S.Maria Paul was the meanest teacher on the face of the school-world. Everyday(and I mean everytime we had class) she put 15 or 20 topics on the board and we had 10 minutes to write an essay. This essay would be graded under the awesomely scrutinizing eye of an English genius. I loved it!
I was so sad when she died. Composition class in freshman high-school was exciting and challenging. I had no idea what a dangling participle was or a run-on sentence, or a prepositional phrase or any of the agreed upon correct usages of the English language until I got them wrong in Maria Paul's class.
She was a genius, she knew that the best way to teach us was to let us tell her how much we didn't know everyday.
Thesis statements and iambic pentameter became a tool, because she gave us that tool.
I wrote and wrote and wrote after that and then.
One day My dad found my poem laying around and set the type for it(Archaic; for printed it out on a special machine, his trade). A gift from him to me. He loved the fact that I was writing and couldn't tell me in any better way than to set the type for my poem.
A while ago, I dreamed about my long lost educators; S. Amadeus and S. Maria Paul and S. Jeane Ursula and one other nun that I can't remember who she was. They were sitting next to a broken down wall and doing cross-stitch and I was walking between their chairs while they stitched and every time I walked between the chairs I got a happy feeling and when I was behind them or in front of them I felt regular.
The skills that they were teaching were stitching up Ichabod (I think). The skills of language and communication and self-control and even some of the meanness are skills that build a civilized society and break down some of the effects of idolatry on our fallen wicked race.
At least, it is doing that for me...
(forgive the run-ons):)
No comments:
Post a Comment