A Teacher Who Changed My Life

I wanted to share with with my readers, someone who changed my life. She was my fourth grade teacher. She was someone who challenged me to think beyond my own horizons, and to embark upon a journey that was to remain with me for the rest of my life. My love of reading, literature, poetry, and the desire to write such works.

For you to understand what this lady meant to me, you have to understand a little about me as a child of nine, entering the fourth grade. This is a gawky time of development, especially for girls. Not quite a small child, not quite a teenager. I was a shy, skinny kid, afraid of my own shadow.

Her name was Mrs. Hellums. She was a child's best friend. She was tall, wore short strawberry-blonde hair, and had quite a "wholesomeness" about her. She was as downhome as "homemade apple pie." She had a way of making you feel at ease and confident about yourself.

As she introduced us to the world of learning, we learned about literature and poetry. One day, I wrote her a poem and took it to her. From her reaction, you would of thought it was a work of "Shakespeare." That may have very well been her undoing! From that day forward, I brought her a poem almost every day. She started keeping them filed away in a folder with my name. At the end of the school year, she told me she couldn't find this folder. Saddened, I forgot about the poems; that is, until years later, a friend of mine was at her home and she asked him to return them to me. She had kept them all that time! I was thrilled and a litte awed that they had meant that much to her!

Some of my favorite memories of school are those I spent in that class. Not only did she teach us about literature, she also took a few minutes out of every day to read to us. There is nothing like being read to as a child! We sat spellbound. I believe she took us all the way through the book, "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder that year.

Another reading I remember with extreme fondness is a poem she read to us and had us memorize, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

When I read these words now, they magically transport me back in time, to a peaceful place, to the school room far away, and the gentle lulling voice of my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Hellums.

Source:

Memories of a Wonderful Teacher

Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost.