A TEACHER REVISITED

The other day the genius came home with a story about one of his students who wanted to take an important test early. When asked why he was going to miss class, the young man said he was going to get his driver’s license! Of course, the genius said No and the boy would have to take a make up test instead which would be harder than the original. The rules had been set at the beginning of the year so there was no argument. Needless to say, the genius was appalled that a member of an AP class would even consider such a thing.

This incident made me remember a teacher I had in high school whom I was terrified of and whose class I wouldn’t have dreamed of missing unless I was deathly ill. I have described her before, but she is worth describing again.

Her name was Jim Lee Allen and she taught upper level math courses like the genius does now. The first day of class she told us all that her name was Missss Allen with the accent on the s. “Not Mrs. nor Mizz, but Misssss Allen,” she declared. Actually that little lesson has stayed with me for a lifetime or at least until “Ms” came into being.

Miss Allen didn’t walk, she marched into the classroom each day with a steely smile on her face. (Everything about her was steely, even her hair was “iron” gray.) When she would call on me to recite and prove a theorem, I would stumble over something I had had down cold the night before. Occasionally, she would help me out by saying the next word, a fact that used to infuriate Nancy, a friend of mine. (“She never helps me out when I hesitate!”) Afterwards, I would almost cry with relief that it was over.

For years I wouldn’t have thought that she could do any wrong whatsoever, but after I became a teacher myself, I did begin to question why my grade was always lower than the average I thought I deserved. When I was a senior and a new letter grading system had come into being, I kept up with all my grades in Trigonometry. I had a 99+ average one six weeks and thought I deserved an A+ (97-100). Instead, I had to be satisfied with an A (90-96). Nowadays the students and parents would put up a fuss and demand to see the grades. But neither my parents nor I would have dared to do such a thing. That was back in the days when the teacher was always right and especially Jim Lee Allen!

I won’t say that she was my favorite teacher of grades 1-12; that honor is reserved for Miss Knight, my seventh grade teacher. But I will have to say that she was the best teacher I had because she “inspired” me to work so hard in her classes.