Praise Song for the Day: Women Matter: School Teachers
Monday, March 22, 2021
One of my junior high school teachers died last week at the age of 80. Wanda Mullins made school memorable because she made the time rush by in her classroom while having us dig into our own learning. Ms. Mullins gave us incentives by earning “Mullins’ Bucks” for completing certain milestones along the way. I didn’t think of what she did as bribes, per se, but she did make sure that we had good behavior and that garnered us an allowance and stuff from her classroom store, which came out of her teacher’s closet and presumably her own pocket. As far as I could tell, Ms. Mullins, like so many teachers we had growing up, devoted her life not just to family but also to her students. At least, that’s what it felt like to most of us.
Throughout my life, I can remember all of my homeroom teachers from First through Eighth Grade. In order, they were: Mrs. Turner (1st-Grade), Mrs. Billheimer (2nd-Grade), Mrs. Scottie (3rd-Grade), Mrs. Baugh (4th-Grade), Mrs. Delanney (5th-Grade), Mrs. Mullins (6th-Grade), Mrs. Harris (7th-Grade), and Mrs. Bentley (8th-Grade). Yet, more than the names, I remember each for what they gave me.
Mrs. Turner taught self-discipline and humility. Since she lived in our neighborhood in Robbins, she “corrected us” with a stern look, and when that didn’t work, with the backside of a ruler; that look made me re-think deeply about socking my friend Vernon in the back of his head when I thought she wasn’t looking my way.
I spent many a day reflecting on my rudeness and plain old “thuggy” behavior with Mrs. Turner. Corporal punishment (getting hit by a teacher or administrator at school) is cruel and unusual, and it was what most of us knew from our little town. Or, as our mantra became: “If y’all knew better, then y’all do better.” Certainly, getting licks on our palms or on our bee-hinds was a holdover from a crueler, more “down South” time where you had to “respect” your elders, or else you could be killed for talking back or mouthing off to somebody else — not a teacher — with more “juice.” This probably kept more young Black men alive from Robbins, Illinois when confronting the immovable twin forces of racism and machismo.
In a different vein, Mrs. Baugh in 4th-Grade provided a vision of excellence that has never been matched for me. When I think of research, I still think about how our imaginations went wild in her class, especially when it came to vocabulary words and periods of history. We watched “Nanook of the North” in 4th-Grade, which I loved for its stark beauty and connection to what seemed like contemporaneous issues.
Somewhere in the middle of our year together, Mrs. Baugh’s husband died. I begged my mother to take me to the funeral, which she did. It was the first time that I remember remembering what death in the Black Community was like, as Mrs. Baugh made the funeral scenes from Ebony and Jet come to life.
Finally, Mrs. Anne K. Bentley was the English and Literature Teacher and my homeroom teacher in 8th-Grade. She had a shock of white hair that was done up into a beehive. We read and wrote constantly. I remember when I was done with the SRA’s, which were this system of reading comprehension that supposedly went through the beginning years of college, then Mrs. Bentley handed me a copy of Hawthorne’s “The House of the Seven Gables.” More than any other teacher, Mrs. Bentley made me feel like college was not just a thing to be had, but getting there would be exciting and like being a detective.
One of my friends, colleagues, and fellow educators named Dr. Victor McGuire said that you know the mark of a good teacher because “when your students see you in the grocery store or on the street, they are either running to you or from you.” Whenever I saw Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Bentley at the local Jewel’s Grocery Store, it always made me feel like I was peaking inside of the gates of Mount Olympus. When I was in their presence, I felt like Hermes, running towards each of them as fast as I possibly could.
— — — — —
Like a daily gratitude practice, Praise Song for the Day will be a way of appreciating what we know we know in a different and perhaps even profoundly deeper way. This column takes its name from a poem of the same title by Elizabeth Alexander called “Praise Song for the Day,” delivered twelve years ago at the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Clap back if you dig the piece.
