Letter From America: Night School
"Her bright accepting humour warmed them to her and her methods. None of them was afraid or anxious to expose his or her thoughts and ideas, however entrepreneurial they were, to the lady who looked them straight in their eyes and who not only lauded, but applauded, their gallant efforts, aspirations, and amazing achievements...''
Ronnie Bray's wife Gay has all the attributes required of an inspirational teacher. But all Gay's talents were put to the test by poorly equipped inadequate buildings when she started to teach Night School.
Read also Ronnie's memory-rich autobiography by clicking on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
My wife, Gay, is a school teacher. She has taught thousands of pupils having taught in Arizona's public schools, served as a school librarian for ten years, taught in Las Vegas for five years, and most latterly taught gifted children in the Gifted Education programme again in Arizona, until she retired from teaching day school late in 1998 when we were close to being married, following which we would move to England for a season.
Since that time she has taught Night School. She moves from school to school as required, and teaches the age group she is appointed on each occasion. These experiences leave her exhausted, frustrated, and apprehensive. Her teaching is never without obstacles of one sort or another, all of which are common to all pedagogues, but last night’s Night School presented difficulties of a different order.
Last night, her problems were nothing to do with students or classrooms supplies, which are the common substance of her teaching anxieties and irritations. Last night she attempted to teach at a school that had no toilet facilities for its students. The students, after searching the building for lavatories, took to shielding each other in the playgrounds to relieve themselves when they could wait no longer.
Gay was shocked that such basic needs had not been addressed and provided. Whereas all her previous sorting out has been with unruly students and disappearing or unobtainable but essential classroom supplies, last night she bearded the school administration in their den, demanding that it provide the requisite amenities or else she would take the matter to the District School Board.
The school administrators were shocked. They hummed and hawed, and explained haltingly that Gay ought not to expect them to put toilets in their building because it was an old one and fitting in plumbing was ‘problematic.’ And there the matter rested.
Gay told me all about it this morning. She always reports her night’s teaching experiences, and they are never identical apart from the usual obligatory elements of frustration and having to face insurmountable obstacles that prevent the smooth operation of her classroom, and sometime prevent any kind of classroom operation at all!
Sometimes she has to explore several shops that sell teaching supplies, but can never find what she needs, either because they have sold out or because they don’t make that item any more. Sometimes she gets into her classes only to discover that the chairs, desks, and tables are not there. She has to spend time scouring the school buildings trying to locate enough furniture to set up her classroom ready for the arrival of her pupils.
Her worst times are always in the couple of weeks immediately to the beginning of the school terms. Then, everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and it is gruelling for a teacher who is not only dedicated to her craft, but also dedicated to her students, most of whom called her ‘Mrs K’ from her surname, ‘Kleinman.’ Mrs K was beloved by her students because she relates to them as perfectly as any mentor can relate to the mentored. She taught them how to be hungry for knowledge, and made them excited to learn by inquiring.
Mrs K led the gifted to explore far ahead of her own abilities, teaching them to trust their own special minds and talents, enabling them to feel confident in crossing normal horizons and boundaries to explore distant vistas that most can not even dream about. She encouraged thinking outside the boxes that trammel pedestrian minds, and she unlocked the sparkling springs of wisdom with which a kind heaven had endowed them.
Her bright accepting humour warmed them to her and her methods. None of them was afraid or anxious to expose his or her thoughts and ideas, however entrepreneurial they were, to the lady who looked them straight in their eyes and who not only lauded, but applauded, their gallant efforts, aspirations, and amazing achievements.
Mrs K made them feel safe with themselves and with the differences they acknowledged in themselves, which are blessings not extended to all gifted children by an academic world that does not always understand them, and which is tuned not to accept them, but rather to consider them inattentive troublemakers in need of swift kicks in the britches.
Mrs K held their, often fragile, souls and rising minds in her gentle hands and encouraged them to blossom as they were disposed. Gently she watered and nurtured their development, and was often amazed at the heights to which their liberated ideas soared, knowing that it was only a matter of a few years before the world would benefit from their abilities when they were wedded to their vocations.
As a librarian she opened the world of research to young minds that had often never seen a real book at home. She showed them how to use the library system to find the materials they needed either for a class project or for their personally enjoyment. She read every child’s book published, so she could advise and recommend suitable brooks to each individual who went to seek her help.
She laid out the world on the library walls through maps, and information posters, opening to burgeoning minds an understanding of something beyond the edges of their own town, beyond the mountain ranges they could see in the distance, and encouraged them to cross oceans to find cultures so different that they seemed to be fictional. She launched them into outer space, and plunged them into the deepest abysses of the world’s mighty ocean, to see creatures that were once thought not to exist.
She used their eyes, ears, noses, senses of taste and touch, to see, smell, hear, taste, and feel the world, and then taught them different ways of thinking about what they had experienced; how to challenge commonplace understandings, how to avoid the prejudices that fulminated all around them, how to question perceived wisdom, how to challenge notions that did not seem right, and how to be comfortable expressing themselves and their ideas to those who were resistant to change.
So why should such a teacher have such terrible experiences at Night School? Her long years of experience as a grade school have taught her that all problems are solvable al least to the point where instruction can proceed and students can benefit thereby. So why all the angst? The key to understanding this lies in knowing that Gay hardly ever ventures out of the house at night, and when she does it is not to teach school, but to visit friends.
Another key is knowing that Gay and I have been married for more than seven years and she has not been ‘Mrs K’ since December of nineteen ninety-eight. But in dreams that come to her several times a week she is back at school where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. It is after a session at ‘Night School’ that she welcomes the morning with most enthusiasm, and is glad to be roused from her sleep. She feels a tremendous sense of relief – until the next time she is summoned to Night School!
Copyright © 2006 Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Other stories at:
http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
~Albert Einstein
