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A Teacher's Love
of Literature Inspires the Same in Her Students
(The Daily Corinthian, 4 December 2004) |
Our
teacher limped into the room and went over to her desk. All of
her newly enrolled students sat quietly in our places. I heard
someone whisper, "This one must be tough. She's been wounded
in the war."
I noticed her salt-and-pepper hair
as she hoisted herself into the chair at the front of the room
and began explaining how our year in sophomore Honors English
was going to go. As she went through the list of novels we were
to read over the year, I remember thinking I hadn't read so many
books in my life. In addition to the list of novels, we also
had a textbook, an anthology of short stories and poems, from
which we would read.
And as the year went along, we
came to find out that Ms. Mary Jane Wilds meant what she had
said at the beginning of the school year. She was serious about
teaching, and her love of literature and writing was evident
every time she went to the front of the classroom to introduce
us to some gem of American literature. She just sparkled when
doing what she loved best.
She expected much out of her students.
On one occasion, she spied someone cheating on a test. She knew
who the culprit was, but she wanted him to own up to his crime
in front of everyone. When the student refused to come forward,
she declared that she was going to give all of us a failing grade
on the test. She ended up discarding the original tests and making
us take a new one the next day.
I was right, too, about the volume
of reading. Even though I had always loved reading, I never read
so many books in such a short span of time. Over the summer before
the class had even begun, we had been assigned to read Ernest
Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," John Steinbeck's
"Of Mice and Men," and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit
451" which foretold of a dark, dystopic world of literary
censorship, the single book that prompted me to rail against
any such censorship and champion the cause of intellectual freedom.
Once the year started we also found
ourselves reading Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn," Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth," and Herman
Melville's "Moby Dick," an ambitious read for tenth
graders. At the time, I loathed that book, full of its detailed
history of whaling and elevated language. I didn't see it then
for what it was: a brilliant exploration of a tortured character.
My favorite of our novels for the
year, though, was Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
It was one of the first pieces of fiction I had read that was
set in a small town not unlike some of the places with which
I was familiar.
And I think Ms. Wilds had a special
affinity for the book. Like Scout, the main character in the
book, Ms. Wilds had been reared by a single father who practiced
law in a small town, although it was Selmer, Tennessee, instead
of Maycomb, Alabama. And, like Scout, too, Ms. Wilds had grown
up in the midst of a racially tense world.
In light of all our reading and
writing, Ms. Wilds was the first teacher who seriously encouraged
me to pursue writing. I recall one paper I had submitted which
had a fictional slant. I described a sailor in the thrust of
some crisis with "passions as fierce as the stormy sea."
Ms. Wilds shared that simile with the class and told me she thought
my paper deserved an A—just for that one simile, if nothing
else.
Looking back, that one simile alone
didn't seem to constitute a masterpiece, but perhaps Ms. Wilds
saw some potential in a young student. I kept writing more and
more, immersing myself into the world of fiction and poetry.
I aspired to the likes of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty,
two Southern writers to which Ms. Wilds had introduced me.
Because of Ms. Wilds' prompting,
it was this tenth grade year in high school that I began to entertain
the idea that I might become a teacher. An English teacher. And
a writer. Until that time, I had seriously wanted to become an
astronaut, or at least work in some capacity in the aeronautics
industry. I had planned to go on to college and major in physics.
But I had always written in my
spare time, closing myself into the sanctuary of my bedroom when
a surge of inspiration hit and letting it pour forth. I had just
never seriously considered myself as a writer. Until Ms. Wilds.
After I graduated from high school,
I kept up with Ms. Wilds, going back to visit at the high school
on occasion. Her arthritis had gotten to the point that she could
barely get around the hallways without holding on to the walls
as she walked along. She ended up having a series of joint surgeries,
and it was as if the doctors had fashioned her into a new person.
On one occasion, she gave me a
collection of writings she had typed and had bound. The book
was titled "Scrapbook: Memories of a Southern Childhood."
I enjoyed reading those stories immensely, savoring the words
she used to chronicle her childhood.
In one piece, she aptly described
West Tennessee as "hotter than the hinges of Hell"
during cotton-picking season, and in another, she told of her
Aunt Bessie, who evidently relieved herself using her shoe while
traveling on a bus without bathroom facilities, as "largely
unrestrained by convention." Somehow I felt this characterization
apropos for Ms. Wilds as well.
Ms. Wilds retired from teaching
a few years ago and will no longer inspire a new generation of
students in the same way she inspired me. Although a daunting
task, I'm hoping I can carry on the legacy of inspiring students
in the same way.
(Stacy Jones, a Southerner, is
a Master of Fine Arts student in fiction writing at The University
of Memphis. She is a native of Guys, Tenn., and her columns,
which appear on Saturdays, are archived at Southern-Drawl.com.) |
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