A Really Fabulous Teacher

Beth Moore has a wonderfully sweet post with precious comments going over at The Living Proof Ministries blog. You can read it for yourself HERE, but the prompt was that she ran into her old high school english teacher yesterday. She asked us to write about our favorite teachers and so I decided that I would post my response here.

Mrs. Constance (Connie) Hill was my very favorite teacher in the whole wide world!!! (That’s how I talked when I was in her class…in 3rd grade!)

I loved her because she loved me right back. I needed a lot of love that year. Just the year before I had moved from one school to another. My grandparents divorced and my grandmother and my aunt moved in with us. My mom gave birth to the most beautiful boy in the world and discovered only 6 short weeks later that he was severely impaired with Cerebral Palsy. My uncle had brain surgery and also moved in with us for a short time. I call it the year that I took the back seat to everyone else on the planet. I’m not bitter — my parents were BUSY…had their hands full. Life was hard. God was good. Period.

But Mrs. Hill made me feel like I was important and that I mattered. She listened to my silly stories and complimented me on a job well done. She told me I played the xylophone with the extra key (a B flat to be exact) better than any student she had ever taught! I made my cursive D wonderfully, but needed to work on my F and T. She taught us how to make globes out of balloons and newspapers and glue which I remember as if it were yesterday. She didn’t come down too hard on me when she caught me passing my “I like you. Do you like me? Yes or No” note to Jeff Grooms. Life in the 3rd grade portable with Mrs. Hill was an escape, of sorts, from a life at home that was sweet in so many ways but hard to deal with in many ways…especially when you are 9.

I went back until I was in the 6th grade every afternoon and graded papers for Mrs. Hill. She always had a Dr. Pepper (in a bottle) and a bag of Andy Capp Fries waiting on me. I loved that she trusted me to grade her papers. But I loved that she sat and talked with me while I did it.

She cared about me in a way she really didn’t have to.

I think about her often. In fact, I thought of her yesterday and wondered if she might be computer savvy enough to be on facebook. I think she is in her 80′s now and I have no idea where she is, but I search every now and again just to be sure.

I wonder if she knows?

I wonder if she remembers?

I hope she knows how wonderful it was to have someone who did not grow weary in doing good to a little freckled-faced, awkward, 4-eyed, hand-me-down wearin’, oftentimes lonely 9 year old.

I wish I could buy her a ice cold Dr. Pepper and bag of Andy Capp Fries. I just might do that if I could!

Blessings,
Dori