Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.
W. E. B. Du Bois
I began tenth grade the next year. My whole family was amused by the name of my new school—Stonewall Jackson High School—since Dunbar and David had gone to Robert E. Lee High in Virginia. We were making a tradition of calling on Confederate generals for our education.
I didn’t feel it was necessary for my father to go with me to meet the teachers this time. Many of them had already heard the word that had drifted up from the junior high that I was a hard-working, straight-A student. Two of the high school teachers knew my father and had spread the word to expect me. Also, I felt more confident this year, since many of my friends from Lincoln would be at Stonewall.
I couldn’t believe how much bigger Stonewall was than Lincoln. There were about two thousand students at the high school, twice as many as at Lincoln. My first grateful discovery was that there was no public-address system for announcements. Each homeroom teacher read the memos and then I was able to read them myself. Now I could decide for myself whether something was important or not.
Mrs. Barth was my English teacher. She was a warm person and proved to be one of my strongest advocates over the next three years. She explained to the class that I was deaf, that I needed to sit in the first row, and why. She told the class that all they had to do to communicate with me was look me in the face and enunciate naturally.
Because of Mrs. Barth’s matter-of-fact introduction to my speech peculiarities, I had an easy transition into her class. Under her influence, the students helped make English pleasurable and easy to follow. Two or three of the students were willing to help me with notes and to fill in important details I may have missed. Another wonderful thing about Mrs. Barth was that she was always willing to share the school gossip with me. The feeling in her English class was one of maturity. We discussed challenging issues, including the problems the school was experiencing, and we tried to find solutions.
Mrs. Barth gave us a lot of homework, and I often read and discussed the poetry and literary works with my parents. Then, when I was in class, I felt I could participate on an equal footing with the other students. If I hadn’t previously talked through and understood everything I’d read, I would have gotten lost in the class discussions. The secret to lipreading successfully was to know the material in advance since I needed to learn how words I had read looked on the lips. Mrs. Barth was easy to lipread, and she educated the class to include me by facing me so I wouldn’t get lost during discussions.
Unfortunately, I was far less comfortable with my Latin II teacher, Mrs. Bush. She was cold, strict, and rigid. The atmosphere of her class dampened my interest in Latin as I’m sure it did for others. She let me sit in the front row, but she didn’t want me to disrupt her by asking questions during class, so she assigned Jennifer, a student, to sit next to me. I had to ask my questions of Jennifer, and she would either answer them or later ask Mrs. Bush and write down the answers. I couldn’t lipread Mrs. Bush at all, so I relied heavily on Jennifer and the notes she took.
I thought of dropping the class, but I had to have one more year of Latin and Mrs. Bush was the only Latin teacher at Stonewall Jackson. I was doing the equivalent of an independent study. I didn’t understand a thing that was going on in class, and Jennifer’s notes weren’t always that helpful.
As time went by, I sensed resentment building up in Jennifer. After all, she hadn’t volunteered to take notes and help me. The teacher had appointed her, giving her no choice in the matter. I felt bad for Jennifer. She was irritated with me for being so dependent on her, but at the same time she probably thought I didn’t need her help, since I did well on my tests. What she didn’t realize was that being near her motivated me to work hard and do as well as she did. I admired her abilities and was sad that she never allowed us to become friends. I wondered how long it would take her to get over the resentment she had built up against me.
As the year progressed, I felt more and more like a recluse in that room. I didn’t understand most of the conversations going on in the class. I missed out on all the excitement and got little or no feedback from the teacher or my fellow classmates. It was all due to an unreceptive teacher. Even so, I was surprised to see how well I did with my grades. But that didn’t make up for being left out.
Halfway through the second semester of Latin II, Mrs. Bush fell ill and couldn’t continue teaching. No one was told what was wrong, but the rumor was that she had cancer. I wondered if physical suffering had made her cold, aloof, and remote. Mrs. Brawley, a substitute Latin teacher, finished out the school year. For me, it was a positive change. All of a sudden, I got the attention I needed. Mrs. Brawley released Jennifer from her obligations to me, a big relief for both of us. My attitude toward Latin II changed so much that I even decided the next year to take the leap into Latin III.
I was terrified when I first arrived in Mr. Hamilton’s geometry class, not of him but of the subject. Yet I soon came to love geometry and eventually was doing so well that I even tutored other students.
I had a positive experience in biology with Miss Blackwood, a young woman just out of graduate school. She accepted me immediately and I liked her very much. It wasn’t always easy to follow what Miss Blackwood was saying, but she was always willing to have me stay after class to review things I missed or misunderstood. She was popular with all the students. We loved her easygoing attitude and abiding confidence in us. She asked for a volunteer to sit next to me to take notes that I could copy.
Other classmates kept me abreast of underground quiz alerts. These warnings circulated among the students, telling of upcoming tests that teachers would “pop” on us. It was a good thing I had someone to sift out the important stuff for me, because there was so much talk to sort through every day. Everyone talked about everything! To me it was like bits of fluff flying through the air, and each person had to decide which pieces to catch and use. I was spared from having to deal with the minutiae of conversations but always grateful to have someone signal me and say, “Here’s something you need to know.”