It does take a village~

Good morning friends and family from my home on East 14th Street to yours, where ever that might be.  It's the early morning hours here and save for me and Oblio, not a soul is stirring on this block.  Good reason for that~only the "crazy" people like me are up.  The sane people?  Well, they are all asleep.  I have heard it said that as we get older, we require less sleep.  If that is true, then I am indeed getting older.  

This is the two-week mark from the end of school and as the days continue to flash by me, I've had plenty of occasion to remember the many children that I have come into contact with over nearly the last four decades.  I don't even have a good "guesstimate" of how many kids I've taught over my time as an educator.  Long ago, I stopped trying to keep count.  But I think I can suffice it to say that there's been more than a couple of them.  A teacher remembers each of them, in their own way, for the years to come ahead.  You know what?  I have loved them all, even the naughtiest of them.  Wait a minute, let me rephrase that...ESPECIALLY the naughtiest of them.  Even in their moments of "problem causing" instead of "problem solving", they have made a special place in my heart.  

Back in the days of corporal punishment at school, when teachers were allowed to spank students who had stepped over the line one too many times, I only had the need to spank one child.  He was a first grade little guy and after about a bazillion tries to make things work out differently for him, I finally took him to the principal's office and spanked.  You know I never forgot that and he didn't either.  After it was over, his mom and dad called to thank me for doing it.  They too were at their wit's end and for the days that followed that little guy became a great student, not only for me but for the teachers that had him later.  Even though I know I did the right thing by spanking, I always wondered in the back of my mind how that little guy must have felt after it happened.  Years later, many miles down the road, he found me one day.  He had grown into a tall and handsome young man, newly married and a little guy of his own.  I hardly recognized him as he sought me out when I was at Haven one day.  After he said to me, "Aren't you Mrs. Miller?  I think you were my first grade teacher", I knew right away it was him.  The very first thing he did was put his arm around me and give me a hug.  When he introduced me to his wife, the first words out of his mouth were..."She's the one who paddled my hind end when I was a little kid."  And then he turned to me and said, "Mrs. Miller, thanks for doing that.  I needed it and it helped me to grow up.  You did the right thing."  I'll never forget that day or that little boy.  Haven't spanked anyone since and I guess if I end my career in 2 weeks having to spank only one child in 35 years, well shoot that's a pretty good record :)  

It's soon time to get dressed and ready for another school day.  By the way, we are still in school you know?  :)  Teachers are teaching, learners are learning.  And that's the way it should be, not only in the classroom setting but every where a kid might be in this life.  I wanted to share a few photos of "school days" that have meant a lot to me.  They all have and it's hard to choose any one group of kids that I enjoyed any more than another.  What a blessing, to have had so many good experiences that I cannot choose which one is the most special.  Have a great day everyone and remember, if you could read this post then somewhere on this earth there is a teacher that you need to thank.  It all starts with the letters and their sounds and ends up with the reading of the "best sellers" of our times.

My last group of students to teach at Avenue A Elementary-Hutchinson, KS.  I had the chance to teach ESL students for my last 3 years there before retirement.  It was important to me to have a photo taken of all the kids that I worked with, just about 100 in all.  You would not believe the chaos involved with getting that many kids to stand still in front of the photographer for one minute.  I look at their little faces and just have to laugh.  What an experience for me to have, one that I will remember for a long time to come.

Little Nadonna and I-She "bit the dust" on the playground one day and broke her right arm.  For 2 months, we both shared in the misery of having to wear casts at the same time.  We became friends, maybe because the old saying "misery loves company" was true for us in its own weird way.  This was the day that we made lemonade from the lemons and after a trip to Walmart one Saturday afternoon, I brought back enough pairs of gloves for both of us to share during the cold days that would lie ahead.  It worked out great and we still laugh together when we think of it.  That little girl "saved me" and she didn't even know it.  When Mike and I get married, now just two weeks from today, she will be standing there with us.  Some day our broken arms will just be a memory but I will never forget that little kid and the time we both were fellow members of the "broken arm club."

Little Sadie-the only kid I ever knew who made it her mission in her 8-year old life to check on me every day after school was out.  The year she was a second grader, I could always count on the fact that about 3:12 p.m. the door to my classroom was always going to swing open and her little face would be peering around the corner.  She would always say the same thing, "Mrs. Miller, I just came by to check and see how you are doing.  Are you doing ok?"  Then she would proceed to make herself "to home" in my room, often times drawing her best renditions of what she thought that the two of us looked like together with a marker on my dry erase board.  If I was I lucky, she'd use the kind I could wipe off.  LOL, there were a few times that she did not.  I love that little one and Sadie was blessed in the fact that a lot of other people felt the same way about her at our school.  (thinking of my good friends and Sadie's teachers, Patti and Elizabeth)  I don't know where she is these days but wherever she has landed in this life, I hope that someone is watching out for her at school and helping her along the way.  She's worth it!  They all are.

See that cute little guy standing there....the one that is obviously not Amish?  That's my now over 6 foot tall son, Grahame Hemman.  I include Grahame's picture here because he endured what most kids don't have to~his mother was his teacher two years in a row.  For 16 years I taught at Yoder Grade School (a part of USD 312 at Haven) as the first and second grade teacher.  95% of the kids at school during that time were Old Order Amish and in this particular class, Grahame was the only "English" kid.   Even though he had me as his teacher for those two years, Grahame swears that he was not scarred by the experience LOL.  He was a good student, very bright.  The only bad grade he got in those two years was in handwriting and he still to this day remembers the grade he got every single time... "N" for needs improvement.  I would like to tell you that it has improved over the years...I would LIKE to tell you.  This photo shows the time when we made refugee boxes to send to the people of Bosnia during one of the many times of strife there.  We worked through the Mennonite Central Committee office in  North Newton, who in turn came to school and picked them all up for us.  I taught that class of children how to read and write but even  more important, I wanted to teach them to be grateful for what they had living here in America and remind them that in the world there were many places like Bosnia where the children weren't so fortunate.  I have never regretted so doing.  The man that my son grew up to be has made it this far in life because of the wonderful influences of a lot of teachers along the way.  To those educators, this mom will be forever beholden to you all.