The Scent is In the Air....

Can you smell it? The smell of color crayons, and fresh floor wax, and new books, and beans. Yep - it's the smell of school.

Gert & Essie start on Thursday. Gert only goes on Thursday, and Essie is QUITE put out she has to go BOTH days and Gert is QUITE put out that she only gets to go ONE.

So, although in Minnesota school doesn't start for a few weeks, in honor of my girls starting school, I thought I would give you some of my favorite memories of school.

The first one is a little odd... because it's actually a bad memory, but then it gets sweet. In 10th grade I ended up in Honors Biology with Mr. VanoB. How, I know NOT. I am NOT good with the sciences. The class was me, and all the geeky-brainiac boys in our class. I did my best to keep up, but sometimes... it was just too much. Like the week we were studying amoebas and paramecium. Remember those guys?? I had spent the evening prior studying, reading, studying some more, but just couldn't get my head wrapped around who was who. Sitting in class the next day, the teacher was going over the two and had slides up on the screen of them. Now we've ALL been told there's no such thing as a stupid question, right? It took a lot, but I raised my hand, and he called on me... "Which one is a paramecium and which one is an amoeba?" Do you know what his response was? "I guess we can see who didn't do their homework last night."

Humiliation.

Devastation.

Embarrassment.

I slumped down in my chair, and you can bet I said not ONE WORD the rest of the semester. I never felt so small (and not in a good "Wow, these pants FIT" sense of small).

Fast forward 2 years. It's spring semester of my Senior Year and I need one more science credit. UGH. THE only viable option was Geology, because I wasn't touching Chemistry with a 1000000 foot pole. I signed up and eventually got my schedule. Guess who was teaching Geology? Of COURSE... Mr. VanoB. UGH and double ICK. But, there was no other choice, and I went in there determined to SHOW HIM! Now, i will tell you that Geology runs in my blood. My uncle is a famous Geologist (really, he is, but it seems that Geologists are only really famous in Geology circles... so I'm guessing the majority of you have not heard of him). Another uncle taught Geology for 30+ years. So, I get geology. I get rocks... plate tectonics... slip faults.. etc. But beyond just GETTING it, I worked SO HARD on that class. I did the extra credit on quizzes, I came after class to look at rock samples. At parent/teacher conferences, Mr. VanoB asked my mom if she had twin daughters because I was NOT the same girl he had taught previously. HA - take THAT Mr. VanoB! And guess what grade I ended with.... A+ thank you very much.

I tell you that story to remind you (once again - I do believe I have found the theme for my blog) that WORDS MATTER. Words we toss out in passing may deeply affect someone - sometimes positively, sometimes negatively.

Now, one more story about school. In 6th grade we lived in a very small town. There were 2 sections of 6th grade - Mr. Paulson's class and Mr. Slattum's class. Math & Reading were both split up into higher and lower groups. Mr. Paulson had the higher groups, Mr. Slattum the lower. Now, I get along with Math (or at least at that point) about as well as I get along with Science. I usually finally get it, but it takes me a while, and it's usually long after the test has come and gone, so while I LEARNED it, my grades never SHOWED I did. So, each day at 10:10 I would traipse over to Mr. Slattums class for lower group math.

Now, Mr. Paulson was FAMOUS for his Math word problems. Other teachers in the school liked to try to figure them out. They were AMAZING! Apparently, this particular day in the fall, he had read through a word problem, and without looking up, said "Elizabeth, why don't you give us the answer." (Elizabeth was me, just in case that's not clear... Elizabeth... Lizzy... see?) Of course at that moment he heard crickets, because I was across the hall with dear old Mr. Slattum (who, funny enough, I saw many years later when I was working for a company that was building the senior living cooperative that he was moving into!).

Mr. Paulson "Elizabeth?"

Random-fellow-6th-grade-student "Um... Elizabeth is in Mr. Slattum's math class"

Mr. Paulson "Well, that's just silly."

(BTW - Mr. Paulson was a tad... flighty)

So Mr. Paulson walked across the hallway, and opened Mr. Slattum's door. He pointed at me, wiggled his finger, told me to get my books and get across the hall where I belonged.

Do you know what I remember about that moment? I remember feeling... gosh I can't even think of the right word... Powerful? Smart? Confident? Understood? I'm not sure but I put that as the most pivitol moment of my school career. Mr. Paulson believed in me. Mr. Paulson saw ability in me beyond just a test score. So I moved to Mr. Paulson's upper math group, and I answered his word problems and I thrived and succeeded!!!

A couple years ago I found an e-mail address for Mr. Paulson and e-mailed him, relaying to him that moment, and what it meant to me. Turns out that year he had been named Minnesota's Middle School Teacher of the Year. I whole-heartedly agree!