Sandra is a teacher, has been a teacher for a long, long time. She used to lie in bed beside me, reading me Bible stories from a book on the high shelf. I remember her tracing on my arm so I would feel the relative lengths of the lifelines in the book. How we marvelled at the incomprehensible longevity of Noah. Could any man live to be 950 years old? She taught me about the unpredictability of volcanoes, and then dried my tears when I cried in the story of a dog who, carrying a raisin bun in his mouth, was found at Pompeii buried beneath the lava that exploded out of Mount Vesuvius. And when I was all grown up, she took me to a storytelling festival, a day that inspired my grown-up storytelling dreams.
Sandra is a teacher. She taught me to tie my shoes, an accomplishment that could only be fully appreciated in later years, when it became apparent how clumsy my fingers were planning to be. She taught me touch-typing as soon as she learned it. She was thirteen. I was six. She taught me to climb on to a horse’s back, make a chocolate pudding, change a baby’s diaper, test the temperature of bath water, cook a frozen TV dinner, tuck in my sweaters and keep my knees together in a skirt. Nobody knows how she learned to be a teacher. She must have been born to it.
Sandra is an officially sanctioned teacher. She started young, was granted a license to teach before her twentieth birthday. Year after year, decade after decade, she has performed her miracle, changing pre-reading children into readers. She got new books to keep herself interested, learned new methods to keep up with the current trends, took cash out of the bank to buy supplies at Teachers’ Conventions.
Sandra is an officially acclaimed teacher. Her colleagues nominated her for an Excellence award. , Acclaim of the official kind has been a rare thing in her life. She was born healthy. Her two sisters were born blind. All three girls earned their place in the spotlight, but her extraordinary abilities were less noticeable because she had no disability against which to display them for contrast. So much was expected of her, too little credit given for things that would have made her the centre of attention in other families. But among her colleagues she was known to be exceptional. When she was chosen for special recognition, they celebrated the honour with her and her family. The Minister of Learning said: “Some of the most valuable lessons teachers offer cannot be found in textbooks or the curriculum. Great teachers help us to discover our unique talents. They inspire us to dream of all we can achieve and fuel our desire to learn.”
And now Sandra is preparing to be a retired teacher. Already her workday is shorter than it used to be. Soon there will be an end to scraping the windshield on dark wintry mornings, driving to work on roads too dangerous for the school bus, being professional at conferences with angry parents, teaching the ropes to new principals, drafting report cards.
Nevertheless, Sandra will still be a teacher. Here come her grandchildren, popping up as steadily as steps on an escalator. Her home is a haven for cribs and highchairs, shapes and colours, letters and numbers, new books and old books. CD’s and DVD’s fill the spaces where long-playing records and cassette tapes used to be. There is a difference between having a career and having a vocation. Fallen arches and pension credits can lure a teacher out of the classroom. It takes more than that to take the teacher out of a teacher.
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