Teacher Appreciation Week: Six that really helped me--by Bryan F.

Today's story is about some great teachers that helped when I really needed it. Today is the beginning of Teacher Appreciation Week.  They deserve all the appreciation they get.  There were six that stand out for me, that went the extra mile. 
A short acknowledgment of each of their efforts follows. 

Warm Springs Elementary school is located in the town of Highland where my Mom and Dad both lived before getting married. Around the corner once stood a church where they both attended in the early fifties and where they married in 1953. Warm Springs school was located just north of Ninth Street on Sterling Ave. A couple miles down Ninth to the east was a house where my Grandparents lived, my Mom's parents. It's also the oldest Elementary school in San Bernardino. Founded in 1854, one hundred years before I was born and the same year San Bernardino was incorporated.

I came to Warm Springs School after my parents moved from Bloomington, California to 9th street just a few houses west of my Grandparents. This was something that I was very happy about.

I had attended part of first grade and second and third grades at two schools in Bloomington and before that the first half of first grade at Sterling Elementary and Kindergarten at Del Rosa Elementary in the Del Rosa area of San Bernardino. So, by the time I got to fourth grade at Warm Springs, I was already way behind everyone else because curriculum between schools especially in different districts doesn't line up.

Math and reading were the areas where I suffered the greatest deficits. I always thought that my scholastic difficulties were directly related to the number of schools I attended, twelve in all from kindergarten to graduation. The truth was however that the reading problems were related to vision difficulty that was mitigated by my fourth-grade teacher and savior, Miss Elgin who recognized the problem and advised my parents to get me to the eye doctor forthwith. I was prescribed glasses and began to read on my own to catch up with my peers. The book I read over and over was a very old one called, The Cat and the Captain by Elizabeth Coatsworth, first published in 1927. 
There was little reading material in my environment and I have no recollection of where this book came from. It was the only one I had at that time and I read it over and over. Reading comprehension and critical thinking became my strengths and offset the math difficulties that never improved until I began to attend college in 1998. 

Miss Elgin recognizing my vision problems allowing me to catch up with my reading skills. Something that my previous teacher did not recognize. Miss Elgin was old school, already middle-aged by the time I reached her class, most of my teachers in my Bloomington schools were young and inexperienced. Miss Elgin didn't just address my reading issue, she also set about to make sure I left her class with my multiplication tables burned into my brain. She came across as an ally so when she made me drill with the flashcards when everyone else was watching her home movies, it didn't make me feel bad. She was helping me and I knew it.

She and her partner traveled through the Southwest United States during the summers and the films were a personal record of her and her partners' travels. I would sneak peeks between the flashcards. I knew she was different from my other teachers and only years later after I knew what being gay was, did I realize she was lesbian 

Miss Elgin had that rare ability to make you want to make her proud. You knew she liked you as a person and wanted you to achieve your potential. 

Learning my multiplication tables which I did, did not ultimately solve my math difficulties. I believe I have a neurological condition called Dyscalculia.
I mostly received Ds and Fs in my math classes in junior high and high school even though I worked hard to try and understand. Looking over notes on report cards from my elementary school teachers makes clear that I was not progressing. The teachers in junior high and high school would fail me on my quarter grade and then give me a D on my semester grade so I could move on. None ever tried to help me until 8th grade when Mrs. Austin, my eighth-grade math teacher took an interest in my difficulties. She worked with me after school several times a week to help me understand the concepts, but I made little progress. I was grateful but also frustrated and I began to develop a negative and hopeless attitude towards education. 

In ninth grade, my English teacher Miss Crawford recommended me to an AP class in my 10th-grade year. I received my first ever A in school in Miss Crawford's class during the quarter we were studying Charles Dickens and for the first time, I felt like I wasn't completely stupid or dumb. The 10th grade AP class was hard but it was also the best class I ever had. We only read novels and wrote essays about them all year. I can recall A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies as well as an assortment of J.D. Salinger and others I can no longer recall. 

I also, for the first time started using the public library. Up until then, I had only ever been in a school library and they were pretty thin. Miss Crawford and that AP teacher, Mr. Taylor opened the world of literature to me. I also got to attend my first play in that class at the Redlands University Theater, The Important of Being Ernest. I still have the ticket.

Another teacher that stood out was my French teacher in 12th grade. My math grades were putting a drag on my GPA and a counselor told me I might not graduate because I was missing some requirements. That was resolved when I had to tell him I had taken makeup classes in summer school, at a different school. I had hated a history teacher so much in my first year of high school that I just stopped going to class, he was also my gym teacher that first year of high school, and I just stopped going to both classes. My first semester PE was fulfilled by Marching Band and going from that wonderful experience into the sadistic gym classes of high school wasn't something I was ready to experience. 

I spent that summer at my Grandma's house in Highland on 9th st and went to San Gorgonio High School, which was closer to her house. I loved the summer PE class because it was swimming. I got a B in History, a grade I seldom received in any class. So, I didn't really have any worry about not graduating after all, but I just wanted to be sure, so I packed my 12th-grade class schedule with literature and language classes, French and Spanish because I knew I could get A's and B's in them. That's when I met Madame Batton. She was born and raised in France and a liberal feminist that knew who I was and what I had endured without my telling her. She was impressed with my ability to learn French without studying. A lecture and class time was all I needed. She saw that I was suffering. With just a smile, something she didn't often do she made me feel understood and loved. She also let me know she was disappointed when I came to class high on drugs. No other teacher ever noticed or cared. Her caring made me want to do better. Most students feared her, she was very tough and put up with no-nonsense. She was also empathic and intuitive. She was also a little strange, she wouldn't allow her picture to be taken.

Another teacher that cared as much as Madame Batton was Professor Angelica Jovita Hernandez. I got to know Angelica when I went back to school at Skagit College, in Skagit, Washington.
She was my English comp teacher. She, like Batten, had a reputation of being extremely tough and was feared. In the first class I took with her she gave everyone back their thesis statements for their research project with a failing grade. Research papers were all you did in her classes. I went to her office after class and she was very open to telling me where I had failed, indeed where all of us had failed. You had to get into one, two sentences at the most a statement that made clear what you would be writing about. It was tough and invaluable learning. I spent quite a lot of time in her office and we became friends. I took her for every English requirement. Skagit was doing an experimental program where they merged two classes. The usual ones were something like Art History with English Composition. You would have to take them together with both instructors present. An art history portion and then the English Comp, which with Angelica was how to write a research paper using a piece of art as your thesis. One strange fusion was a Biology/ Literature class I took. That class took a lot of imagination to integrate the two disciplines. 

Angelica became a friend and after learning I was HIV positive shared with me that her father had died of complications of AIDS. He was an artist, as were her two brothers. One of her brothers often did installations behind glass in designated areas in the college common area. 

She broke the rules one day and told me that only a couple other of her students that she had ever had, had critical thinking abilities on par with my own. I think it was the paper I did where I used Warhols, Marilyn Monroe silkscreen print, to talk about commercial standards of beauty that excluded some talented women from advancement. Her compliment didn't give me a big head. It gave me confidence, that I was sorely lacking. 

One class that really defined her intellect, but that I did not get to take was a communication class that she created. It was centered on and included tortilla making. It was a cultural lesson about how people communicate in different cultures and specifically how traditional Mexican women communicated with each other. She was a smart and fascinating woman. 

I also, with a ton of tutoring made it through my math requirements with grades overall good enough to get me into the Honor Society, Phi Theta Cappa. I also held the position of Secretary in PTC. 

Completing my course work at Skagit allowed me to let go of the related anxiety that often manifested in my dreams. 

My teachers Angelica, Miss Elgin, Mrs. Austin,  Miss Crawford, Mr. Taylor, and Madame Batton all helped me on my path of learning and healing. I give sincere thanks to them all.

https://www.additudemag.com/what-is-dyscalculia-overview-and-symptom-breakdown/

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