Facing Your Next Teacher Is Just Elementary

It was Labor Day, the last day of summer vacation. And it was raining. Hard.

I looked out the window at the water running down the street, flooding over the curbs and sadly concluded that the end was near. Summer was over. I couldn’t even run around outside in one final hurrah even though it was warm enough.

What made it worse was I was about to enter fifth grade at Colvill School and would be facing Miss Schlegelmilch, considered by many former students of hers to be the strictest teacher there. All summer long my older brother Dave kept warning me about her.

“You better be ready. She’s tough and you’ll have homework every night. She’ll keep you after school, make you stand in the hall and report you to Mom and Dad,” he said too many times. I was able to mostly disregard this brotherly needling all summer. But now there was no more time to hide. I would have to face the nightmare awaiting me. I did not sleep well that night in my half-bath bedroom.

If I had thought about it, I would have remembered that this happened every year. There were warnings about the teachers I would have, not just from Dave, but from other kids in the neighborhood who had experienced the wrath of every teacher at Colvill School. 

Even if a teacher was new to the school I was warned to watch out. New teachers were an unknown quantity. They would set strict rules and be mean. This was pure intimidation of course. They had no way of knowing what the new teacher would be like. But it sure worked on me anytime I was getting a new teacher. It was worse when the “new “ teacher was not new but a transfer from another school. Then you’d hear horror stories about them from kids at that school.

Every teacher I had at Colvill School was a woman except for a few art and gym teachers. So I had no way of knowing if men teachers were better than women teachers. Many of these teachers would be “miss” their entire lives. There were a couple that became “Mrs.” over the summer or over Christmas vacation.

Then there were the warnings of how much worse it would be in junior high and high school when you had to face many different teachers each day. And they had detention if you caused trouble.

Now, there was some truth to all of these warnings. But it wasn’t always that a given teacher was strict or unforgiving. Often it was because the kids warning you were the troublemakers who deserved punishment. You just couldn’t be sure though, so had to weigh the risks. Miss Schlegelmilch had been there forever so there was enough empirical evidence from Dave and others that I decided to pay attention.

It was most unfortunate if you had an older sibling that had less-than-exemplary experiences with specific teachers. Teachers have very good memories and they can recognize a last name pretty quickly. Having a name like Johnson in Minnesota can help you hide, but not for an entire school year. Too often, the image recall of teachers gives you away immediately.

“Oh, you’re part of THAT Johnson family,” was a statement that could chill you to the bone. More often than not though, well-organized teachers would have already discussed their class rosters with each other ahead of time so they were ready for you.

If teachers asked me if I had an older sister named Laurel, I could be assured it was a good thing. If they asked if I had an older brother named Bruce or Dave, I had to study their tone of voice and facial expressions before I could decide how to respond.

I remember one teacher making a student known for troublemaking sit up front near him.

“Billy, it’s not that I don’t trust you. I just trust you less.”

It also didn’t help that my dad was a high school teacher. He always knew what other teachers thought of me. I could not hide so the best I could do was try to stay off his radar. When I picked up my class schedule for 10^thgrade, it listed him as my biology teacher. I was overcome with a cold sweat as I rushed  to his classroom to tell him.

“Dad, they put me in one of your classes!”

“Don’t worry. I already had it changed,” he said tersely without even looking up. Even he didn’t want me. I did have him for driver ed. But that was OK because then I could get my license quicker and those were mostly one-on-one driving sessions.

I really don’t remember any bad teachers in elementary school. Some had a larger influence on me than others but they all cared about their students. I can’t say the same about all the teachers I had after that.

And what about my experience in fifth grade with Miss Schlegelmilch? She turned out to be one of my favorite teachers. That first day was scary, listening to her explain her rules in no uncertain terms. Yes, she was strict and there were some tearful events that year. But I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I never read so many books.

I also learned to not listen to my brother Dave.