My fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Guenther. My best friend Teresa and I were teacher’s pets. She gave us special projects to do all the time. We spent a lot of time in the school library doing those projects. As I look back now, I think she mostly gave us a lot of extra things to do to keep us busy and not talking and disrupting the class when we had all our work done. (I was a big talker even way back then.) So, my confidence in fourth grade was sky high.
The Wizard of Oz, June 1967
Dorothy (Teresa), Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow (me)
In the spring Mrs. Guenther decided to have the class do a play. We did The Wizard of Oz. My friend Teresa was Dorothy. I was the Scarecrow. All went well until the final performance. Mrs. Guenther had instructed the cast to repeat their lines if the audience laughed during the performance, so that everyone could hear the lines. At one point in the play one person in the audience laughed during Dorothy’s line. Picture now a heated conversation between Dorothy and the Scarecrow (Teresa and me) on stage in a very loud whisper:
Me: Repeat your line.
Teresa: Why?
Me: Someone laughed.
Teresa: No one laughed, everyone could hear. You say your line.
Me: No. You say yours.
The Great Standoff: Dorothy and the Scarecrow
This continued for what seemed like at least five minutes while the entire cast stood and waited for us to proceed. The mom who was prompting lines was practically shouting the next line. I would not say it. Teresa would not repeat her line. It was every teacher’s worst nightmare. Finally I saw our teacher walking up toward the stage from the audience. I whispered, “Here comes Mrs. Guenther. You better repeat your line.” She did. The show went on.
I didn’t think much about the whole thing until the next year. One day Mrs. Naus was talking about an upcoming class performance, and she looked me straight in the eye and said something to the effect of, “And this year we will have no one stubbornly holding up the show.” It was an eye-opener to me. Someone had noticed?? And remembered?? I was embarrassed, and made some loud comment about how it wasn’t really my fault that that had happened.
Sometime later in the school year Mrs. Naus asked me to stay after school one afternoon. She sat me down and said, “I need to talk to you about something very important.” I had no idea what was coming. Mrs. Naus very seriously told me that I needed to learn to accept criticism graciously. I was mortified, and protested loudly that I did not have a problem accepting criticism. She quietly talked to me for a long time. As I look back, I recall that she spoke to me like I was an adult, not talking down to me at all. She told me that I was mature and intelligent, and wonderful to be around, but that I did have one major fault, and that was that I did not do well with criticism. She told me that if I could learn to be gracious when criticized, not only would others look on me more positively, but I would feel much better about myself. I walked home alone after that conversation, burning with shame the whole way.
It was the best lesson any teacher ever taught me. Hard as it was, I struggled to be gracious when corrected. For years I thought of Mrs. Naus every time someone criticized me. Sometimes I still do. It was my first step in realizing the virtue of humility. Thank heavens she had the insight to see that fault in me, and cared enough about me to help me along a difficult path to overcome that weakness. I am a different, and I think better, person because of her.
She’s a great part of the reason I became a teacher myself.
What a great story!
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