Third Grade: Certain People
Miss Winkelman was strict and unsmiling.
I learned valuable lessons from her that have lasted my lifetime.
They had nothing to do with academics.
She kept an Ivory Soap Chart listing our names. Once a week she checked for clean hands and nails. We also had to produce a spotless handkerchief or a packet of tissues. After each inspection, she recorded her findings on a wall chart.
Perfection in all areas received a tiny Ivory Soap sticker. Minor infringements were orange dots. Serious failures received red ones. Our grooming history hung there for all to see.
Over time, I noticed something. Soaps remained soaps. Red and orange rarely changed either. I never saw a red-dot child improve to soap-label status. I wondered about this.
I also wondered about Darrell, a boy who struggled to sit still or remain quiet. Even though he was a whirlwind from 8 am to 3 pm, he wasn’t bad. I could see he had a good heart. But whenever Miss Winkelman left the room, he ran in circles and climbed onto his desk, talking nonstop. Most kids laughed at his antics, but I worried. She’d return and haul him down to receive his paddling. I can still hear the thwack, thwack, thwack from the cloakroom.
Darrell’s behavior never changed.
Finally, she brought rope to school and tied him to his chair when she had to leave. Even though he was bound at the ankles, he never stopped causing a verbal ruckus. Darrell defied knots.
When I told these stories to my husband, who had a forty-year career in elementary education, he was horrified. He talked about danger and liability, pointing out the hazards of a fire or the likelihood of injury if Darrell managed to tip the chair over. But mostly he talked about the damage to a boy who needed help, not rope.
Then Cliff addressed the inspection chart, a Procter & Gamble marketing campaign that did not improve children. It embarrassed them. At Sherman School, in a largely working-class neighborhood, students were wrongly targeted for what was beyond their control. Did P&G assume that children would beg their parents to buy Ivory?
Sympathy and patience were not among Miss Winkelman’s educational tools. She preferred punishing. And labeling.
Out of curiosity, I googled Darrell’s name. He’d become a highly regarded special education teacher in another state and once received the Teacher of the Year Award. His obituary tribute page listed appreciative memories from former students whose lives blossomed because of him.
That might seem remarkable, based on the Darrell I witnessed. To me, however, it seems just right. He figured out how to turn his unfortunate experiences into something better. He clearly understood that hitting and shaming never helped any child.
Darrell became the kind of teacher for his students that Miss Winkelman never was for hers.
That’s the wonderful thing about certain people.
