excellent teachers

Our own Geetha Thomas is an excellent teacher. She is in our life group and I saw her last night. Wow. She has some interesting stories. And she has a lot she deferentially keeps between herself, her husband, and God. Each year they give her a most difficult class. She asks us to pray for her. She works especially hard. She cares for each one. Each year they all pass the TAKS test which means she has raised them all several grade levels in one year.

There is no one way to become a master teacher. This is taking me down memory lane.

I remember my Low Second Grade teacher Miss Woods. (She would be Ms. Woods today.) After close to 50 years I actually can remember most of my elementary school teachers. It helped that when I was in high school I used to make lists. But I can do it from memory.

Miss Woods claim to fame is that when we would play "Seven Up" she used to tickle us. Now I don't think anyone would stand for that today. Modern ideas say do not touch a child. There are several reasons for that. Not all have to do with ideas about child molestation.

Anyway we loved being tickled. And we loved her. We loved it so much that we lobbied with Miss Woods that she should be our teacher for High Second Grade. It was not done but probably a mixture of Miss Woods and our parents lobbying the principal got it to happen. I think we had an exercise where we wrote letters to the principal asking that she let us stay with her. I cannot imagine that it was her idea. She actually seemed very reticent. She got us to agree to work very hard and not disappoint her if she agreed to try to get an exception.

One of us must have volunteered us to do it. We all thought it a great ideas and she, seeing a wonderful teacher opportunity, allowed us to write these compositions.

OK, so much in those past paragraphs to define. First High and Low. That came from the practice of mid-termers. Second grade is second grade now, fall and spring semesters. But I was a mid-termer. That means I started in January. My first days of first grade started during the spring semester. Our little elementary school had three classes of regular termers and one class of mid-termers. The regular termers started their year in September just as all kids do now. Our class was much the same for six years. We were probably together in kindergarten too but that I really do not remember.

Any for us spring semester was called the "low" semester as in Low - 1st or (L-1st). The fall semester was High - 1st, just backwards from the regular classes.

So I had Miss Woods for the spring semester of 2nd grade. And then after the summer vacation we got her back again for H-2nd grade. Actually four students were deemed too smart to stay with us and they moved to another class. This brought on a lot of tears by us (this was mostly girls) and the girls themselves. I think the four moving out for the semester were all girls. This is not as surprising as you might think because our class only had six boys and probably twenty girls. I am pretty sure at least one of the girls soon came back as she was not working too well without her regular friends. I cannot remember, they may have all come back eventually. They did after this one semester anyway. I do remember the big scene. I'm sure I did not cry. Hmmm. Maybe I did. ;-)

Think about the tickling teacher reminded me of "Seven Up". Anyone remember that wonderful game? I was actually never any good at it. The girls got to giggle at me. I was mortified. For those who do not remember this is how it goes. Seven people are "up", standing in the front of the class. The rest of us are supposed to hide our eyes. We would lay our heads on our desks and sort of wrap our arms around our head. This way our eyes were not showing. Even if we had our eyes open we could not see. So then the seven people would tip toe around and tap one person and then run back to the front. Then the teacher would say, "open your eyes" and the seven people tapped would stand. Then each would try to guess who touched them. If you could guess you got to replace them up front. As I said I was never any good at it. If I was tapped I never could tell who did it. If did get to be up front my poker face was awful. The person I picked could look into my eyes and I would break up. I rarely made it a second round. Still I loved the game. I got just enough attention. Yeah the ham in me was coming out. Does anyone play Seven-Up any more? Does the touching make it verboten in a modern classroom? Is it felt that this would wasting valuable time? I wonder.

I should ask Mrs. Thomas about that next time I see her.