Five Women Mayhem Honors our Community’s Quiet Heroes: Our Teachers

In the coming weeks, more than 3.1 million educators across our country will arrive for their first day of the 2022-23 school year. 

So, as we approach this annual momentous occasion, the writers at Five Women Mayhem honor our community’s quiet heroes with our own personal stories. Stories about teachers who touched our lives. Stories about teachers whose joy, wonder, heart and hard work – made a difference. 

This week, Lincoln’s public and private schools open for business. Teachers, good luck on your very first day of class.  We wish you well.

Praise to Those Teachers Who Refuse to Give Up by Mary Kay Roth

By the time my daughter, Anna, reached her senior year – barely – she had given up on school. During her middle and high school years, many a tenacious teacher had attempted to reach her as we tried various schools, strategies, enticements.

She was just “one of those kids.”

One of those kids who didn’t quite fit.  Who claimed she hated school.  Who seemed to almost disappear into the niches and crannies of the classroom.

When we hit grade 12, we found the Arts and Humanities Focus Program at Lincoln Public Schools, a place we thought would be Anna’s salvation.  And yet, barely a semester into the year, she stopped trying.

“Let me drop out,” she pleaded.  “Tom Cruise is a high school dropout – did you know that?”

Good grief.

Then, one evening, a simple phone call turned into a lifeline – a call from  Arts and Humanities teacher John Clark, who said he was simply checking in.

I don’t remember everything about that call, but I know I cried and told him I was clueless about how to help my daughter.  And I do remember exactly what Mr. Clark said: “We are not going to lose Anna.  I won’t let that happen. I see something in her, something special.”

He suggested she come meet with him to map out a plan.  Miraculously, she went – and to this day I’m not sure how Mr. Clark wove his magic. But over the coming months – through independent study, creative assignments and perhaps shear force of will – Mr. Clark literally pulled Anna through high school.

Yes, even after graduation my wonderfully stubborn daughter kept taking detours, but eventually found her footing and is now a certified nurse practitioner.  And at each milestone along the way, each graduation, Mr. Clark has come to help us celebrate, giving us that unassuming shrug and claiming it was all Anna – not him.

Frankly, it remains a mystery to me why some kids like Anna struggle so mightily in school.  But it’s no mystery how they are saved: One teacher who cares.  One teacher who takes the time to make that phone call. One teacher who “sees something special."

In honor of the first day of school, I raise a carton of school milk to teachers like Mr. Clark who refuse to give up on any child.

Bless you all.

 

***** 

Mrs. Teter by Marilyn Moore

Cora Teter was my high school senior English teacher.  I was surprised when I met her, because to my 17-year-old eyes, she looked old.  She wasn’t old, she was my mom’s age.  But to a 17-year-old, that was old.  I realize now that most of the teachers I had in my small town rural high school were young.  They were new grads, in their first teaching job, and they would stay a couple of years, and then move on to a bigger school, where they wouldn’t have to teach seven preps, coach at least one team, sponsor at least one club, and maybe direct the class play, too.  But Mrs. Teter was local, from a neighboring town, and returned to teaching after having mostly raised her family.  So she was new, but with a life of experiences in the fall of 1967.  I realize now she also had a wry sense of humor, but I don’t know if I recognized it then.

I don’t remember much about the senior English curriculum.  I’m sure we read some British and American poetry.  We probably read some Shakespeare.  We studied, again, all the tricky parts of grammar, word usage, and sentence structure.  And we wrote the dreaded senior English research paper. 

I don’t remember my topic at all.  I do remember having a timeline with specific steps to follow, turning in the work along the way.  I remember taking notes on 3x5 index cards, looking up resources in the library’s card catalog.  Old tools, young readers will not recognize these.  But it’s what we had.

What I remember most about that senior paper is the feedback I received.  I don’t remember the grade, but I remember the comment.  On the last page, she wrote, “Good research skills, Marilyn.  You will use this same process when you write your dissertation.”  It was the word “dissertation.”  Never had I thought of that word and my name in the same sentence.  I knew I was headed to college the next year, but graduate school wasn’t even a term I knew.  Her words planted a seed, an idea, a glimpse of something possible, and I have never forgotten them. 

This is one story, of one teacher, and one student.  What I know to be true is that every teacher has a student, past, present, or future, who will say the same thing…a teacher who planted a seed, an idea, a glimpse of something possible.  The teacher who said just the right words at just the right time.  On behalf of students everywhere, thank you.

*****

A Hand on the Shoulder by JoAnne Young

As a child, I judged my elementary teachers on how friendly they were. All my secondary teachers had to do was make some effort to be interesting. 

When I had kids of my own, I judged teachers a little differently. Did they understand my child? Did they try to bring out the best in them? Did they stimulate their imaginations and teach them how to learn? 

One of their teachers at Randolph Elementary stood out: Karen Ellis, an art teacher who was, for many years, the first and only elementary art specialist for Lincoln Public Schools. 

She engaged the kids at Randolph in stained glass windows and murals, mosaics and mobiles. She took her students’ work into the community, so they could see the world react to their creativity. She was a passionate advocate for art in the schools, believing it had value for all children. 

Art should come from the heart, she once said. Kids should be taught more than to color between the lines.

When she moved to Bryan Community, she lovingly introduced teens to what they could create, surprising even them with what could come from within. 

Amy Skorohod is one I remember. She had lost interest in school and dropped out of Northeast. She was persuaded to give it one more try at Bryan, where the struggling teen signed up for a class with Ellis. She found a teacher who was willing to listen to her, to put a hand on her shoulder when needed, the underpinning of support that helped Amy fit in, and then go forward to a successful life. 

Ellis gifted her students with love and creation and art for 30 years. Then, in the very early days of 2002, she died of a sudden, unexpected heart attack at age 49. 

I remember attending her funeral and barely being able to hold it together. Karen Ellis touched me in a way few people who are not family or close friends have. 

It was her knowing that kids needed someone to sit with them and listen as they discovered their creative longings. To risk making mistakes. To reflect on their lives. To see their curiosity quotient shoot up. 

“Our kids need that more than anything in the world,” Ellis said. 

Thank you, Karen Ellis, for all you did for our kids. And thank you to all those following her today. You are needed more than ever.  

 

*****

 Sister Jacinta By Mary Reiman

That’s where it started. My love affair with inspiring teachers. That admiration lasted throughout my educational journey and my professional career. I can’t name them all. There are so many. Instead, I will tell you where it began.

Sister Jacinta. Perhaps I just loved saying her name. She was my first and second grade teacher. In our Catholic school there was no kindergarten, so she was truly my first introduction into the world of formal education. In that era, a Franciscan nun wore a habit. A long black robe with a black veil and a white coif. The coif is a close fitting cap that covers the top, back, and sides of the head. We could not see the color or style of her hair, but always wondering about it!

The only feature we could really see was her face. That was all I needed to see. Those sparkling eyes and her genuine smile were all this first grader needed to know she would be well taken care of at school. Sister Jacinta’s beauty came from the inside. That’s the most important thing I learned in my first two school years. Any goodness, kindness or generosity in my soul that was not formulated by my parents, was developed from watching her.

She was tall and thin and even on a hot spring day she would run around the bases on the baseball field and never look tired or hot or cranky. We would come in from recess and put our heads on our desks while she read us a story. She didn’t have time to relax, but we did.

And wax heated in the old coffee cans on hotplates would definitely not comply with OSHA standards today. But I vividly remember standing in line as we carefully hand dipped our red Christmas candles until they were just the right thickness. I still have that red candle. 

Sister Jacinta was magical and that was just the beginning of the magic I’ve seen from so many fabulous teachers throughout my years in education. 

For all of them, I am most grateful.

 *****

Vielen Herzlichen Dank! Frau Flagstad by Penny Costello

When I remember my teachers in high school, several come to mind who certainly made an impression. But only one stands out as my all-time favorite teacher.

I took four years of German in high school. The language itself was interesting to me, but it was Frau Flagstad who kept me coming back each year. She loved the language, and she loved igniting the spark of learning in her students. She made it fun, and she instilled a desire to experience the language, history, and culture by sharing her own stories of her travels there, stories about the people, the music, the food.

Frau, as we called her, exuded kindness and competence. She spoke Deutsch as easily as she spoke English, and she had a way of letting students know that, while it seemed like an awkward mouthful at first, she had total faith in our ability to gain the same skills and fluency.

She was someone I looked forward to seeing every day. I was a ranch kid who boarded in town during the week during my freshman and sophomore years. I walked by her house on the way to and from school.

In class, we were invited to choose a German first name, and she would address each student by their chosen name. I chose Michaela, which she shortened to Micha. The “ch” was pronounced with an airy, soft sound from the back of the throat, rather than a hard “ch” sound like in “chip”.

High school is such a cauldron of peer pressure and presumption about who we are based on where we live, who our parents or siblings are, who we hang out with, what we wear. At that point in time, in the mid-1970s, to be given the opportunity to choose how we would be identified within the culture we were learning about was empowering in ways I couldn’t fully appreciate then, but I certainly do now.

My family went through some tough times during those years. While I was boarding in town during the week, my parents were moving toward divorce, and within three years, the ranch that had been in my father’s family for four generations would be sold. The home I had always known would be gone. 

In those same four years, I joined our school’s German Club. I also joined the National German Club, which gave me the opportunity to travel with Frau and a few other students to Gunnison, Colorado for its convention one year. I ended up spending a month in Germany as an exchange student in the summer between my sophomore and junior years. We had shared interests, both of us were avid downhill skiers. We got to know each other as people, and as friends. She made my world bigger and better.

At the beginning of my senior year, I experienced a serious injury playing varsity basketball that put me in the hospital for 19 days. The day before I was released, my mother came to see me and told me she was going to be remarried the following day. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, and I was somewhat relieved to have an excuse not to go to her wedding.

On the first night of her second marriage, while my mom was having a honeymoon dinner with her new husband, he choked on a bite of steak and died. That Monday, I went to Frau’s class. I handed her the slip to excuse my absence for the past three weeks due to my injury. And then I handed her the slip that would excuse my absence in a few days when I would attend my mother’s husband’s funeral.

She signed both, and she told me how stunned she was upon hearing about his death, and how unbelievable it all seemed. It was unbelievable. But her compassion and empathy for me in that moment made it bearable. And her presence in my life, her kindness, and her friendship through those years provided hope, fun, laughter, inspiration, and stability that helped shape the person I would become. I hope I’ve sufficiently honored the examples that she set as a teacher, a mentor, a friend, and the kind of person she still is in the world.

Frau Flagstad, you’ll be pleased to know that I do remember ein bisschen (a little) Deutsch after all these years. Please accept meine vielen herzlichen Dank! The impact you’ve had on my life and in the lives of countless students will live on for generations. Tschüss, bis später.

– Micha -

*****

 

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