Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | winter 2007

WINTER 2007
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Cover Story:
The power of one

Feature Story:
Time to celebrate

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TEACHER APPRECIATION

My best memories of elementary school don’t involve friends or field trips or recess or lunch. They’re about my teachers.

I loved ALL of my teachers at Ott Elementary, and later at my new neighborhood school, Mill Creek Elementary. There was Miss Turnage, my first grade teacher. She was a tiny woman, barely bigger than we were (and we were only 6 years old). There was my second grade teacher, Mrs. Mason, who for some unexplained reason my friend Lori Wilmes and I lovingly
nicknamed “Grandma Teenager.” I even liked my third grade teacher, Mrs. Doubt (not to be confused with Mrs. Doubtfire, although she did have the same taste in clothes). Mrs. Doubt was nearing retirement, and the thing I remember the most about her was the way her upper arms swung back and forth when she wrote on the chalkboard. I used to think that was hilarious, but now that I’m getting close to 50, it’s not funny anymore.

My fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Spadafora, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Spadafora changed my life. She did something in our classroom that no teacher had done before: She treated us like adults. This is a revelation of monumental proportions when you’re 10 years old. She gave us responsibility! She used the proper name for body parts! She never talked to us like we were a bunch of dumb little kids. She told great stories about her life and her family and all her adventures. She had been to the Florida Keys! Her son was a cop! She let us read Owls in the Family, and she made us correctly spell and pronounce “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”
I grew up a lot that year.

Fifth grade was a blur, because my class got split up when the new school was built. Nothing was really the same after that. My sixth grade teacher was Mr. Hale, and my friend Kathy Brewer and I had a contest to see which one of us could be MORE in love with him. It was probably a draw, but I was definitely more in love with David Cassidy.

If you would have asked me in elementary school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I might have said an artist or a writer. But I might also have said a teacher. Because I thought teachers were the coolest people ever.

But I would have made a lousy teacher. I just don’t have the patience to deal with a classroom full of kids. But I’m so glad that there are people who ARE cut out to be teachers.

From Ms. Wilde, my college prep English teacher, I learned about life and love and literature. I took every class she taught at William Chrisman High School.
I learned about run-on sentences and comma splices. I read Crime and Punish-ment for that woman. I did my best work for her. I thought I knew everything by
the time I graduated from high school. She made me feel like a genius.

From Linda Smith, my high school journalism teacher, I learned that I might want to be a journalist. Early in my junior year, she asked me if I had considered majoring in journalism in college. I had not. I wanted to write poetry and books. I wanted to paint and draw. I thought I might want to write and illustrate children’s books. Maybe. The only reason I was in a journalism class was because it was an outlet for my writing. I loved having people read what I wrote.

But by the end of my junior year, not only did I want to be a journalist, I wanted to be Woodward AND Bernstein rolled into one. I wanted to set the world on fire. I wanted to right the wrongs and get the bad guys. I wanted to be a rock’n’roll reporter and a magazine editor and go to New York and be a Pulitzer-prize-winning newspaper reporter and travel to other countries and be the best journalist there ever was. Thus was the profound effect that Linda Smith had on my life.

I haven’t done most of those things, but I did major in journalism at a university in Missouri. There I had more great teachers – especially in English, journalism, and
philosophy – who helped shape the person I’ve become. I was the editor of my college newspaper one summer, and I was managing editor of the yearbook. I was part of the “McCracken Muckrakers,” a would-be band of gonzo journalists on campus in the late 1970s. I did freelance rock’n’roll reporting for the Kansas City Star. After graduation, I was editor of a couple of small-town newspapers. And yadda-yadda-yadda,
now I’m here.

I may not have set the world on fire (yet!) but I’ve met some amazing people and done some pretty cool things in my career. I still run into Linda Smith occasionally. She left high school teaching a long time ago. Now she works at Kansas State. I personally know at least a dozen people whose lives and careers changed because of her, and I can only imagine
that there are hundreds more, maybe thousands.

To her, and to all the other teachers who taught me so much over the years, all I can say is “Thanks, and I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

About the Writer | Carole Gieseke is the editor of VISIONS magazine.