Teaching Revisited Part One

I had an interesting question asked in a note. “Were you a good teacher? Did kids listen to you?” Well, all my teaching is in the past but I find myself thinking of how I was.

The seventh graders I taught did listen to me for several reasons and not the least was that I “talked funny.” I taught in a rural school in the Pine Belt of Mississippi {and learned to say Miss’ippi} and I am a woman with a pronounced English accent. For those who want to do a Professor Higgins on me, the accent is Midlands-but-educated. I was born and brought up in Nottingham but learned to get rid of what my aunt called my “common” {meaning not good, lower class} accent through what were then called elocution lessons. The lessons were because I had at that time {and still have when I am tired} a pronounced stutter. So, in addition to learning to breath properly and project my voice, I learned to sound like a BBC announcer. {As a sidebar here, my sister tells me that diverse accents seem to be encouraged on the telly and wireless these days jusdging by what she hears…} So my Southern students were rivited by the way I spoke and sometimes because they had difficulty understanding me as I did them.

As time went by, they also learned to listen to me because I learned to be NOT like most teachers {and mothers} and say things so many times that the kids tune them out. I learned this from a teacher who was next door to me when I first started. I can remember his appearance but not his name. He was VERY tall, thin, had an Afro hairstyle and dressed very much in style .{This was in the middle 6o’s…think tie-dye and platform boots with high heels} But the most interesting thing about him as a teacher was that he didn’t repeat things. And the kids soon caught on to this and commented on it. In addition, he had a very soft voice naturally and so they learned that they HAD to listen to him…instant quiet when he began teaching. I never got to be as good as he was, but I did learn that constant repetition causes kids to not listen.

Towards the end of my teaching career I had an enormous advantage in that I had been at the school long enough to have taught some of the parents of the seventh-graders I was instructing. A couple of times I remember taking a kid aside and saying quietly, “I am really being bothered by your behaviour lately . If it goes on, I will have to talk to your Momma about it, OK?” Instant improvement! {This is known as the power of the Southern Mommas. Most Southerners in the area I taught really cared that their children behaved in school and if the kid didn’t, action was taken.}

I still haven’t answered the question was I a good teacher? I think I was, and only partly because I taught long enough to retire and have my past students come back and tell me I had been good for them…

To be continued…