R.I.P. Jo Wheeler
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/02/2007 - 22:46
At around 9:30 on a Friday evening, my daughter looks over to me from her computer. She has been reading notes on Facebook from her classmates from The Long Ridge School. She tells me that they are saying that Jo Wheeler has died. I check the local paper and find this obituary.
JOSEPHINE STALDER WHEELER - creative and beloved teacher of young children, died peacefully Jan 28 at home and surrounded by family. She was 81. She had for several years suffered from COPD and lung cancer.
My mind goes back to the numerous times my children brought treasures to school for Jo to talk about in class. You never knew what you would find in her classroom. I thought of the urgent phone calls I would receive from her about some important physical phenomena that I should show the kids.
Long Ridge School always spoke about giving children a life long love of learning. It was more than just a marketting line, it was embodied in the life of Jo Wheeler, and it is now carried forward in the lives that she touched.
In the song Joe Hill, Joe tells young labor activists, that he didn't die, "Where working men are out on strike Joe Hill is at their side, Joe Hill is at their side." Well, perhaps something similar applies to Jo Wheeler.
Whenever a teacher joyfully accepts a little discovery, a dead beetle or a piece of animal dung that some child brings to the the teacher with urgent fascination, Jo Wheeler is at their sides.
My Teacher
Submitted by Tessa on Sun, 02/04/2007 - 11:27.Flora Arnstein taught poetry to children in San Francisco and even as an elderly lady in the 1960s took great pride in each student. She celebrated the ones who didn't win awards just as much as the ones who did.
One of her methods started with a blank book. She came to the first session with a stack of blank spiral bound drawing books (very precious thick paper), several rolls of japanese rapping paper, and pots of rubber cement. We started by making our own blank books.
Every week she began the class by reading several poems out loud. Old poems, Modern poems, Haiku, a real mix. Then we would write. "Write anything," she would say. "Write what you think, write wht you feel." ans "You don't have to rhyme but you can if you want". I suppose that today that doesn't sound very radical, but it was.
She also had each of us select which poem of the ones she read we liked the best. At the next week's class she brought us a typed copy of whatever poem we eachliked from the previous week, as well as a typed version of our own poem. We would paste the poems into the book and if we wanted we could read our own poem to the others.
Then she would read to us and the cycle would continue.
When we graduated from Elementary school she took us on as private students in her home, fed us coffee cake and tea, and taught us how to be real. I have never felt so fairly treated and loved within a group of equals and never will again.
Thank you Mrs. Arnstein. Thank you Aldon for giving me a place to write about my love for my teacher. She died 30 years ago, but will never leave me.