The busy hallway was filled with elementary school students. The walls were plastered with art projects and colorful paintings of zoo animals and letters of the alphabet. When the third-grade boy entered his classroom, leaving the noise of the busy hallway behind, he made his way into the cloakroom to hang his gray coat. As he made his way to his desk a girl wearing a purple dress smiled at him and said, "Good morning." But the anxious boy—his mind a million miles away—remained silent as he passed by.
After reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher seated her class and turned their attention to yesterday's homework assignments. Thankfully, the boy's mom had helped him complete the math problems on the mimeographed take-home paper long before his father stumbled home from the tavern.
The teacher walked through the five rows of desks, checking the students' math homework and giving them back their writing homework from the week before. The room was filled with an electric energy as the students chatted and laughed. But the boy stared out the window, his mind filled with vivid memories of the horrible argument his mother and his intoxicated father had the night before.
Then the murmurs of the class quieted down until it was silent.
Abruptly, the boy was wrenched back to the present by the sound of his name being spoken in an uncharacteristically positive tone. Everyone was staring at him. The boy looked down and saw his handwriting on the lined pages—words written in cursive, with loopy consonants and vowels—a magical story he'd written. The teacher was praising his short story, her carefully chosen words of acclaim piling one upon another. His classmates smiled and cheered him for a job well done.
In that moment, a public school teacher lifted a tortured elementary child above the mental, emotional, and physical abuse that permeated his life at home, and offered him a glimpse of what he could make of himself. That incident would not be forgotten.
* * *
Much of that story about the boy is fictitious. The specific details of that incident left my mind a long time ago. What is not invented, and has not been forgotten, is that I am the product of a troubled home, and I wrote a short story in third grade that was praised before the entire class by my teacher. It was just what I needed that day, and lovingly offered to me by a teacher who sensed my distraught situation and provided an emotional Band-Aid that was just the right size and shape.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember that teacher's name, but the positive seed that she'd planted took root and quietly grew over the years, and when its time came, it pestered me until I began to write what I hoped to turn into a mystery novel.
As a career pastor, throughout my years in ministry I wrote religious essays and articles that were printed in a variety of Christian publications and local newspapers. As a part of my profession, I learned to enjoy writing and relished the delight of seeing something I had written in print. Those accomplishments, however, did not seem to fulfill the dreams of an eight-year-old boy—both the dream of writing fiction, and the desire to pay tribute to the person who originally lit that fire within me.
Throughout this country's history, there have been, and still are, countless public school teachers who care about their students, and who are perceptive enough to sense when their students need to be elevated in a positive light and step in at just the right moment. My third-grade teacher was there for me when I needed her, and even though I didn't know how to respond appropriately to her praise at the time, she added something to my dark world that continued to bring light.
In this thank you, I am confident that I don't stand alone. There have been many of us—hundreds, perhaps even thousands—a myriad of young spirits elevated to unimagined heights and accomplishments. Why? Because public school teachers in this country care and want to be there for their students, especially those who, for one reason or another, are facing otherwise insurmountable hurdles.
This piece is a tribute to a particular third-grade teacher employed by the public school system in Clarion, Iowa, in the mid-1940s. I assume she is no longer with us. Her words, however, remain in my heart, have given me hope throughout the years, and were the first and most influential impetus for writing my debut mystery novel, Legacy of a Frozen Scream.
A simple thank you is not enough to adequately compensate my teacher for what she did for me. I hope that wherever she is, she knows that her deeply troubled elementary student grew up and wrote a book.
