Teacher Appreciation Week: Thanking Three Teachers

My high school biology teacher

I remember very few of the teachers I had from kindergarten through college. Some of them inspired fear – my kindergarten teacher who punished five-year-olds who didn’t follow the rules by shutting them in the cloak room and my third-grade teacher, Miss Cartwright, who paddled misbehaving students, including a boy who was paddled every morning before class started as a preemptive reminder to sit down and keep his mouth shut. Not surprisingly, I kept a low profile until fifth grade.

School was different that year because my teacher, Martin Hollander, believed our classroom should be a “democracy” in which we had a say in what we learned and were encouraged to share what was on our minds. Relieved of the fear I had of the authoritarian educators I had encountered prior to this, I started to raise my hand to ask questions and offer opinions. This worked out pretty well until Mr. Hollander had to leave the classroom and put me in charge of the lesson. Poor naïve me thought the class would follow my directions and work on our assignment. Of course, all hell broke loose and no one listened to my pleas that we complete the work we had been given. When Mr. Hollander returned, pandemonium reigned and he took away our democracy. Still, I adored him and felt empowered to speak my mind for the first time in school.

I don’t remember much about any other teachers until I encountered Stanley Delidow, my 10th grade biology teacher. Rumor had it he was a very tough teacher. I do remember being terrified that first day in his class, assuming my usual school demeanor of being quiet, keeping my hand down, and taking copious notes. For some reason, Mr. Delidow took me under his wing, choosing me to go on a field trip with three other students to the University of Michigan science museum.

Looking back on it, I have to wonder a bit about what he wrote in my 10th and 12th grade yearbooks (emphasis mine):

“I must admit – although I tried not to show it – you were my favorite, not only scholastically but socially, personality-wise. You’re the most. Best of luck in all future endeavors.” – 1961

“To one of the nicest students I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Brains and beauty are a fine combination – personality to boot. Best always.”  -- 1963

I was a diligent student, but never thought of myself as a social, extroverted type with a big personality. People called me a brain in high school, but never a beauty. In hindsight, his comments are a bit creepy, but for a teen starved for approval and attention from her father, who never attended any of her performances or events in high school, that year in Mr. Delidow’s biology class did make me feel special.

The teacher who actually shaped my academic future was Constance Young, my 12th grade English teacher. She was the cliché of the old-fashioned and very bright spinster teacher that was typical of my years in high school. She instilled a love of Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Blake, and Burns that lasted through college. We learned to write well by diagramming sentences and creating weekly essays. I remember being thrilled to read and discuss books like A Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gatsby, and The Scarlet Letter. Of course, there was also Shakespeare. I’m sure we read a couple of his plays that year, most likely Macbeth or Julius Caesar or Hamlet.

Miss Young also made us memorize and recite a Shakespearean sonnet. This created an uproar of protest from the class, but she stood her ground and claimed she was giving us a gift we would have forever. I know that’s true of mine, which I can still recite from memory 62 years later:

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This August, my husband and I will celebrate 57 years of marriage, so my sonnet is especially meaningful. Thank you to Miss Young for this gift and for inspiring me to be an English major in college. Thank you to Mr. Delidow for nurturing a part of myself I didn’t know existed. Thank you to Mr. Hollander for encouraging me to speak up and ask questions.

When I left teaching English at Niles East High School in 1971 to have my first baby, my homeroom students gave me this plate:

 Sadly, the plate broke, but its message remains intact. The Chinese proverb written on the plate, "Flowers leave part of their fragrance on the hands which bestow them," reminded me that what I taught my students hopefully was my gift to them but being their teacher brought me joy and was their gift to me. I hope each of these teachers who touched my life felt the joy of knowing that what they gave to me was a treasure for both of us.