I liked fourth grade. Third had been kind of unsettling, perhaps even disturbing for a naive little girl who knew nothing about the outside world but what she saw on TV, and that was make-believe. I had come face to face with people who lived a different lifestyle than me, but my fourth-grade teacher was so familiar and comfortable she could have been a member of my own family. Her name was Mrs. Bowers.
I don't remember the first time I saw Mrs. Bowers, I suppose she had been at our school as long as I had been there, but I knew all about her. I think Keith, my older brother, was in her class the year before me. Mom and Dad talked positively about her, the kids at school all wanted to be in her class, and I remember being very relieved when I looked at the bottom of my third grade report card and saw that she would be my teacher next year. It made the summer comfortable, and relieved a tiny bit of the apprehension I always felt on Labor Day Weekend.
You know, you would think a kid should really enjoy a holiday like Labor Day. We always did something fun, often going up to the cabin for the weekend, and on Monday afternoon we invariably got together with Grandma Johnson and our aunts and uncles and cousins for a big picnic. But I hated that day! Not because of the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, although I really disliked that yearly program too: it was soooooooooo long, and it circumvented all of our favorite TV shows: but I hated Labor Day because I knew the next day I had to go to school and my stomach was tied up in knots all day. By evening I could never enjoy the hamburgers and soda pop, not even the ice cream cones, because I felt like I was going to throw up. We would get home from our party early so we could pick out our clothes for the next day, bathe, have family prayer, and then jump into bed, all ready for a nice, peaceful nights sleep to get us ready for the first day of school, but I could never go to sleep. It was like Christmas Eve, only turned into a nightmare. Instead of feeling like my eyes were wired open with happy anticipation, they were cemented open with dread. Instead of waking up every fifteen minutes wondering if it was finally time to get up, I woke up every fifteen minutes worrying I had overslept and fearing I was going to have to get out of bed. Oh, I hated those Labor Day nights!
Thank goodness the year I went to fourth grade I didn't have to worry about my new teacher, at least. I still worried about the kids who would be in my class, whether I would remember all the stuff I had to do, if I would loose my lunch box or say something stupid or not have any friends, but I was comfortably happy to be in Mrs. Bowers room. And she turned out to be just as nice a teacher as I had heard.
Mrs. Bowers was probably not much older than my parents, but she had white, fluffy hair, a big smile, and she reminded me of a grandma, or maybe a Mrs. Santa Clause. She was kind and understanding, firm but just, and she told great stories! When kids didn't do their work she encouraged them to do better before she disciplined them, so most of us tried our hardest. I remember getting chastised for spending too much time playing paper dolls on my desk instead of working on whatever project we were supposed to be doing, but that's the only time I remember getting in trouble. I suppose that's a mark of how comfortable I felt in Mrs. Bower's class. I would never have spent any time doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing in another classroom. I was always afraid to get in trouble. But I didn't worry about Mrs. Bowers, so I spent a lot of time cutting out paper horses, mermaids, and princesses and princes to play with out on the playground with my friends. Kind of dumb, but we had fun.
Mrs. Bowers had a son on a mission in Mexico or South America, and she used to tell us stories about things that happened to him. I don't remember the particulars anymore, but I remember her coming to class one day very excited about a letter she had received from him describing how he had been miraculously saved from going over the edge of a cliff while driving in a car. It made me want to meet her son some day, which was the first time in my life I ever even thought about the fact that my teachers had children and a life outside of our classroom.
Years later I did meet one of her sons, I think it was this same one, Rusty Bowers. Rusty married my second cousin and although we were never close it made me feel good to know I had some kind of a relationship with a celebrity.
I really enjoyed fourth grade. Mrs. Bowers made learning history fun with her stories. She encouraged us to work on our penmanship until, after hours and hours of filling pages with small circles and straight lines, my handwriting became quite pretty. She motivated us to read by reading aloud wonderful books every afternoon when we came in from lunch, opening our minds to the limitless possiblities of stories we could find in our library. I'll never forget the afternoon she finished "Where the Red Fern Grows", hardly able to speak the final paragraphs because she was crying so hard, while everyone in our room, including the boys, had tears streaming down their faces. Mrs. Bowers wasn't able to help me enjoy math, but at least she was able to get me to pass, and although I wasn't a straight A student, I did ok. I loved her, and I loved fourth grade. I suppose she is the reason I chose to become a fourth grade teacher, myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment