One of the teachers from my sixth and seventh grade years--and I think the fifth, too--passed away last month. I hadn't heard from or spoken to her since I moved on to junior high---she wasn't the type I would have tried to contact. She was pretty serious, never affectionate, and could even be mean sometimes: she once made fun of a student's big feet, and another time, when we were filling out personal information forms in class and I didn't know the city of my birth, she abruptly sent me outside in the snow to go around the building to the principal's office (I went to a very small, old school) to call home and find out from my mother. She could be short with her students, and never radiated the warmth that one recalls in one's most fondly remembered teachers. But she could teach. And she taught me love and respect for the English language.
She would drill the rules of English grammar into our heads until we understood them. She once procured booklets with all the basic rules of English for us all to take home---a book that I saved and referred to for years, and which I wish I still had today. (I doubt I'd use words like "procured" if not for her positive influence.) She instilled in me a clear understanding of the difference between their, they're, and there; of when to use it's rather than its; that when you create a possessive form of a plural word ending in s, such as members, you don't add a second s---"the members' votes were counted" would be the proper form. There are still words and rules I have trouble with: I generally have to rely on Spell Check to confirm or correct the spelling of occasion or broccoli, and I always have to set aside time when confronted with whether I should write "if it were to have..." or "if it was to have...". But those are my own personal mental blocks---not a failure on her part.
As a matter of fact, just starting that last sentence with "But", I was aware that, technically, it should have been part of the previous sentence, because Mrs. Shaw taught me that.
I understand that language evolves, but it took me years to accept "impact" as a verb because I'd learned it was only proper to use it as a noun. One can reasonably play with grammar only if one understands the basic rules. Certainly, "woe is I" is awkward, albeit correct---but a lot of people never learned, or were never taught well enough to remember, that "Woe is me" is perfectly acceptable as a colloquialism, but it isn't proper grammar. I wrote a song with the line "You told me you'd take me and never forsake me for anyone cuter than I," and I like that I used the proper form when "me" would be the more common choice. Mrs. Shaw's influence.
Unfortunately, it wasn't until I reached high school that I realized just how much I valued what she'd taught me...and I should have written her then to say thank you, but I didn't. I went to college as an English major my first year, and she deserves a large part of the credit for that. I should have written to her in college---I certainly knew by then that she had molded at least the writing and speaking portion of my brain well---but I didn't. And when I began writing a comic strip and a blog, it would have been a good time to track her down and tell her how I was using the tools she'd given me as a child. Why didn't I think of it then?
She evidently had a happy retirement. She was in a quilting club in Maine---an activity that I wouldn't have imagined the stern woman I knew participating in. (Yes, I know I shouldn't end a sentence with a proposition.) She had a husband and children who loved her. I'm glad. She scared me sometimes, but she had a very positive and lasting impact on my life. And she loved teaching, which says to me that maybe she loved her students, too.
So if you're listening, Mrs. Shaw: thank you.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment