Revisiting 4th Grade

Remembering Miss D

My fourth grade teacher died last month, and when I read her obituary, I was struck by the extent to which St. Agnes–the small Catholic church and school community where I went to preschool through sixth grade– seems to have been the scaffolding of her life. Miss D went to St. Agnes for elementary school through high school, and taught there for her entire career. She sang in the church choir, directed the music programs for the school, and arranged for musical enrichment programs. 

When I saw the news of Miss D’s passing, I was surprised to realize just how much I remember from 4th grade. I remember the way light came in the tall windows and which desk I sat in toward the end of the year. I remember how fiercely strict Miss D was, but also how devoted she was to our school community and the children in her care. Her impact was narrow and deep: she worked within a small community, and she touched the lives of every student who came through our little brick school building on the circle for forty years. 

Miss D ran the annual Christmas Pageant and taught the entire student body the song we sang for graduation each year. When my brother Andrew shared that he was remembering sitting cross-legged on the floor of the fourth grade classroom learning songs for the Christmas pageant, I was flooded with my own memories of looking up at Miss D’s animated face coaching us to sing louder, to smile more. Her classroom was accented with Buffalo Bills paraphernalia, and she always left lipstick marks on the cheeks of her niece and nephew when they came by to see her. 

In fourth grade, I got glasses for the first time after Miss D noticed the technique I had mastered of pulling at the edges of my eyes to achieve a deeper squint at the chalkboard from the front row. In fourth grade, I stayed up late to hot glue the last parts of my Navajo cradleboard together for our project on Native American culture. I read a book on St. Margaret and proudly tacked my Saint essay on the bulletin board in the hallway. I spent many frustrated minutes looking words up in the dictionary at the back of the classroom because Miss D never revealed the spelling of a word. When limitations were put on the number of Silly Bands and rubber bracelets we could wear, Emilie and I petitioned Miss D and our principal, Dr. Ben, to be allowed to wear them as a form of self expression (I believe we succeeded, but can’t quite remember). I obsessed over my crushes, envied the two girls in my class who had Bratz dolls, learned long division, and labored away at my cursive. 

One afternoon, I tucked under the bench in the reading nook during free reading time and didn’t become aware of my surroundings until well into math class, when I finished the book and resurfaced. I remember the shock of realizing that everyone had moved back to their desk and onto the next thing without me realizing it, absorbed as I was in the world of whatever I was reading. When I think back on this in adulthood, what strikes me most is that when she saw my empty desk at the end of free reading time, Miss D didn’t shout my name or send a classmate back to send me to my math workbook. Instead, strict though she was, she let me remain in the world of my story, in that immersive state so many of us long for in adulthood. And that, more than anything else, is what I remember from 4th grade.