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I joined DU during the summer before the presidential election in 2004. It's taken me seven years to hit 1000 posts. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to talk about on my 1000th post and decided that with all of the hell that teachers are taking these days, that I should tell you about my grandma.
When my grandma was 50, my father and mother were divorcing. This was in the late fifties, when divorces were a rarity and a bit of a scandal. My mom split the scene and my dad took my two brothers and myself to live with my grandparents. We were aged two, three, and five. I'm in my fifties now, and it is now when I understand what a colossal and loving undertaking that was for them.
My grandma taught 4th grade from the time she was in her early twenties and forced to retire at 65. Not ready to retire, she then got a teaching job at a private school and taught there until she was 70.
Yeah, she got home at 3:00. And graded papers and did planning until at least 6:00 p.m. but most of the time later than that. Every day.
Yeah, she got the summer off. 8 summers in a row, she drove from Jacksonville to Gainesville, to the University of Florida every day and studied at night to get her master's degree. The rest of the summers she taught summer school and did private tutoring.
She didn't call in sick. She did, however, miss a few weeks when a high school kid came into her elementary school after class, while she was changing a bulletin board in her classroom for the next day. Most had left the building. He hit her on the head with a brick and stole her purse. The night janitor found her, unconscious and bleeding on the floor. She was 61 at the time. She went back when she recovered. Damned if I would have.
At the beginning of de-segregation in the south, she was transferred from the elementary school she had taught at for 35 years, that was 2 blocks from our house, to a school in one of the poorest sections in town almost 40 miles away. She cried when they told her, but then put her chin up and went and taught there for 10 years until she was forced to retire.
She wrote a flattering poem about each and every child in her classroom every single year. She taught her 4th graders to speak French "just for fun".
I remember as a young child being jealous of her students and thought she loved her students maybe more than she loved me.
At her funeral, hundreds, really hundreds of former students showed up. I was shocked by this.
Was she perfect? HELL no. Did she earn her salary, vacation, sick days, and health care and pension? OH HELL YEAH.
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