WHAT KIND OF TEACHER did your child have today?
Someone like Mrs. Griggs, who remains calm no matter what, and believes in public apologies for bad behavior? Or one like Miss Pointy, who disdains the educational bureaucracy and helps a lonely fifth-grader reveal what a good writer, and good person, she is? Or maybe it was someone like Miss Nelson, who is nice and sweet and kind despite a dreadful class of kids who won't settle down and behave.
Mrs. Griggs can be found in the pages of Beverly Cleary's "Ramona the Brave," in which Ramona starts first grade and promptly gets in trouble. Through a misunderstanding that could happen only to Ramona, she throws away the paper owl she's made in class and then, in anger, crumples up the owl made by a classmate. After her mother counsels her, Ramona agrees that she will apologize. But Mrs. Griggs expects her to apologize publicly, in front of the whole class, and Ramona is just not sure she can do it.
While Ramona is passionate and serious and creative, Mrs. Griggs is calm and quiet and orderly. "Ramona liked people who got excited. She would rather have a teacher angry with her than one who stood there being calm." Ramona learns a lot from Mrs. Griggs in the course of just a few months--and alert readers will recognize that Mrs. Griggs may have learned a thing or two herself.
Learning to get along with a teacher who doesn't really understand you is a good skill for kids to learn, but it's much more fun to find a teacher who appreciates who you are. In "Sahara Special," Esme Raji Codell, herself a former teacher, introduces Sahara Jones, a fifth-grader who's repeating a grade after a disastrous year in special education.
Her new teacher, Madame Poitier, known as Miss Pointy, tells the class that "boring" is a swear word and that no one in her class will fail.
She's full of ideas, like keeping a trouble basket by the door for kids to leave their home troubles so they can learn in class. Miss Pointy is challenged along the way by some difficult kids and even by difficult administrators, but Sahara quietly spends the year blossoming into the writer she knows she can be.
In James Marshall's "Miss Nelson is Missing," the nice, sweet teacher is met with spitballs, giggles and bad behavior. "They were even rude during story hour."
The next day, Miss Viola Swamp comes to school instead, wearing a black dress and an angry scowl. She means business, and soon the kids are working hard, sitting still and having no fun at all.
When Miss Nelson finally returns, she has the most well-behaved class in the school.
Maybe now she can leave that black dress in the closet!
Miss Agnes Sutterfield arrives in a small Alaska village to be the new teacher in the one-room school, and, unlike earlier teachers, she doesn't turn right around and get back on the plane after the first day. In "The Year of Miss Agnes" by Kirkpatrick Hill, 10-year-old Fred watches in amazement as the new teacher throws out their textbooks, tells them stories, plays them opera music, and, most surprising of all, believes that they can grow up to be anything they want to be.
Here's hoping your kids' teachers have the best qualities of Miss Agnes and all the rest!
You can phone CAROLINE PARR, coordinator of children's services for Central Rappahannock Regional Library, at 540/372-1160 or e-mail her at cparr@crrl.org.