The Love of a Lifetime

Good teachers are not rare, though perhaps more so in a society that values them less. Extraordinary teachers, who can influence a life for a lifetime, are just that: Beyond the ordinary. Memorable. Encountered, if we are lucky, perhaps two or three times during our formative years.

After the gentle ladies who guided my years from six to twelve, spent in the polite society of the South, I was unprepared for the stunningly effective and universally unloved sixth-grade teacher to whom I was assigned at New York City’s P.S. 117. Mrs. Jones was the school’s music teacher but purveyor of all subjects to her captives of the sixth grade.

I’ve no doubt she taught us reading, writing, arithmetic, history and science just as fiercely as she did her beloved music, but music is all that I remember learning from her.

Mrs. Jones was determined that we would memorize—presumably thus better to appreciate—certain classical pieces from her own eclectic list of favorites. Woe to the child who could not stand and sing (all the melodies conveniently had words) selections from Grieg's “Peer Gynt Suite,” Paderewski's “Minuet in D,” or “The Swan,” by Saint-Saëns. (See? I remember them all!) The latter was my particular downfall and shame: for my failure to recite it properly when called upon, I was summoned to the front of the class and required to sing it until I got it right, while Mrs. Jones kept time with little tugs on my pigtails. I learned the tunes, in the end, but it was another twenty years before I began to appreciate them.

The star of my memories, though, is Marie McManus, high school English teacher without equal. Not a day goes by, though now I am a grandmother, that I don't think about what I learned from her only yesterday. In our small public high school in Dobbs Ferry, NY (there were only 37 seniors at graduation), it was a given that we'd all be in her care—for better or worse—for three years running. Every student in that school had the incredible good fortune to study under one of the most exciting and effective teachers I've ever known.

She was a no-nonsense lady, a veritable drill sergeant like Mrs. Jones, but her passion was for every kind of literature. From day one of our first year with her we read, parsed, memorized and analyzed poems, plays, essays and novels. Seizing every opportunity to capture adolescent imaginations, she had us read the Classic Comics treatment of such stalwarts as The Brothers Karamazov and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and compare them with the originals. We joked that she could find a deeper meaning to the word "the," so insistent was she that we understand every word we read. There was no ducking or dodging the assignments, and everyone in the high school—college, business or vocational track—had to complete three years of English with Mrs. McManus.

I can't say enough good things about the sum of the experience, and the way it turned me on to literature and learning. The words and ideas she laid before us filled my senses and remained with me, riding around in the back pocket of my mind, handy for reference in my journey through life.

There was Austen, Bacon, Blake, Byron, Chaucer, Dante, Emerson, Faulkner, Frost, Goldsmith, Hardy, Hawthorne . . . you get the idea. And her purpose reached far beyond mere appreciation of the literature she clearly loved, for there were lessons to be drawn from even the most exquisite lines of poetry: art, psychology, politics, sociology and history all made their way from the printed page into our understanding. She made it so lively and interesting that we ultimately forgave her for the workload. She brought it to life for us—I'll never forget how we jumped during a lesson when she suddenly began pounding her desk, galumphing her fists across it like a galloping steed as Macbeth readied for his last battle: "Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back!" (She was also our drama coach.)

Now that I've had a few years to think about these teachers—so different in their ways—I'll venture to support the old-fashioned notion that there is a value to drill and recitation, but most of all when it is part of teaching understanding and a love of the subject at hand. The simplest life experience is enhanced when a bit of music or prose or poetry learnt so long ago echoes again, unbidden: "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky!" Ah, how it adds to pleasure taken in the simplest of Nature's offerings, much as sharing with a loved one will do, and in turn increases the joy of life.

Certainly the lessons learned remain with me still, my gratitude expanding as the decades have passed.

I had the urge one day to call Mrs. McManus, half-way across the country, to tell her how much she had affected my life in so many positive ways. I was saddened to learn that she had died a few years before, and I chastised myself for taking so long to tell her. Another lesson learned.