I was up with the birds on Monday morning. I was far too excited to sleep. I had always enjoyed teaching, but never before had it affected me in quite this way; the eagerness of the people in the area had rubbed off on me.
The bell was to be rung at nine o’clock. I felt that I had already lived two full days that morning before nine o’clock arrived.
Dressing carefully, I did my hair in the most becoming way that I knew. It really was too fussy for the classroom, but I couldn’t reason myself out of it. I tried to eat my breakfast but didn’t feel at all hungry, so I finally gave up and cleaned up my kitchen area.
I left early for the classroom and dusted and polished, rearranged and prepared, and still the hands on the clock had hardly moved.
The first students arrived at twenty to nine. Cindy and Sally Blake were accompanied by their mother and father. Mr. Blake was a quiet man—but every family can use one quiet member, I decided. Mrs. Blake was chattering before she even climbed down from the wagon, and didn’t actually cease until the schoolroom door closed upon her departing figure.
The Clarks came together—seven of them. It took me a few moments to sort them all out, and the harder I tried the more confused I became. It helped when I learned that there were two families involved, cousins—three from one family and four from the other.
Mrs. Dickerson brought her small son in by the hand. I think she had hoped he would be shy and reluctant to leave her side, but his face brightened at the first glimpse of his school.
Others came too quickly for me to learn each name as they entered. I would have to wait until the bell rang and the students had taken their places—and their parents had returned home.
I smiled at the Peterson children. Else and Lars presented me with carefully wrapped packages. Their mother wanted the precious books to be returned safely without soil, so she had wrapped them in brown paper and tied them securely with string.
The morning was spent in organizing a roll call and trying to determine the grade level of each student. Even the older ones had previously had very little opportunity to learn, so it was going to be “back to basics” for the first few weeks of my teaching. I prayed that I would be able to present the simple lessons in a manner that would not offend the older students. It was difficult to include a girl of fourteen with a row of six-year-olds for a lesson on the alphabet or the phonic sounds without making her feel embarrassed, but I’d need to devise a way to do it.
Not all of the students were eager to attend school. I picked out three who, for one reason or another, seemed to prefer going their own way on this lovely fall morning.
Sally Clark seemed rather absent-minded and uncaring. She was fifteen and probably reasoned that if she had managed thus far without school, why bother now? Besides, she would likely marry in a few years, and she could already bake bread, make quilts and care for babies. Time spent in a class-room with a lot of little children seemed like a total waste of time.
Eight-year-old Andy Pastachuck may have wanted to learn, but it was clear that he wasn’t capable of learning very much. I was told that Andy had been kicked by a horse when he was three years old. The side of his head bore a rugged, vicious scar, and I concluded that Andy’s little mind bore a scar as well. I determined that I would do all that I could for him. With his older sister, Teresa, I longed to find some way to protect him from the cruel, angry world.
David Dickerson had no problem with ability. He was wiry, witty, and had a constant, seemingly uncontrollable energy. He wished to be at all places and involved in all things at once, and found it most difficult to sit still long enough for a fact to catch up to him. This six-year-old thrived on ideas rather than information and jumped quickly from one to another. If I can ever corral all that energy and steer it in the right direction, I thought, I’ll have an exceptionally capable student. In the meantime, David seemed to wish to be in the wheatfield, the playground, on his pony, up a pine tree—anywhere but quietly seated at a desk in the classroom. Still, he did have a hunger for knowledge, and I was sure that if I could only get him to sit still long enough, he would learn quickly.
By the end of our first day spent together, I had been able to introduce my pupils to the open door of learning; but I knew that many difficult days lay ahead before I would be able to sort them into legitimate classes. Certainly I couldn’t divide them by age. I would have to wait and discover their learning abilities.
I went home from my first day in the classroom excited and exhausted. Every student I had—and there were nineteen—needed individual tutoring. Would I be able to handle it? Where would the time come from? How long before some of them could work on their own?
It seemed that my only recourse was to prepare individual assignments, both after school at night and before school each morning. Then each member of the class would have something to work on as I took time with the individual lessons.
I sighed deeply at the awesome task that lay ahead of me. Reminding myself that it was a challenge but not an impossibility, I squared my shoulders as I entered the teacherage door.
I brewed some tea and carried the teapot and my china cup to my chair and sat down. Poking at some of the chair stuffing to make it fit me better, I decided I should get some sort of footstool so that I could put my feet up for a few minutes at the end of the day. I recalled seeing a small wooden crate in the storage shed. Surely I could find enough pieces of material in my sewing basket to cover it. I planned that it would be my next Saturday’s project.
As I relaxed in my big chair and sipped the hot tea, I thought about each student and how best I could teach him. As soon as I had drained my cup, I began preparing some simple assignments. I worked well into the late evening by the wavering light of the lamp. Tonight even the howling of the coyotes failed to distract me.
———
The week was a busy one. I arose early each morning to write assignments on the blackboard and to add last-minute ideas to the lessons that I had prepared on paper. The day was given entirely to the students. Already some of them were beginning to show abilities in one area or another. A small group was slowly emerging who would be able to take a forward step in arithmetic. Another group was ready to go on in the second primer. Two students showed real promise in art and three had musical ability.
Daily I felt frustrated by my lack of materials for teaching. If only I had . . . I often started thinking. But I didn’t have, so I tried to make up for the lack with creativity.
At the end of the classroom time, I lingered for a few moments to correct work and plan the next day, then rushed home, made my cup of tea and rested for a few moments in my overstuffed chair. All the time that I sipped, my mind refused to relax. It leaped from one idea to another, from plan to plan. As soon as my cup was empty I returned to work in the class-room, trying to put my ideas to work.
By the end of the week I was physically weary, but I was perhaps the happiest I had ever been in my life. I had planned to work on the footstool on Saturday, but instead I asked my students if they knew of anyone with whom I could ride into town, The growing list of items that I might find to assist me in the classroom prompted this request. I dreaded another long trip to town in a bumpy wagon, but I couldn’t very well hand the list over to someone else and expect him to do the shopping for me.
To my delight, Sally Clark brought word on Friday that her folks were going to town on Saturday and would be happy to pick me up at eight o’clock the next morning.