My Favorite Teacher(s)

[Tansy_Gold]

I started this over in another thread and decided I really should start one of my own. This is the place to indulge our memories and pay tribute to those hard-working, dedicated women and men who taught us.

I actually have two, and I'll get to the other one later. . ..




Fall, 1958. I was in fifth grade, but it was a hand-picked combination class of 12 fifth graders and 10 fourth graders in our still-expanding suburban school. We couldn't have TV for the World Series, but Mrs. Quast brought in a radio, so while we listened to the Yankees (boo, hiss) and the Milwaukee Braves with Lew Burdette and Warren Spahn and Hank Aaron, we worked on homework or art projects. I remember this all so clearly, making tiny baseball players out of modeling clay and putting them on a field. I loved baseball even then.


That was my last year at Ridge School; I went on to junior high and high school and life in general. But over the years I continued to keep in touch with Mrs. Quast, visiting her and her family every once in a while even though I'd moved away. I remembered that class with crystal clarity, right down to where everyone sat, in our four rows of five students, 10 fifth and 10 fourth graders (after two of the fifth graders had moved away, one to Seattle and the other to the south side of town).


Summer, 1985. My first novel had been published and we were getting ready to leave the midwest for Arizona. I knew Mrs. Quast loved the southwest; she used to bring copies of Arizona Highways magazine to class for us to look at during free time when our homework was done. I knew that she had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer. So I went to visit her one evening, even met her parents, about whom she had told us stories back in that marvelous fourth/fifth combination class. We laughed and told jokes and when I said I never thought of myself as having any artistic or creative ability, it was Mrs. Quast who reminded me of the clay baseball "action figures," no more than two inches high at most and posed appropriately for their positions. "You were the most creative one in that class," she told me.

She passed away in early 1986. My mother called to tell me.


Fall, 2000. I was temping at Arizona Highways, doing the mindless data entry to renew subscriptions and process holiday gift orders during their busy season. The mail room brought us batches of 100 subscription forms at a time. Sometimes we'd get a subscription from an unexpected address, like Nairobi, Kenya, and some of us even kept a tally of how many different countries and states we processed. And sometimes we got them from familiar names and wondered if it really was "Walter Cronkite" who was renewing a subscription. And then one afternoon, it was just after lunchtime as I recall, I got the renewal notice for a familiar name and address. Mr. Quast still had a subscription to Arizona Highways. I burst into tears.


Today, 8 March 2011 -- He is still listed at the same address.




Tansy Gold, storyteller

[xchrom]

1. oh tansy.

i'm suddenly filled with smells and memories of miss harlan, miss mittens{yes, really}, miss costello -- all stern -- except for miss mittens -- tough as nails women who made it their duty that we learned -- and learn we did.

sometimes a kid was held back -- but by and large no one -- not one kid was beyond the capacity of that fine company of women.

[MineralMan]

2. Great story. Thanks!

[TBF]

3. Tom Bartelt

Taught economics and history in rural Wisconsin in the 80's. In an area where kids thought nothing of dressing up as Ku Klux Klan members during dress up week, he was a breath of fresh air with his progressive ideals. But most importantly he was a good teacher - the kind who encourages everyone and tries to make the teaching relevant to them (I remember him teaching how to balance a checkbook and fill out simple tax forms - very practical in that area).

I wouldn't be surprised at all if he reads this site, so if you're out there Mr. Bartelt, thanks again.

[LibDemAlways]

4. That's a lovely story. For whatever reason I

don't have too many fond memories of my own teachers. I know I had plenty of good ones, but no one I became close to. However, my daughter had the best kindergarten teacher ever - Mrs .Grossman. It was her first year teaching. She had gone back to school and earned a credential after her own children had finished their elementary years. She was patient, kind, and loving. She took the children to the pumpkin patch at Halloween, to see the Nutcracker at Christmastime, to the local market and dentist office so that they could explore their neighborhood. Each month she honored several students as "Students of the Month," citing their specific talents and contributions. Each and every child received recognition before the year was out. And she took the time to put together a separate scrap book of important events for each of her students full of photos she had taken as well as samples of the student's work.

That was in the 98-99 school year. My daughter will graduate from high school this June. One of the things she is looking forward to doing before she leaves for college is to go back to her elementary school and give Mrs. Grossman a big hug and a personal "thank you" for the great start she was given way back when.

I'm a substitute teacher and daily come into contact with hard-working men and women who shape the future by teaching our kids. It's one of the most challenging careers a person can choose, and certainly one of the most selfless.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Ms. Gardill and Ms. Downey.

English teachers, the both of them. Never let it be said that public school teachers are not special. They are angels in disguise.

[peacebird]

6. Senor Casas & Dr. Jack Clark, Radford College 1975-1979

I had both all four years. Senor Casas bravely attempted to teach me Spanish (i am miserable with foreign languages) but he also shared his life in Cuba as a wealthy lawyer with us, and how he and his family fled the island when Castro's regime selected his daughter as one of the children to go to Russia for "education". They left everything, and the only job he could find was teaching Spanish. He was a lovely man, full of humour, intelligence and humility.

Dr. Jack Clark was a biology teacher. He made learning so fun and so connected the courses he taught to the world around (and in us) that I took his classes from freshman general biology all the way through cellular bio senior year. He always pointed me out as a bad example to the younger class at the beginning of each course... I wore clunky leather mountain boots, tattered jeans, flannel shirts and an old army jacket with a can of coke in one pocket and a candy bar or bagel in the other, would slump down into my chair looking probably quite the derelict or at least decidedly NOT a proper young lady - LOL! (Did i mention his classes were inevitably at 8am? and I worked night shift at Radva Plastics factory?)
Anyhow - he would point me out and I would laughingly call him out with "yeah Jack, but who aces every exam you give?" and he would laugh out loud and concede the point that things are not always what they seem!
I still fondly remember him anytime I eat asparagus... or shortly afterwards anyhow!

[Tansy_Gold]

7. Charles and Spanish IV -- but not biology!

Biology and I never got along very well. From the frog dissection in Mr. Goins' class my freshman year in high school to the fetal pigs my freshman year at U of I, I just didn't like cutting things up. There are other stories there, too.

But I loved Spanish, loved all languages, and my fourth year of high school Spanish promised to be an exceptional class.

There were only 9 of us in the class, because one student who had signed up for it in the spring had moved during the summer. Regulations stated that elective courses would be cancelled if fewer than 10 students enrolled but somehow or other Charles kept us together through the crucial first week without cancellation: Tom S. and Pam M. and Joyce G. and Mary B. (my best friend) and Steve C. and Susan P. and Bob Y. and Sue M. and yours truly. Some of us had had Charles for Spanish III, too, so we were used to his slightly warped sense of humor, his love of puns, eagerness to open up for us wealth of culture and history from the Spanish-speaking world. He had attended college in Mexico City and his wife was Mexican, and he had been talking casually for at least the year before about how interesting it would be to take a group of students to Mexico City over spring break.

But he never did anything about it.

Our Spanish IV class met the first hour of the morning, so we nine were usually in the room before Charles arrived. One Friday in the early part of the school year, tired of hearing his musings about going to Mexico, we decided to get him either to do it or stop talking about it. We went on strike, refusing to speak a word until he agreed to make arrangements for our trip. The following Monday morning, he presented us with the itinerary of a chartered bus trip from Chicago to Mexico City and back. We were going to Mexico!!

Eventually, about 44 students signed up for the trip, and there would be three other chaperones in addition to Charles. A few weeks before departure, Charles handed each of us a packet with our hotel room assignments and our individual schedules for meals and events, as we would be split into smaller groups for some activities. (The whole group would go together to the Pyramids at Teotihuacán, the Castle at Chapultepec, and a few other spots.) Each evening Charles would take a very small group to some place special, off the beaten path, a place generally known only to locals.

As it turned out, Monday night was just me, my best friend Mary, and our favorite teacher. After dinner at the San Angel Inn -- the VP of Mexico was dining there that night, too, we were told -- we hit the Jorongo night club at the Hotel Maria Isabel. One of the musicians playing there that night was, according to Charles, the first husband of actress Maria Felix. We had watched Maria Felix in "Doña Barbara" in class.

From there we were off to Garibaldi Plaza and more mariachis and gift shops and finally we staggered back to our hotel at 3:00 a.m., exhausted, sober (Mary and I were only 17 1/2), but delighted. We were the only ones taken to the San Angel Inn and the Jorongo, and we knew we'd had a special treat that night that none of the others would enjoy.

This was in the spring of 1966, so I made do with an inexpensive little Kodak camera and just a few rolls of film. But with it I captured some never to be forgotten moments.

While waiting for a table in the nightclub, Charles and Mary and I wandered into a little art gallery off the hotel's main lobby. On a pedestal stood a strange looking bronze bust, nominally female with a spiky headdress. Charles walked over to it and looked at the brass plate affixed to the front.

"Mayan Virgin," he murmured around his pipe. Then stepped back and took another look before saying, "No wonder!"

Charles and the "No wonder!" girl were captured for posterity.





I haven't talked to Charles since September 2006. I owe him a phone call.



Tansy G.