Everyday Canvas

A Good Teacher

Prompt: What is a valuable lesson you learned from a teacher?

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A good teacher is a gift of God, and I’ve been granted many such gifts. It is, therefore, impossible to pinpoint any one teacher and say she or he taught me the most valuable lesson. All the lessons I learned were valuable.

Yet, one teacher who taught me not only a valuable lesson but also a practical one stands out in my memory. She was Miss Lindsay (RIP), our home ec teacher. Miss Lindsay liked me a lot and she probably never admonished me because I was a good, quiet student and didn’t make trouble for anybody. Still, Miss Lindsay was a big stickler to rules or regulations. Her bugging the students was so much so that some students called her the “mother-in-law.” These were some of her admonitions to the other girls that still stay in my memory: "Get your hair off your face." "Don't sit on stone steps; you'll get cramps." "Young ladies don't scream; young ladies don't laugh like street cats; young ladies don't gallop like horses," and so on and so forth.

Funny that, alongside her moniker, the most important lesson on in-laws should come from Miss Lindsay…

During the late fifties and early sixties, a sort of a fashion of marrying early while still in teens was going around like wildfire. I still wonder if Tab Hunter's singing Young Love had something to do with it. Anyhow, one day, Miss Lindsay told the class that since most of us girls would get married one day and we would probably be living with in-laws or our parents in the beginning, we should give a thought to the idea of getting along with them. In those days, Emily Post didn't count for much where we were concerned, and there weren’t very many self-help or how-to books easily available, so we all took very careful notes.

Those teachings are rather long to repeat here, but basically they are listening to the person opposite you and figuring out what their needs are, and working with them alongside their needs. For example, one of the things she told us was not to do any one thing concerning housekeeping without asking the mother-in-law as to how she did it, even if our knowledge of it was soundproof, or we should at least ask her what she thought on some things, once in a while. This was to show her we valued her opinion. Now, this specific item sounds not too honest, but many years later, there was an incident in my life when it worked for me.

I don't know if the other girls used her advice, but I did, even though luckily, I didn’t marry while in my teens. Still, I didn't forget what she said, and her lessons stayed with me and helped me to get along better with a lot of people, whether they were my in-laws or not. I’ll never forget those teachings and Miss Lindsay. As I said earlier, a good teacher is a gift of God.