Elementary School Teachers: Matt’s perspective

As I expected, I remember considerably less about my elementary school teachers than Kelli, but I seem to remember more details about the ones I do remember.

Oddly enough, I remember kindergarten better than the following two years combined. My teacher was Mrs. Dubois. I loved her. I remember her being kind, patient, and in my tiny mind, a freakin’ genius.

I can still remember specific lessons that she taught us to this day. I can still picture specific pages of our math workbook. I remember learning about sets and basic addition and subtraction. Every time I learned something new, I assigned her all the credit.

There are many reasons I became a teacher, but I suspect it began in kindergarten with Mrs. Dubois.

Mrs. Dubois taught us the alphabet using letter people: large, inflatable characters that represented each letter. I loved those letter people, and Mrs. Dubois must have known it, because when she replaced a leaky Mr. R with a new one, she gave the old Mr. R to me to take home and keep. Mr. R had rubber bands for hair. I thought that was just about the cleverest idea in the world.

Apparently the letter people were associated with an educational television program at the time, complete with video and song. I recall the songs a little, but I don’t think we ever watched any videos about them.

Mrs. Dubois was the first teacher to discipline me. I can remember being send to the corner for the first time. I stood beneath the American flag and stared at the pencil sharpener, wondering if she would ever let me out. I swore that I would never do another wrong thing again while I was standing in that corner, and as far as I can recall, I was never sent to the corner again in kindergarten. 

Our classroom was filled with blocks and puzzles and pretend kitchens and the like, and I remember adoring the time we had to play. Kindergarten was always sunny in my memory. I never rained as long as I was with Mrs. Dubois.

Mrs. Carroll was the equivalent of the kindergarten paraprofessional, and she would take each one of us out of the classroom and into the hallway to test us. We would sit at a round table between the two classrooms and demonstrate our knowledge of our birthday, our address, our ability to spell our names and count to 100, and similar information.

I just did some poking around online and discovered that Mrs. Dubois retired in 2006. Her first name is Cora. I wonder if I can find her and thank her for all that she did for me. Kindergarten was only a half day for me back then, but those few hours of schooling each day were precious to me.

I have almost no recollection of my first or second grade teachers. In fact, I can’t even recall their names, though Kelli’s mention of Mrs. McGann makes me think that she was probably my second grade teacher, too.

Since I grew up in the age of tracking, where children are grouped according to ability, I may be able to recover the names and memories of these teachers. The kids who were in first grade with me remained with me for the most part throughout elementary and much of middle school. We were Group 1. The smartest kids. Just imagine grouping students solely by perceived academic ability and then informing them of the pecking order by assigning a number.

I still can’t believe it happened.

As such, any friends that I have from that time had the same teachers as me and might remember.  

My third grade teacher was Mrs. Laverne, though I suspect that I am spelling it wrong. I find no mention of her online.

I remember Mrs. Laverne’s class because that was the year when I realized that my family was not doing well economically. I was in a class filled with the best and brightest from our town, and as you might expect, many of those kids came from homes that were at least middle class and often above.

My family was not.

Third grade was the year when I realized what it meant to raise my hand every morning during the teacher’s lunch count when she asked who was “getting free hot lunch.”

I still can’t believe they had us do that.

My fourth grade year was a disjoined time that deserves a post of its own. Probably a chapter in a memoir someday. As the top group in our class, we were sent to middle school a year early, but when the second middle school in town was condemned, administrators sent those students to my middle school and sent us back to elementary school for the remainder of the year.

As you can imagine, we were an unruly bunch. We went through at least two substitute teachers for those final months and most assuredly learned nothing. I’ve had conversations on Facebook with childhood friends about that year, and they might be able to offer those details again to me. I recall a lot of Blondie dance routines from the ladies and a lot of fooling around in the back of the classroom by the boys. I know that for a short period of time, my friend’s mother, Mrs. Lavalee, served as our teacher. She was a German with a thick accent who had no control over us whatsoever. 

Lastly, our principal was Mr. Hartnett, for whom the new middle school in town is now named. He was a kind but firm man who I had to visit on more than one occasion for minor indiscretions. What I recall most about Mr. Hartnett was that when I was sent to his office, he would call me into his office even if he was meeting with other adults at that moment and let me have it right in front of them.

Public shame is a powerful tool. Mr. Hartnett understood this well.