I went to grade school in a community so small, my kindergarten teacher used to date my dad, and never got over he dumped her. Some of my teachers had also been his teachers. One of those had moved, and taught where I eventually moved and she was a teacher at my new jr. high. Kids made fun of her, and did imitations, and then I told some of them she was my aunt. Boy, that made some of them feel foolish.
Some of the teachers I had, had been students of my Grandma when she was still single.
That was in a single room little wood schoolhouse, in a town so small it has never had a zip code. My uncle had a farm in that town. Well, the house was. I remember playing on the old, rotted wood teeter totter which was still outside that little school. It was nothing more than four walls and part of a roof by then. Think Little House On The Prairie episodes.
The teacher I loved the most was a fourth grade teacher. She didn’t mind that I brought a snake to class in a big glass jar.
Mrs. Z was tiny. Some of the kids in my class were taller than her. She was super cool.
She let class get off topic sometimes I guess just to see where we would go.
One time she had us collect dandelion greens during recess. She cleaned them, and boiled them, and we ate them on crackers. I gobbled my share, and maybe somebody else’s, but to this day I won’t touch spinach.
She encouraged us to think beyond the pages of our textbooks.
She taught us learning could be fun, even adventurous. That was before Sesame Street and Zoom, and The Electric Company.