Memories of a Classroom

(Continued from last Wednesday—August 7 . . . )

Not quite fifty-four years ago—on Sunday January 3, 1960—I, a newly vowed scholastic, boarded the train in Atchison, Kansas, and traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, a distance of 159 miles. I wore my Sunday habit and the black veil I’d exchanged for the white one worn for the novitiate year. My suitcase held . . .

·      my daily black habit made of seven yards of black serge;

·      my daily scapular, the long rectangular piece of black serge that covered the habit both back and front;

·      several flat white coifs of pleated linen, which, when shaped and worn, would cover my neck, head, and the sides of my face;

·      two heavily starched and rigid white linen headbands;

·      two voluminous one-piece cotton undergarments that encased the body from shoulders to thighs;

·      two floor-length cotton nightgowns;

·      an extra pair of black shoes;

·      two aprons;

·      my monastic diurnal from which I prayed the Divine Office, the ancient Latin prayers said seven different hours a day;

·      my St. Andrew Daily Missal for use during Mass;

·      and a collection of readings used for Matins, the longest prayer of the day.

          There may have been more in the black leather suitcase, which my parents had given me just two days before, but I have no memory of toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, soap, shoe polish, or the other sundries that I’d carry today.

          Nor do I remember the three-hour trip. Did I stew about entering a classroom the next day to teach when I’d had no classes on teaching? Was I curious about the nuns I’d be living with at the St. Peter and Paul convent? Did I already miss my classmates who’d been left behind to start college?

          Was the scene beyond the train window that January morning bleak? Sunny? Windy? Snow swept? Did grain stubble pierce through the frozen black soil of Nebraska? Were the dark skeletons of trees, stark against the prairie sky, foreboding? I don’t know.

         This is what I do remember about the two weeks that followed: The next day, I entered the fifth-grade classroom of Sister Nicole who was being treated for cancer in a nearby hospital. From a pole high above the chalkboard draped an American flag. Bookcases, with innumerable children’s books arranged in alphabetical order, nestled beneath the windows of the far wall. A globe stood on one bookcase. The room was sunny, filled with the children’s art and posters about reading and hygiene.

         The children within that classroom were young. Innocent. Welcoming. Concerned about their beloved teacher. They asked each morning if we could say special prayers for her throughout the day. I was eager to meet the woman whom these children treasured. Thoughtfully, she’d left me detailed lesson plans so I’d know how to proceed and what to teach.

         The only other thing I remember from her classroom is Stanley. A tall, hollow-cheeked child with sea-blue eyes and tousled chestnut hair, he sat mute in the back seat of the row next to the windows, staring blindly ahead while lobbing a hardball into his baseball glove. A sorrowful river of tears flowed over his pale cheeks and plopped onto his worn jeans throughout each of the ten days I spent in that classroom

          Another nun told me that Stanley’s father had died in an accident over the Christmas holidays. The children and I respected his grief—we were, I think, awestruck by it—and grew used to the thud, thud, thud, of the ball as it hit his first-baseman’s glove. Those thuds, which became the counterpoint to everything said in that classroom for those two weeks, still resound in my heart.

         It was on Friday, the last day of my sojourn in Sister Nicole’s classroom that I encountered a group of older children on the icy playground during recess. That encounter changed my life and may have taught me all I ever needed to know about teaching.

                                       (. . . to be continued next Wednesday)

Photograph by Jomphong from freedigitalphotos.com