For a long time (almost 19 years), I taught at a girls' prep school in New Orleans. Just outside my classroom in the old science wing (my classroom had earlier been the "new" library) was a breezeway winding down past a history/English classroom and the music room. Along that breezeway were old wooden benches on which my students and I sat when conferring about their writing.
Among the treasured things I took with me when I left that school was this photograph, which my friend Cathy, a former development director, gave me. It has been sitting in my office at my new school and reminds me of the girls, all now young women, I taught at McGehee's over three different decades.
One of those young women, Meredith (listening intently in the photograph above), and I have recently been chatting through Facebook. She now teaches at her alma mater and also coaches volleyball. When I taught her in 8th and 10th grades, she lacked confidence in her reading, writing, and voice. During her senior English class with me, however, poetry gave her a voice. Indeed, she wrote such a beautiful personal essay that she used it as a college essay. Later, her peers chose it for publication in the school's literary magazine. In one of our last FB wall-to-walls, she wrote that she was the highest achieving student in her freshman composition course.
I always loved Meredith, and I know she knows it, too.
I have an elderly friend who loves movies and ice cream, and since I love movies and ice cream, we have a mutually beneficial agreement: almost every Friday night, I bring the movie (courtesy of Netflix) and she supplies the ice cream.
Last night when I arrived, she was doing her breathing exercises. Since my great-nieces have been hooked up to similar equipment before, I knew that even though the contraption looked scary, it actually isn't. But she looked sort of strange, sitting on her throne (her couch), surrounded by miscellaneous articles and newspapers and books, tissues and TV clickers, food packets and the like. I just had to take her picture.
Once she finished and I made my bowl of German chocolate cake and she got her leftovers for dinner, we watched a terrific movie -- Charlie Wilson's War. I'm not exactly sure how much of it is historical, but it was a thrilling political film that suggests some of the previous wrong steps we've taken to lead to our current global conflict with Islamists.
By the way, here's an amusing note about Marymor (nicknamed Boo): she was in the very first class at Metairie Park Country Day School and, as a child, lived in the old McGehee's building on Louisiana Avenue. Small world department strikes again!
Years ago, before I left McGehee's, where I taught for 18 years and student-taught before that, the mother of a graduating senior gave me a gift that I see every day: a calligraphic quotation. With cheerful, multi-colored Where's Waldo-type characters surrounding it, the text box reads: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -- Marcel Proust." When the mother gave me this gift, she thanked me for helping her daughter gain new eyes.
I remember both women fondly. (The daughter, whom I taught in English 8, 10, and 12, is now 27, so "woman" is indeed the suitable word.) The daughter was somewhat shy and self-conscious in school. By the time she was a senior, she had become more assertive and a much better student of language and composition and literature.
Looking at this gift reminds me that even when students or parents or fellow faculty claim I am too demanding, I have made a difference for some people, Sally included.
One of those young women, Meredith (listening intently in the photograph above), and I have recently been chatting through Facebook. She now teaches at her alma mater and also coaches volleyball. When I taught her in 8th and 10th grades, she lacked confidence in her reading, writing, and voice. During her senior English class with me, however, poetry gave her a voice. Indeed, she wrote such a beautiful personal essay that she used it as a college essay. Later, her peers chose it for publication in the school's literary magazine. In one of our last FB wall-to-walls, she wrote that she was the highest achieving student in her freshman composition course.
