever, rippling forward. I think that my grandma's happiness, and theirs, depends on hearing the echo of their class, their students, their DIFFERENCE coming back to them, maybe loudly now or perhaps almost imperceptibly, years later. No matter what the challenges are, that alone could make the journey worthwhile. Educator John Hunter may have said it best,"You'll never know your effect as a teacher. You'll never understand the full impact of your reach. Everything you do is like reaching through time-because you do it and you affect their actions and behavior and they affect other people decades ahead of you. Even though you may never see them ever again but what you said, what you did, how they remember you may live on for decades. Everything you do is important. Everything you do has meaning." Although I still cling to my wish that my grandma would live forever, I have a sneaking suspicion that when her time on this side of heaven is done, I will be so relieved to know that a part of her will always live on because she was a teacher and that I was lucky enough to reach through time with her and see what that really means.
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