Note: I recently read of a book by Jefferson A. Singer whose premise is to teach a person how to use self-defining memories in his/her personal story which will help define "the real you". This is one memory that I have reflected on many times in my life. And I recognize this experience as one that literally changed me and made the "real" me. I shared it in the NICHOLS FAMILY NEWSLETTER MAY 2006, but in case you forgot or never had a chance to read it....here it is as it was originally published!
WORDS
OF WISDOM…There
are times in our lives when the right
words spoken at the right moment can
transform us. They challenge us at a crossroads, carry us
through times of sorrow, or dare us to action.
This is the story of one of Momma G’s transformations.
I had dreamed of being a teacher ever since I
was a little girl. And, after I had
Mildred Chaffin for Sophomore English at Rawlins High School,
I solidified that dream into one of being a high school English teacher. Mildred Chaffin was from Iowa, a thin, unattractive woman with a sharp nose
and nondescript “dishwater blond” hair.
It was long, thick, dry and usually unstyled and bushy. She had the
husky voice of a chain smoker and always wore sling back high heels with open
toes (even when it was cold and snowy) which produced a loud staccato as she
walked purposefully down the hall or in her classroom. Mrs. Chaffin didn’t smile often, and her
voice was not pleasant but abrupt and to the point. She
wasn’t the sort of teacher to whom adolescents gravitated, nor did she seem
popular with the other teachers and staff, though she was married to the
good-looking and affable man who was the head bus driver and in charge of all
school transportation.
For the entire first semester of Sophomore
English Mrs. Chaffin seemed harsh and demanding, far beyond 15/16 year old capabilities, it
seemed. But I was in an accelerated
class (now they call them GT) and much was expected of us. I worked hard for my grades, as I didn’t want
to be the target of her critical comments.
And Mrs. Chaffin knew English—backwards, forwards, inside out. (That was
the year we did Silas Marner. I made Grandma Huggins sew the clothes for
the character Nancy Lammeter as my special term project. Remember? I showed you the doll with those
special outfits still in its gold cardboard case just the way I submitted it
for grading.)
Truthfully, I was kind of afraid of Mrs.
Chaffin, yet grew to admire her and appreciate her special talent for making us
want to learn about the English language.
She set her standard the first semester, and when the second semester
rolled around we were disciplined enough that she began to loosen up and actually
joked around with us. I became excited for
that period each day to see what she was going to present and how innovative
her presentation was. 10th grade English was a great warm up for
those of us lucky enough to be in it, because Mrs. Chaffin taught English to
everyone in the 12th grade.
So, we had her again a couple of years later. It seemed seniors dreaded English class each
year after having heard the stories from those who had experienced Mrs. Chaffin’s
expectations in previous years. However,
my accelerated class had the advantage of already knowing what she was like and
what she expected. We lost no time picking
up where we had left off as sophomores.
12th grade English was geared to more sophisticated learning
as we explored “Macbeth” and Les Miserables, and much more advanced
grammar and writing skills.
When
I was a senior, I was president of my high school’s chapter of Future Teachers
of America. That organization gave its
members an opportunity to do some “student teaching”. I selected Mrs. Chaffin’s current,
accelerated 10th grade English class to “show my stuff”. Mrs. Chaffin was full of praise for my
ability and seeming talent to draw out the class in discussion. It was a heady experience to be in front of
other students and lead them into avenues of language exploration and
learning. I was exhilarated and anxious
to begin my college career so I could be a “real” teacher.
When I arrived at Brigham Young University
in September 1964, I declared English as my major and set about designing my
schedule for the four years ahead. By
taking a history exam worth three credit hours, I had all general requirements
behind me by the second semester of my BYU sophomore year.
As I returned to Provo for my junior year
at BYU, I began that long-awaited Teacher Education 301B—the beginning class
for high school teaching certification.
And….I HATED it! It wasn’t at all
like I had imagined. We started out with
something they called “Maeger Objectives”.
It was this complicated formula of classroom goal setting, I think. (Comparable
to all the theorems of solid geometry which I was never able to master either.)
To this day I do not know what THAT had to do with teaching (the University
dropped that approach a few years later).
I only knew I wanted to be in front of a class and teach ideas and
mechanics, not be bound by performance objectives that didn’t teach
ANYTHING! I felt like the profession I
had always wanted held no promise for me.
It seemed like it would be more like being in a prison of my own
choosing. I expressed my disappointment
to roommates and family, and was met with statements much like this, “You’d
better certify to teach anyway. You’ll
need something to fall back on in case you can’t get a job. You can always get a job as a teacher.”
As those first few weeks of
classes came and went, I became more and more discouraged about the choice I
had made and seriously wondered if I could stand being a teacher doing
something that satisfied a curriculum requirement with no potential for
personal satisfaction.
Midterms came, and my test
score was far from a stellar performance.
I was bummed enough as it was when I saw my posted grade. Then I got a note from the professor that he
wanted to visit with me. I was sure I
was going to get the same “pressure” talk about the need to improve so I could certify. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting with him.
Timing of the appointment
couldn’t have been worse. Oh, the
weather was gorgeous. It was a beautiful
Fall day on campus. However, the night
before, the guy I was crazy about had told me he wasn’t crazy about me. What an emotional blow! And that morning I had exchanged some cross
words with my roommate Ann Boyd whom I
really had a hard time tolerating, let alone liking. Then on top of all that, I got back to the campus
parking lot after my first class only to find a parking ticket on my car.
By the time I got to
Professor Lyal Holder’s office, I was a wreck.
He began the interview by saying, “I perceive you are not happy in this
class.” All of the frustrations of six
weeks of class and the previous 24 hours caught up with me as I started to cry and
tried to get myself under control. I was
sure Brother Holder was going to come down hard on me now!
Instead, he opened his desk
drawer and took out a box of Kleenex, patted me on the arm and said, “When you
are finished, we’ll talk.” With that the
floodgates opened, and I began to bawl in earnest. I sobbed and cried while the tears streaming
down my cheeks mingled with the snot from my runny nose. I couldn’t seem to stop! What a sight I must have been. Messy mascara was rapidly turning my eyes
into a raccoon mask. (This was the 60’s with HEAVY eye makeup!)
Brother Holder motioned for
his assistant and asked him to go to the classroom where the professor was
scheduled to teach that hour and indicate there would be no class that
day. Then he sat patiently while I
slowly regained some semblance of composure.
My story spilled out. No, I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t what I thought teacher training was
going to be like, and I no longer wanted to be a teacher. I had come to abhor the idea of being chained
to a classroom with rigid guidelines and papers to correct—all using that
“Maeger Objective”. But everyone seemed
to be pushing me to “certify”—that magic safety net for unsuccessful job
hunters.
Truly, I thought Brother
Holder was going to give me the same pep talk.
Instead he said, “Georgia,
if you can’t be the kind of a teacher you would like your children to have,
then don’t be a teacher.” He paused, “What
would you rather do?”
I was shocked, to say the
least! Here was a legitimate way out of
my dilemma with authoritarian approval.
I thought for a few moments then told him I had always loved
libraries. Thus it was that, instead of becoming
a teacher, I became a librarian. And,
the rest is history. I graduated on May 30,1968 , from Brigham Young University
with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English with a Library Science minor.
I arrived in Denver on August 31, at the end of that
summer. Three days later I found a job as a Library Assistant
III at Bibliographical Center for Research, whose offices were on the third floor
of the original Denver Public Library building at 13th and
Broadway. “Bib Center”
was a research library, one of three like it in the country.
I loved the work I did as it often involved
sleuthing for book titles from cryptic clues the patrons would furnish (though
I didn’t care for the micromanagement of the Supervisor and Director). I stayed in that employment until six weeks
before Harold was born. (At that time
pregnant women had to quit work two months before the baby’s due date, but
Harold was born early.) It was the good
result of that tearful confession with a teacher who truly had a sense that his
student wasn’t cut out to be a high school English teacher.
Through the years as I have
served in teaching callings in the auxiliaries of the Church, I have come to
know that teaching IS one of my gifts. But that gift would never have blossomed
in the public education system of the late sixties.
Brother Holder’s words that fateful day
challenged me at a crossroads in my life.
They gave me direction to move forward and not feel guilty about
changing my long-held dream, but to grasp a different dream that would lead me to
greater fulfillment and satisfaction.
