My calendar tells me it’s the first day of women’s history month. I’ll take that as permission to reflect a bit on some of my own history.
In August of 1972, newly graduated from Cornell, I accepted a job as junior high math teacher at Ella P. Stewart school, then at 707 Avondale. We came to Toledo so that John could attend medical school. For various reasons, coming her was a last-minute decision. It took us a while to find a place to live, and we spent the first couple of months at the Ann Manor on Scottwood, later moving on to other Old West End locations.
For a girl who grew up in a town of less than 1000 people, all of whom were white and most of whom were farmers, Stewart was a new experience. All of my students were Black, and most of them were several inches taller than I. The veteran teachers in the school were Black but those of us who were new were mostly white. Apparently that passed for integration in those days.
To my horror, I was expected to paddle those who misbehaved. My helpful students made me a paddle in shop class and assured me that its aerodynamic design would make up for my small size and lack of strength. A Black college friend explained that if I declined to paddle, my students would believe that either I didn’t care enough to hit them or I was afraid to do so. (What do you suppose I did?) This disciplinary style was so ingrained in the culture that at least one young man routinely wore multiple pairs of pants when he intended to be troublesome. The alternative to taking a student into the hall, calling another teacher to witness, and taking a swing was to take them to the principal’s office. On at least one occasion I watched as the principal instructed the miscreant to take down all but the last pair of pants before administering their punishment. It was a different time.
Because Stewart was a neighborhood school for grades K-8, my students were not far from their homes, their siblings, and their mothers. As one of my students assured me, that led to relatively good behavior. “You should see what it’s like at XXX junior high” naming a nearby larger school where the students, 7th and 8th graders, were a few blocks farther from home.
I learned a lot in my three years at Stewart. I taught some remarkable children. I learned some horrifying things about the lives some of them lived. I learned that good teachers, of which there were many, could transform lives. I decided that being a classroom teacher was not for me.
It was 50 plus years ago. History.