Writing Workshop prompt from 8/2022: “Did you ever get in trouble at school? What happened?”
Ms. Tew was my first elementary school teacher. I don’t remember how many children were in my class, but she chose to set-up her classroom tables in a large square. The space in the middle of the tables seemed enormous to my 6-year-old self.
Our classroom abutted a second-grade classroom which had a reading loft. I yearned to be in the class with the loft the next year and pined for the adventures a loft might bring. Even in first-grade, rumors spread about teachers and their relative kindness, coolness or harshness. The teacher with the loft was known to be cool and kind, which seemed to me a perfect combination.
Our first-grade classroom, much like the arrangement, was square: No mood lighting, no loft – just bulletin boards and chalkboards with harsh fluorescent above. A rectangular floor-to-ceiling window provided the only natural light, but the window faced South.
Sometime during the first couple of months of the school year, Ms. Tew received word she had a phone call to take in the principal’s office. She pointed toward the worksheets before us telling us to work on our letters, and she sternly warned us about making too much noise. She also told us to stay in our seats. She would be gone briefly, and we needed to behave ourselves during her short time away.
I do not know the nature of the phone call, but seconds and minutes turned into what felt like hours to a classroom of aesthetically starved first graders. I’m sure it started with small conversations between neighbors on the square. A little later, the hyperactive boy sprang up to bother a friend seated across from him. Paper began to be wadded up and thrown. The girls screeched as the boys began pulling hair. Small, and then large, arguments broke out. The decibels grew louder and louder.
At least once, maybe twice, another teacher passed by the room and encouraged us to shush and get back in our seats. But as soon as she left (and they were all she’s), mayhem commenced. Herding cats comes to mind.
My predilection is for rule-following. Given the regular chaos of my home, rules became a safe-haven providing security and defense if needed. While my classmates got out of their chairs, drew scribbles on the chalkboard, poured Elmer’s glue on the tables – I sat trying to focus on my alphabet, keeping my head down and trying to stay out of trouble.
When Ms. Tew finally came back, her normally calm demeanor morphed into wild-eyed rage. She yelled while making statements about what she had told us to do, how we were disrupting the entire wing of the school, how we only needed to be still and quiet for a little while. I imagine the floor was covered with pencils and markers, poorly cut construction paper, glue bottles and paper jets with the nose-gear bent sideways. Chairs must have been in array, maybe the tables were knocked askew – but in our defense, she was gone a LONG time, especially for freshly minted first graders.
She had us straighten the room up and return to the square while she found her wooden paddle. She stood the students on each side of the square up in unison, then went down the row whacking our rear ends with the board. “Thwok, thwok, thwok”
I wanted to protest, to tell her I had not participated in any of it. I didn’t want to get paddled. I feared the pain, being lumped in with all the rule-breakers and what if my mom found out! I might get a whooping again for being disruptive. I think I started crying – maybe we all did. All the exuberance of childhood shenanigans squelched thwok by horrible thwok. Replaced by alligator tears and smeared “A’s, B’s and C’s” on our pages.
An event like that did not happen again in all of elementary school (or beyond). I don’t know if Ms. Tew received a reprimand with other teachers forbidden to act similarly. Maybe the rumor mill did its job and scared all of us straight. Who would think the teacher would paddle ALL of us? Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.
Still, the event is my lasting memory of first grade and my lasting memory of Ms. Tew.
Written 3/25/26
No comments:
Post a Comment