Beneath the old cottonwood tree there once stood a one-room school house. My mother went to school there as a girl, a short walk from home along the Iowa country road. Misty mornings on a road between cornfields and soybean fields can often conjure up ghosts.
I took this morning walk with the dog while I was visiting my old Iowegian home, and I was writing my fictional story Magical Miss Morgan in my head, not yet having had time to sit down and write. I was reflecting on times long past and a school long gone, though Miss Morgan’s story is really about my own teaching experience. Miss Morgan is in many ways me. But I am not a female teacher. I am a goofy old man. So, why am I writing the main character as a female?
Well, the ghosts from the old school house heard that and decided to send an answer.
Miss Mennenga was my third grade and fourth grade teacher from the Rowan school. The building I attended her classes in has been gone for thirty years. Miss M herself has long since passed to the other side. So when she appeared at the corner… Yes, I know… I have said countless times that I don’t believe in ghosts, but she had the same flower-patterned dress, the glasses, the large, magnified brown eyes that could look into your soul and see all your secrets, yet love you enough to not tell them to anyone else. Suddenly, I knew where the character of Miss Morgan had actually come from. I also realized why I was drawn to teaching in the first place. Teachers teach you more than just long division, lessons about the circulatory systems of frogs, and the Battle of Gettysburg… They shape your soul.
“You remember getting in trouble for doing jokes in class when you were supposed to be studying your spelling words?”
“Yes, Miss M, but I didn’t make any noise.. they were pantomime jokes that I stole from watching Red Skelton on TV.”
“But you pulled your heart out of your chest and made it beat in your hand. You had to know that was going to make the boys smirk and the girls giggle.”
“I did. But making them happy was part of the reason God put me there.”
“But not during spelling. I was trying to teach math to fourth graders. You interrupted.”
“You made that point. I still remember vividly. You let me read the story to the class out loud afterwords. You said I needed to use my talent for entertaining to help others learn, not distract them from learning.”
“I was very proud of the way you learned that lesson.”
“I tried very hard as a teacher to never miss a teachable moment like that. It was part of the reason that God put you there.”
“And I did love to hear you read aloud to the class. You were always such an expressive reader, Michael. Do you remember what book it was?”
“It was Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary. How could I have forgotten that until now? You made me love reading out loud so much that I always did it in my own classes, at every opportunity.”
I remembered the smile above all else as the lingering image faded from my view through the eyes of memory. She had a warm and loving smile. I can only hope my goofy grin didn’t scare too many kids throughout my career.
I needed a post for 1000 Voices that was about reconnecting with someone. I could’ve used any number of real life examples from everything that has happened to me since poor health forced me to retire from teaching I could’ve written any number of things that would not make me feel all sad and goopy about retiring and would not make me cry at my keyboard again like I am doing now… like I did all through that silly novel I wrote… even during the funny parts. But I had to choose this. A debt had to be paid. I love you, Miss M… and I had to pay it forward.
Catch a Falling Star 
All That Really Matters
This is a classic repost from June of 2020
I was not able to post yesterday for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is the turmoil caused by this nation trying to come to terms with those sins of the past that come back to haunt us and hunt us in the present.
I am an old white man. I suffer from “white privilege” in ways I can’t explain to some of my white friends back in Iowa, a State that was almost entirely white when I was growing up there. (And I pray that I grew UP, not just old.)
I learned yesterday that it matters how you put in order the things that you can say on matters of race. You can’t just say, “Black lives matter” to some white people. They will angrily insist that “All lives matter.” They will then proceed to tell you that you are being a racist when you suggest that black people are somehow more important than white people. I learned that you should say instead, “All lives matter, which means black lives certainly matter too. And the debate now is about a few recent black lives that were treated like they didn’t matter, and so, their lives ended in being murdered.” You can’t give white people a reasonable-sounding way to get out of admitting that, or they will. (See, I can be a bit racist too. I sometimes have a hard time believing all white people have positive human feelings in them somewhere.)
It has often, in my teaching career, been a disadvantage to be a white male. Black kids don’t believe you can see them as a good person. If you have to call them down for misbehavior, the worst ones will automatically assume it is about their race and not their behavior. A good teacher needs to listen more than they talk. You have to get them to open up about what happens in their lives that makes them behave the way that they do. You have to make them understand that you actually care about them and want to help. You have to earn their trust to get their best learning behavior. And being white makes that all so much harder. Not just with Afro Americans. Hispanic kids too. Vietnamese kids too. And I promise you, if you take the time to really get to know a kid… from any race or culture… you will discover that underneath it all, there are no bad kids. You stand a very good chance of learning to love them… no matter their racial or cultural differences from you.
And as an old white man, I suffer the disadvantage of never being able to truly understand what it feels like to have to worry that, at any moment, the police might kill you with a gun, or press the life out of you with a knee on your neck… just because of the color of your skin. That is in no way a fair thing that black men, black women, and black kids have to worry about that.
I am saddened and frustrated too that I can’t do any more to correct this terrible injustice than I am doing. I can’t attend protests because of my poor health and the pandemic that will probably kill me anyway. I am too old and crippled and broke to do any more than write this essay and post things on social media that make some of my old white friends angry and ready to argue.
I feel bad. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, and too many more diminish me, make me hurt in my heart. And all I can do about it is tell you that there needs to be more love in this world, and less hate. And I hope maybe you have a little more of it to add to the world. After all, that’s all that really matters.
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