I had a very unusual teacher in third grade.
See– and forgive me if I end up getting the facts wrong (though I don’t think it is particularly important)– I don’t think she was actually much of a teacher at all. If I recall correctly she was originally involved with theatre; an actress or something. I don’t know why she decided to teach elementary school. But she did.
She was very “different”. She was the definition of “artsy”. She played show tunes on the piano and she was married to a Jackson Pollock-esque abstract artist who was probably almost three times her age.
Not surprisingly, her class was not your typical third grade class. When other kids were doing the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of their class day, we were singing songs from the “Annie” musical and reciting poems by Robert Frost. She spent hours a day reading us the works of Roald Dahl. “Storytime” after lunch was only supposed to consist of one chapter but she was so good at doing the voices that we would beg her to read three or four of them at a time, and of course she couldn’t resist.
Let’s see, what else did we do in that class? We wrote haiku. We painted still life paintings. We did creative exercises that involved closing our eyes and imagining that we were mouse-sized elephants that lived in burrows.
One day we sat in a circle and went around and one by one every single kid talked about their religious beliefs or lack there-of, and what we did on a typical Sunday. There was no prejudice, there was no bigotry, no debate, just pure and simple curiosity, understanding, and acceptance. And we were a pretty eclectic and multicultural bunch. To this day I have never seen religion talked about so civilly as it was that day in a classroom full of third graders.
We performed a play of “Where the Wild Things Are”. It was pretty art nouveau. We monsters wore paper sacks over our heads that had been painted by the teacher’s husband so we looked like walking Picasso paintings. We had a jazz number in the middle of the story and lots of crazy abstract props.
Of course this was all too good to last– if I understand correctly we were her first and only third grade class. I don’t know the details, and I was what, 8 years old back then? …so I wasn’t even paying attention, but I caught a whiff of rumor that there was some contention between our teacher and the school board and some of the parents. They said she was too weird, too “out there”; we spent too much time daydreaming and doing art and not enough time doing actual third grade coursework, or something. So she disappeared the next year. I never saw her again. I heard a rumor that she went to teach high school, but I don’t know.
I had a lot of really good teachers growing up, but I find myself wondering about my third grade teacher more than any of them. I wonder what happened to her and what she’s doing now. Wherever she is, I hope she never stopped reading stories or letting kids pretend that they were mouse-sized elephants.
Cause man, that class was awesome.