From kindergarten to graduate school, more than 200 teachers have taught me. They instilled their subject matter in my brain, enriched their textbooks, praised me, scolded me, and encouraged me to keep on learning. Some I hardly remember, but I’ll never forget the truly exceptional ones like Miss Ames and Miss Quirck.
An angular, stern-faced fourth-grade teacher, Miss Ames wore thick, wire-rimmed glasses. She demanded that all papers be free from errors and blots or they had to be recopied. Nine-year-olds made many mistakes, exacerbated by awkward fingers dipping pens in ink wells. A finally acceptable paper was rewarded with an A and a smile from Miss Ames.
Boys escaped her classroom three times a week for 30 minutes of calisthenics. Girls, however, stayed in their seats learning sewing. Awkward little fingers had trouble threading needles, but by the end of the semester, each seamstress had completed a sleeveless apron from a length of toweling. All stitches had to be small and even; otherwise the student had to rip them out and start over. (Some of our aprons had had more wear being made than they ever did in the kitchen.) Second semester brought a more difficult and stressful project – white cotton nightgowns trimmed with lace at the neck and cuffs. Sewing, ripping out and re-sewing took us well into spring. I no longer feared Miss Ames and loved being in her class.
One morning, I woke up very, very hot with a terrible headache. Had my mother known, she would not have let me go to school. I washed my face with icy, icy water before I kissed her goodbye. During sewing time, I struggled with my nightgown, now grimy from weeks of stitching and re-stitching and being dropped on the floor. Feeling dizzy, I rested my head on my desk and Miss Ames, checking seams and helping pin lace, was suddenly at my side. “What’s the matter?” she asked. Then, feeling my burning face, she said, “You must go home immediately.”
Somehow I walked the nine long blocks in the warm sun, occasionally going through hoses to cool my fevered body. Finally, exhausted and very wet, I reached home. When the doctor came, he determined that I had double pneumonia and was critically ill. During my convalescence, I cried because I couldn’t go back to school, couldn’t finish my nightgown.
Weeks later, our doorbell rang, and there was Miss Ames. She handed me a basket containing homemade jelly and applesauce plus a tissue-wrapped package. Inside was my finished nightgown, pristinely white with pink ribbons running through the ruffled lace. How beautiful it was! And how easy to tell where my stitches ended and Miss Ames’ began. Her stitches were even and very, very tiny.
Miss Quirk lived up to her name. A junior-high Spanish teacher, she had flame-red hair and a temper to match. She demanded that pupils be in their seats before the tardy bell with books and homework on top of their desks. Miss Quirk began class immediately, starting with an oral review of yesterday’s homework. She called on student number one. If he was unprepared, she called on student number two. If his answers were incorrect, she continued to number three. By then, the class was hoping desperately that he would recite perfectly. We had learned what would happen if Miss Quirck named three unprepared students in succession. “That’s enough,” she would bark. “All of you, put your heads on your desks till the end of the period. Tonight, try studying.” Never before or since have 40 minutes passed so slowly. That experience repeated twice taught us convincingly to do Spanish homework first.
Even though Miss Quirk never suffered student adulation, I am grateful to her. Because of her strictness, I sailed through Español 8 and can still conjugate “ar,” “er,” “ir” verbs, even though no one’s ever asked me to. Also, I still do my most threatening work first. I’ll always be grateful for Miss Ames’ gentle caring and to the many teachers like them who helped me. I wish I had been thoughtful enough to have personally thanked them all.
Louise Turnbull, a Denver native and retired teacher who has written commercial film scripts and an animated television special, dotes on her garden, her four children and eight grandchildren.
