Did you have a favorite teacher in
school? I had three: Miss Dewey for 1st,
2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade Art, Mr. Garber for
U.S. History my senior year of high school, and Miss Campbell was my high school gym teacher. The pumpkin is one of my 4th
grade drawings for Halloween. Seems
appropriate to post here today.
I was one of those right-brain
learners back when schools thought the only way to teach was the way left brain
individuals thought and learned. Miss Dewey understood my right brain way of
thinking and it worked well for me. Unfortunately she was only in my class for an
hour one day a week. She always gave me an A and sometimes an A+. I didn’t get
another A+ until I was in college.
Art is also the reason Mr. Garber
is a favorite. He too understood we aren’t all left-brain learners. He gave us an option at the end of the semester,
a term paper or a project of our choice that depicted something we had studied
during that year. I choose to do an oil
painting of a plantation with hard to see slave quarters behind it, visible only
if one looked closely. I got an A and he asked to keep the painting. Of course I let him. Now I’m sorry I didn’t
get a photo of it but that was 1957, I was more interested in a grade than
keeping track of the painting.
Miss Campbell had nothing to do
with art so why was she a favorite? My
other love was water, being in it or on it. It still is but that’s an aside. Swimming
was part of gym in high school and Miss Campbell was one of the teachers. She selected a few of us for Synchronized
Swimming. We were good! We demonstrated
at a major university. Unfortunately we got no recognition from our school, girls
didn’t do sports. But it didn’t matter,
to me. I was in the water and loving every minute of it.
I wanted to continue swimming in
college so I signed up for a class.
After the initial swim where the teacher put us through the paces the instructor
told me I couldn’t take the class. Maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, I
had to ask anyway. Her answer, “I can’t
teach you anything.” What a bummer, I guess Miss Campbell was a better teacher than she was given credit for. However, not being selected to be in the synchronized swim class prompted me to take Senior Life Saving and Water Safety Instruction. They
gave me more time in the pool and prepared me for a job as a lifeguard during
summer break. Good choices.
And another of my 4th grade drawings....
No comments:
Post a Comment