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A teacher like Mrs. Squire


I am preparing for year #20 of teaching, and I am trying to work myself up to that word everyone says as the new school year begins. Parents and students alike will hear it about a hundred times that first week, as kids from ages 5 to 17 enter the once-again polished school building. It's the word "excited". And as I strive once again to be that teacher that every child wants to sit under, my mind goes back to the first teacher I had, the one who I'm still talking about 50 years later.

Her name was Mrs. Squire, and she was my first grade teacher at Sunnymede Elementary. She had platinum blonde hair, wore bright red lipstick, and drove a red convertible that matched her bright red lips. When she smiled, her eyes seemed to disappear. And when she hugged me (because you could do that back then), I never wanted her to let go.

When I would come home from school, I would line my dolls up at the end of my bed, and I would take the chalk-stubs she would give me and teach on my make-shift blackboard (a closet door that my mother made me wash constantly because of the chalk residue that is probably still there today).

I wanted to be a teacher, just like Mrs. Squire. But it wasn't until I was 19 years old that I really understood why she had stood out from all the others. That was the year my mother died. When my dad and my sister and I returned from picking out my mother's casket, I was told that Mrs. Squire had come by the house to see me. I was so touched that she would come, after all those years. But what happened next has forever changed me. She came back that night, walking through my front door and taking my face in her hands, she said, "I just had to see your face". I said to my heart, as she drove away that night, "Lord, let me be that kind of teacher someday".

I don't know if the word "excited" was ever used by Mrs. Squire in that classroom. And maybe, I've tried too hard to work it back into my vocabulary as I begin another year. What I do know is that she brought something into that room that I hope never leaves my own: a smile that never disappeared, a heart that never stopped caring, and a legacy that said, "Always see their face".

If she was still alive today, I would put on my red lipstick, put a flip in my blonde hair, and leave a kiss on her beautiful face; the one that never stopped seeing my own.

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About Me

I am a learner.  I have an insatiable desire to learn, so I read a ridiculous amount of books.  And, because I love to read, I process my thoughts through journal-writing. 

I guess this would also make me a writer.  

I think that a writer puts their time into something they want to read again, and hopefully invite someone else to read as well.  The words mean something to them, and they want those words to mean something to others, too.

I believe that readers and writers are also pretty good story-tellers, and there is nothing I love more than a good story.

Stories tell us the things we need to know, and not just the facts we seem to think define us.  I am more interested in someone who drives a 95 Astro van than someone who drives a new car with a personalized license plate, because I know there's a story behind it (and I love that I am married to the one who drives the van).

So I wrote a book called Tell Me a Story.  In it, you will find stories of people that most don't sit and listen to; maybe because they've never traveled out of the country in order to hear them.  Or maybe they've never really thought about the importance of just listening. 

I didn't listen because I thought I was special; I listened because I believed they were. 

I've taught high school Bible for more than 20 years, written curriculum for all of my classes, led mission trips around the world, taken lots of pictures, made lots of journal entries, and prayed every single day for the people whose faces appear in my heart.  Each blog post will take you to a story; some will be from my memory, some from my journal posts, some from people I'm around every day, and others will be from the best Story-teller I know, Who wrote a book long before I did.   His story keeps writing new stories in mine.  I hope someday to get mine published so that others will be encouraged to read more of His.

 

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