My Grandma's
Story: Rock of Ages
I come from a long line of
educators. My grandmother, Nona
Kauffman, was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Northern Indiana.
Many of her students were Amish, and the others came from the local
farming community. She used to tell stories about these students and
could remember names and details of specific events many, many decades
later.
Memory was never an issue
for Grandma. She was an avid Scrabble player, wrote a weekly column for
her church newsletter until late in her 90s, and could rattle off long passages
of Shakespeare or full poems of Wordsworth or Browning well into her ninth
decade. She passed away soon after her
100th birthday, but lives on in many ways, as this story may show.
After I had been teaching
for a few years and Grandma was in her late 80s, I stopped in one day to talk a
bit, but mostly to listen. When I arrived for this particular visit, she
was excited about an encounter she had that morning with a former student.
Grandma had been down to the main office of the nursing home talking to
one of the secretaries when a head popped around the corner, and a woman who
was thinking of moving into the nursing home said, "Nona Kauffman, is that
you? I thought I recognized your voice."
This elderly woman, in her
70s herself, had been Grandma's student in the one-room schoolhouse in
Honeyville, Indiana, many years ago. Even after six decades had passed,
her former student still recognized the voice of her favorite teacher.
Grandma's comment to me as
I left that day: "You have picked the right profession. The rewards
of teaching will follow you all of your life."
My Story:
Classic Rock
About two weeks ago, I
received an email from a former student who both my wife and I had in class
when we first started teaching at Hesston Middle School in rural Kansas in the
early 1980s. Now an elementary teacher with middle school-age children of
her own, she has kept in touch with many of her former classmates. They had been trading school stories on
Facebook, and one of them posted a picture that stirred memories and led to her
email. This is the picture:
At Hesston Middle School in
the early 80s, all of the students were placed in homerooms. The students
chose names for their groups, designed and made t-shirts, and met weekly to
work on all the things a middle schooler might need to work on in order to be
successful. This t-shirt was from my one of my homeroom groups. How and why she kept this t-shirt is a
mystery, but I’m glad she did.
Since that first email, I
have heard from other of my ex-seventh graders. It has been great fun to
see what they are up to and all they have accomplished in the past 30 or so
years. I'm amazed, both at these students and that so many years have
passed so very quickly.
Time does fly when you're
having fun!
So have a great week, HSE.
Be secure in the knowledge that you do make a difference in the lives of
your students. Remember the words of a very wise and very wonderful woman
who once told me that the rewards of our profession last a lifetime. She
was right in the 1980s, and her words still ring true today.
Bring it home strong. Rock on!
Phil
“We must use time wisely and forever realize
that the time is always ripe to do right.”
--Nelson Mandela
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