I guess I go way back with teachers. Mrs. Campbell, in grade 1, drew a chalk circle an inch above my nose-height and made me stand there with my nose stuck in it. I forget what I'd done but could make something up, I suppose (I'd slugged Betsy Benny in the shoulder). I've told that story before, but no one has ever believed me. Not sure that I would myself.
Miss S. in grade 2 was a babe, no other way to put it (could again make something up: her first name was Rose). When we got to the classroom the night of the Christmas concert, we found a new phonics workbook on every desk, and the desks themselves renewed.
And so on through the grades. Skip ahead to grade 9 and Mrs. K, another babe, who lived in the same decade as her students, it seemed, which made her coolest by far.
I remember Mrs. Cohen at U of C music ed class, asking us to make noise and record it and compose with it. I reached back, don't know what made me do it, to the back panel of an electric piano, one of seven or eight in the row behind mine. I rubbed along, pulling a groan louder than the other noises. For her, that was a good thing. She was a serious creative spirit
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When I was in school--not that many years ahead of you, Gerry-- 7-year-olds got the strap for behaviour that now would get them on Ritalin. I never got the strap; I was a pretty quiet kid, mainly, and pretty unconsciously happy, but the teacher in the next room was always on the look-out for bad signs--and always setting traps for 6 and 7-year-olds to fall into. Then she would slap us upside the head in ways that would now get her jailed, but then got us in trouble at home: "If you're in trouble at school, you're in trouble at home" being the parents' motto of the day.
Miss Tanaka was the first cool one in my experience. She was taller than I was as I went into Grade 8; shorter by the time I got out of it. Of course, she was only 5' 0". Her brother was in the same grade I was. That was a puzzler: he had to call her Miss Tanaka in class, but she was Tammy at home. When friends visited him at home, she was Tammy to him, Miss Tanaka to them.
Mr. Todd was cool, too. A strapping great Irishman with a bad knee and a drinking habit. He once bounced Hans head first against the classroom door--Hans hit about two feet above the floor--for lipping him off.
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