A teacher is not supposed to have favorites. I’ve never been a teacher, but I imagine that keeping oneself from having them would be very difficult. Inevitably, a classroom will be populated with achievers who validate one’s confidence in being a good teacher, and underachievers who erode any confidence one may have gained. Students will come with their own set of capabilities and challenges, and when the capabilities align with a teacher’s passion, I’m sure it becomes even more difficult to stay impartial.
As a third grader, I already knew that a teacher should treat her students as equally as possible. So when Mrs. Wolff voiced a clear preference for my work over Peter’s, it was shocking.
Mrs. Wolff was very artistic. Her passions were literature and poetry, music, dance, drama, drawing, and weaving. She often gave assignments that combined one or more of these favorite subjects of hers. Consequently, while learning how to write in cursive, she gave us each the task of picking a poem from a large anthology of poetry about animals. Peter’s choice was a poem about a squirrel, and mine was about a bunny.
After choosing our poems, Mrs. Wolff had us practice copying out the poem using our best cursive handwriting. Once she was satisfied with our drafts, she had us commit the poem to a piece of specially lined paper.
The final versions of our poems were then affixed to the top half of a piece of 11x17 colored construction paper. It was now time to begin the second part of the assignment. We were to draw our animals using a variety of crayon colors. We were instructed to include a bit of shrubbery and background images in our final drawings. Unlike the poetry portion of the assignment, we would not practice our drawings.
With our final drawings complete, Mrs. Wolff affixed them to the bottom half of the colored construction paper. She then mounted all of our finished pieces to a long roll of white paper. She rerolled the paper and fitted it to the top and bottom cylinders inside an easel. By turning the crank at the bottom, we could view everyone’s piece of art one after another. To go in reverse, we’d turn the crank at the top. It was quite the contraption.
We all took a turn at scrolling through the art. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in silently comparing my piece to those of my classmates. On the whole, I thought mine to be pretty good, but I wasn’t a braggart, so kept my opinion to myself.
A couple days after the scroll was complete, Peter came over to me and said, “Your bunny is better than my squirrel.” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond as I actually agreed with him, but knew it would be rude to say so. Instead, I said, “Your squirrel is good, too.” He continued to disagree and I was determined to not yield to him. He then said, “I know. We’ll ask Mrs. Wolff.” This didn’t alarm me a bit because as I stated earlier, I was positive a teacher would be diplomatic. But, when Peter asked her, she didn’t hesitate before saying, “Oh yes, Debbie’s bunny is much better. And her cursive is also nicer.” I stood staring at her. I couldn’t believe it. I think I probably blushed when Peter turned to me seemingly unperturbed and said, “See, I told you.” At that I had to concede, but still didn’t say anything aloud. I was actually embarrassed, and a little horrified.
Being the teacher’s pet was not a good experience. After the incident with the squirrel and the bunny assignments, Peter took every opportunity to mock everything I did that earned a good grade or praise. “Teacher’s pet, teacher’s pet. I bet you get an A on everything on your report card too!”
I loved Mrs. Wolff. I would do anything to please her. She even invited me to have my lunch with her in the classroom one time. She told me all about her big vegetable garden and the pretty flowers she had planted around her home. I told her about taking piano lessons, and how much I liked to sing. She asked me to sing for her and I did. We had a wonderful time together. But, with every A and every positive word of encouragement, Peter’s taunting would lead me to mistrust whether I was actually achieving, or receiving something I had not really earned.
Talking to others who had Mrs. Wolff as a teacher, I have found that she really either liked you or she didn’t. There wasn’t a middle road for her, and she clearly didn’t hide her feelings from her students, which made for completely different experiences for Peter and me.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2019
