A SAVVY SAVIOR
Miss Frieda Schneller had the extraordinary ability to be where I least expected her to be at the time I least expected her to be there. She usually approached my desk from behind. I both feared and admired her air of authority. Today’s elementary students would call her a Transformer© and indeed she was exactly that to me.
Seven decades later I continue to hold a transparent, freeze-frame image of my third grade teacher in my aging mind.
She is a plump spinster with dark seams running straight down the back of coffee-colored stockings. Her swollen legs silently stride directly toward me. They are encased in bark-brown leather oxfords laced tightly across her wide feet. Her perfumed white hair is wrapped in a tight bun that nestles at the nape of her neck. An over-sized decorative hairpin plunges randomly into the middle of the swirl lying there. A few strands of it curl forward toward her round and freckled face.
Her flowered waltz-length dress is topped with a creamy lace collar. Two rectangular pockets are conveniently located at hip level. The left-hand pocket holds a fresh, white linen hankie 186 mornings a year. I can see a bit of lace peeking out of it. The other pocket holds two pieces of hard white chalk because Miss Schneller is right-handed. Each day she writes with magnificent penmanship on a chalkboard that covers the entire front wall of our class room.
It often occurs to me these days that, indeed, one of many skills I learned in third grade was to observe details thanks to Miss Schneller. A handy trait for a poet.
I consider myself one of the luckiest students ever to attend Lincoln Elementary School in small town Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. I was lucky because Frieda Schneller loved teaching and sincerely cared for an undisciplined, cocky little girl in the first seat of the back row who sported long braids and was possessed by a determined attitude.
She undoubtedly regarded me and my disruptive mannerisms in the classroom day after week after month, the bane of her existence. She reprimanded me for my talkativeness repeatedly, yet in my redheaded stubbornness, my river of words flowed ceaselessly onward. Eventually I learned to channel that river onto paper.
This good-hearted lady, my savior in disguise, and I got along well for the first eight weeks. She was experienced in the ways of verbose nine-year-old children and she was fair, in a demanding way, in her dealings with them.
Our relationship changed the day our class received our first report cards of the year. And there it was; a grade of C in penmanship on my report card. And an N next to Works Quietly on the deportment section of the card. Needs improvement? Who? Me?
Talk about shock and awe. Until that moment nothing but A’s had ever been on my record. My parents expected me to earn A’s. My teacher’s written truth forced me to abruptly realize that focus and discipline was what I was going to learn this year and I was foolish if I believed otherwise. That C was the first of a long line of wakeup calls I was to have that bind me to Miss Schneller to this very day.
I was furious, of course, and hid my report card from my nosy classmates. I was embarrassed to go home to my parents. That C in penmanship was an unforgivable blot on my academic record at the ripe old age of nine. My natural flare for drama erupted. Forced to admit to myself and my family that my daily rebellion as a motor mouth had done me in, I eventually vowed to reverse my fate. Dad’s “quiet talk” helped a lot.
That C meant that a cute smile and a sharp mind was not going to sway Miss Schneller as it had my first and second grade teachers. Sliding sloppy, hurriedly-written papers onto her desk was unacceptable. She was not kidding when she told me my gibber jabbering distracted those around me as well as myself. She expected neat, accurate work and respect for others at all times. Those were the specific satisfactory behaviors allowed in her classroom from each student. That included me. Imagine that.
Miss Frieda Schneller, once an immigrant herself, sensed that the “Scotch-Irish Hunky” multilingual child in front of her was the logical product of the town of Eastern European immigrants numbering eight to ten thousand. She could, with her specialized encouragement, become a successful student. For the next 130 days, under Miss Schneller’s watchful eye, I gained extensive practice in the life arts of organization, structure and verbal discipline.
Ten months under her weighty wings taught me patience, persistence, purposefulness, and prudent use of time. Those days of dedication from Miss Schneller to this writer provided the unshakable foundation of confidence and resourcefulness I needed later to reach for my dreams. At the time I had no idea what a role model she was for my future roles as parent, teacher and poet.
My Savvy Savior’s classroom rules were never discussed aloud, yet so deeply did I absorb them, they appeared now and again on my classroom walls over the span of my career as an educator. Simple rules, summed up in her appearance and her behavior, they became my rules for life:
1. Approach people with honesty and authority garnered from experience.
2. Maintain focus as straight as the seams on old fashioned stockings.
3. Have available the right tools, including a quiet mind, to produce neat, organized results.
4. Use colorful though disciplined language when speaking or writing.
5. Surprise listeners and readers with the use of creative viewpoints.
Every now and then an image of a short, round lady, wisps of white hair escaping from a bun tucked at the nape of her neck, and wearing a flowered dress covering her knees, springs into sharp focus, and I must smile.
From the perspective of age and life experience, I often reflect on the lessons I learned from this caring teacher following my fateful day of reckoning with that C in penmanship.
There is no doubt in my mind that the model that dear Miss Schneller set before me influenced whatever successes my careers have achieved.
