Teddy & the Class of ’93 Headline at Jackie Gleason Theatre

Because we all know the feeling of going back to school…

Here’s how a trip to the stationary store led to old school memories and a grand speech at the Jackie Gleason Theatre.

Bombarded with images of multi-colored notebooks, pencils, glue sticks, boxed crayons, yellow school buses, and backpack-wearing children dressed in their snazziest zippered jackets, crisp jeans, A-line skirts, and shiny sneakers – the month of September usually reminds us of one thing: Back To School.

For some, the idea of going back to school brings dreadful memories of an alarm clock buzzing in their ear in the dark of morning as their parents yank them out of their warm and toasty bed and into the kitchen for a cold and soggy bowl of cereal. For others, like myself, the excitement of not knowing which eraser (the yellow star-shaped one or the pink circle-shaped bubble gum smelling one) you want to whip out on your first day of school – is euphoric.

Today, I ask you to humor me. Let’s say you’re as obsessed about hole punchers, sharpeners, and college-ruled loose leaf paper as I am. Let’s pretend a trip to the stationery store is an ideal afternoon excursion. Today, we’re going pencil shopping!

At the stationery store, we ogle the wall of 4-pack, 8-pack, and multi-pack pencils…graphite pencils, propelling pencils, #2 yellow pencils, and #2 black pencils, when suddenly, the sound of voices escalating at the end of the aisle catches our attention.

A set of bewildered-looking parents squint their eyes and shake their heads in disbelief at a list apparently provided by their local Board of Education while their children swirl about them grabbing at items on the shelves.

“Why the heck do they need hand wipes! Don’t they have sinks at the school? They don’t even sell wipes in this section.”

“Why do they want so many single subject notebooks! Can’t I just buy them a five-subject notebook? It already comes with dividers.”

The parents struggle to stick to the list but the children have their own ideas about which items should make the cut. As their parents decide that the Spiderman-print pencils and the Hello Kitty 2-pocket portfolios are “not what the teacher asked for,” the children break down in tears and storm off but not before knocking over a poster board stand.

The moment is amusing at best, but a stark reminder that the back-to-school process is not all smiling children, Trapper Keepers, and matching lunchbox and Thermos sets.

Recent news headlines aside – of a select few teachers who have chosen to violate the Educators Code of Ethics – a teacher is this: an individual who has educated and trained themselves for a lifetime of knowledge sharing, curiosity piquing, wisdom imparting, confidence breeding, character building, power asserting, imagination awakening, explaining, demonstrating, motivating, and inspiring. It is a task that cannot be captured in a single sentence. A description of an occupation that even sounds exhausting. A profession that resembles an art form of sorts.

Historian and Educator Jacques Barzun had this to say on the subject: “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

Often described as a “thankless job” where students rush out at the sound of the bell leaving desks and chairs askew and papers floating in the air behind them, when the school year is over, teachers are often left to wonder if all their excitement for lesson planning and their enthusiasm at the beginning of the year, was in vain.

In his imaginative novel about journeying into the past, 11/22/63, Stephen King writes “We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late.”

It is a melancholy thought and one that fills me with nostalgia about my own classroom experiences and the ones who commandeered them – the teachers I never had a chance to thank.

We head home from the store with a new pack of mechanical pencils that I’m sure I will stare at for hours before deciding which color best suits my writing mood. With the Spiderman and Hello Kitty revolt still fresh in my mind, I decide to dig through my photo albums for any semblance of my school-age years. We rifle through and we come to this…

A photo of me on my last day of 1st grade.

It’s a photo of me on my last day of first grade. My unkempt hair, super tan skin (It was sunny in Florida!) and the hands that are covering the sad look on my face.

And in a moment straight out of the animated children’s TV series, The Magic School Bus – the episode where the bus shrinks under the leadership of everyone’s favorite teacher, Ms. Frizzle, and flies into a little girl’s nose to explore a lesson on molecules and the sense of smell – we are instantly transported back to school. Funny the way nostalgia works…

We find ourselves in a dark stairwell where I stand wearing my bike-riding flamingo print shorts and an oversized backpack. My eyes burn as I hold back tears.

My mother growls behind us “Turn around. Don’t be turkey! This is your last day of school and I want a picture!” I wipe my eyes and nervously bite my hand to stop my bottom lip from quivering. I turn around and my mother snaps her photo, squealing with excitement.

Standing in the doorway to the left of my mom is my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Moss. Today, on this last day of school, I couldn’t look at Mrs. Moss as she hugged me goodbye. She said many nice things to me but, overcome by emotion, all I could do was nod.

Kindergarten had been a blur of play times, nap times, and snack times. But then came first grade and Mrs. Moss was a sweet grandmotherly woman whose hugs were contagious and whose enthusiasm for reading and adventure were unparalleled.

Mrs. Moss’ classroom was a reader’s haven. In a corner of the classroom sat all of our favorite Scholastic Book Clubs books. This reading corner was carefully guarded by Teddy, an oversized stuffed bear that Mrs. Moss brought in to encourage us to read aloud. We’d individually visit the corner to practice our reading skills in front of an audience of one – a non-judgmental Teddy, who sat quietly listening, his one ear erect with interest and an affirming grin on his face. 

Mrs. Moss is proof of the importance of building a strong foundation. First grade is just that: our first real grade school class. It is a sign of things to come. There are no nap times, no half days, no mid-day visits from mommy. Only you, the class, and the teacher. Mrs. Moss made the transition an easy one.

We manage to escape the dark stairwell and my photo-obsessed mother and find ourselves in a classroom decorated with American flag banners and golden stars. I recognize it as Mr. Fern’s 5th grade class. My first male teacher, who showed up to class every day wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and tie with some sort of military insignia on it. He was an Air Force veteran with a crew haircut and a slight southern drawl in his speech. Mr. Fern loved to teach us about the government and U.S. History. A photo of a uniform-clad Mr. Fern flanked by a younger-looking former President George Bush, Sr. was proudly posted above the wall-mounted pencil sharpener.

There is a knock on the door and I remember it is the day that I meet Ms. Williams.

The Principal arrived to inform us that the results of a test I had taken were in and I was being transferred to another class. The one and only class in the entire school designated for gifted and talented students. I cried at the thought of leaving all of my classmates behind. Mr. Fern and the Principal tried to console me as I sobbed all the way down the hall to meet my new teacher.

Ms. Williams was a stoutly, curly-haired, African-American woman, who wore pleated Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt that rested too tightly against her large bosom. Her face was stern with a prominent gold tooth on the upper left corner of her mouth.

Ms. Williams’ classroom.

Ms. Williams aggressively opened the classroom door and demanded to know who was interrupting her poetry hour. A dozen curious little faces peeked out from behind her. It appeared that my transfer was as much of a surprise to her as it was for me. She scowled as she escorted me into the room, “Great!  Now she’s going to break up my soul train.” A comment I didn’t quite understand, but one that I felt implicated that I was different; an outlier of sorts.

My suspicions proved wrong when I was quickly befriended by a little girl named Tiffany, who wore a myriad of colorful ball ties in her hair and, as a result of a birth defect, was born with an extra pinky on each hand. She and all the other kids in the class soon became my new best friends.

For some reason though, I couldn’t shake Ms. Williams’ comment about the “soul train,” so I precociously asked her what she meant by it. She laughed nervously recalling that she had even made such a comment and earnestly explained that Soul Train, was a musical television program that, over the years, featured all varieties of R&B, hip hop, funk, jazz, disco, gospel, and soul artists. It was a TV show that she related to culturally and one that symbolized not only the rhythm with which she ran her classroom, but also the “soul” that, up to that moment, she thought could only be understood by her class which consisted of all African-American students – a “train” which she originally believed that I would derail. She looked away with repentant eyes then suddenly hugged me. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m sorry.”

That year, Ms. Williams and I would teach each other something very valuable. She would learn a lesson in diversity and first impressions. I would learn that change is sometimes good for us and adaptation is key.

Ms. Williams’ vulnerability was surprising and rare. She was a tough cookie and ran a tighter ship than Mr. Fern with all his military training. She was a no-nonsense, no chatting, no fooling around, no goofing off, kind of a teacher, and we secretly loved that about her. We had the most fun simply learning and knowing that with each bit of knowledge we absorbed, we were one step closer to something. A “something” we wouldn’t fully appreciate until much later in life.

Ms. Williams encouraged reading, dreaming, exploring, and questioning. She stressed the value of knowing who you are and where you come from. She taught us the importance of speaking up for yourself and those in need of a strong voice.

Every day, we had a poetry hour in which we’d recite poems, word for word, or else we’d have to write any missed words one hundred times. We’d recite motivating poems like “Winners Take Chances” and those that warned us of life’s complexities like Dorothy Law Nolte’s “Children Learn What They Live.” But Ms. Williams’ absolute favorite poem – one that we’d recited while standing on our feet, our backs tall and straight, whose words we bellowed like an army – was “Somebody’s Child.”

She allowed us access to poems and books that were representative of the time were growing up in; poems that crushed boundaries and sometimes even broke rules. I never realized why she had us cross out words like Jesus Christ and Satan, words like abortion and sex, HIV and crack. Her instructions were “Take your pencil and cross out those words with a single line.” Almost as if she knew that, years later, we’d look back on those same pages and see that, although we weren’t allowed to say or speak on those things in the classroom, and especially at that age, the words would remain visible to us and, one day, we’d inquire about their significance on our own.

That year, I was named 5th grade class Valedictorian. With Ms. Williams’ help, I prepared a speech that I’d have to read in front of the massive crowd that would fill the famed Jackie Gleason Theatre (now the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theatre) on graduation day.

Wearing my yellow tulle dress with puffed sleeves, white ankle socks, and my first pair of heeled shoes, I nervously walk up to the podium and see Ms. Williams standing just off-stage behind the curtain. I think about the poems and all her efforts to build us up. I think about Mrs. Moss, Teddy, and the reading corner.

I watch as Ms. Williams pulls her forearm up and down as if she’s pulling a train horn. She winks at me and mouths the words “Choo Choo.” I smile, take a deep breath and recite my speech…

We, the Class of 1993…

I’m grateful that nostalgia allows for life’s little amendments; opportunities to go back and reconcile.

My mother bought this 42 years ago for her 1st day of Community College.

I find it interesting that we are here, back in school revisiting these two very memorable and inspiring women that I met so many years ago and who sadly, may no longer be with us in the present.  Stephen King’s words echo:

“…Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late.“

Somewhere in the distance I think I hear Michael Jackson’s song Heal the World playing. That was my graduation song. And suddenly, like a compressed cellulose sponge that expands at the touch of water – like a science experiment in Ms. Frizzles cartoon classroom – I abruptly snap out of my daydream. I begin to gather up the photos and the poems and place them in an envelope for safe-keeping. On the front of the envelope I write the words: Thank You.

And now I wonder – do teacher’s remember us?