First-grade teachers give kids the world

This is a great article. It really touched me.

I'm 28 now but one of my most vivid memories of gradeschool is of Sister Idalia at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School on 32nd here in Omaha. My family was poor and my mom didn't have the money for my milk money at school, so Sister Idalia paid for my milk for the year. I've never forgotten how compassionate that was. And that compassion really taught me by example. She knew I was sensitive about being the only kid in class who didn't get a little milk carton.

Many from OLL will remember Sister Idalia, I'm sure. Growing up is a messy and difficult business. Great teachers make it much easier.

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Michael Kelly: First-grade teachers give kids the world

BY MICHAEL KELLY

        
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WORLD-HERALD COLUMNIST  

Do you recall your first-grade teacher? On vacation last week, as I heard my 6-year-old grandson read aloud, I fondly remembered mine.

I had carried around a kind note from her last spring, and intended to call. Then I learned that she had died.

All teachers are important, but the first-grade classroom is a special place of wonder - and for many of us, our first-grade teacher is a wonder, too.

First grade is where the door to language opens wider. We learn to gain meaning from print, and to convey meaning from mind to pencil to paper.

What a thrill for a child - to see that door of literacy swing open.

In Omaha last month, another former first-grade teacher died. The legendary Ann Christiansen lived to 98 years, eight months and 10 days. She taught for 50 years, including 46 at the old Corrigan Elementary, 38th and Y Streets.

Her husband died long ago, and she had no children. But in another sense, she had so many children. For the past 25 years, some of her former pupils from long ago met her for lunch once a month.

"I loved to teach," Ann said last December. "I could be teaching today if they'd let me, but I'm too old."

As a teacher, she delighted in arranging field trips to the workplaces of her students' parents. In some cases, the parents had been her pupils, too.

She kept an active social calendar and traveled widely. She never stopped teaching.

"I remember as a child that Ann would teach me about the places she'd visited," great-niece Diane Warneke recalled at her funeral. "I was always amazed that my aunt - who, at the time, seemed very old to me - was traveling all over the world."

Ann was frugal, teaching the importance of working hard and saving money. More than just punctual for appointments, she always arrived early.

Ted Argintean of Valley never forgot his teacher. He is 72, a retired railroader.

"Ann is the person who taught me how to print and how to read," he said. "She was a one-of-a-kind person. Unforgettable."

My first-grade teacher was a nun, and I well remember her busy classroom - 40 children, learning to write with thick-leaded "mechanical pencils" on lined paper.

Her name at the time was Sister Mary Ferdinand. We kids affectionately called her (not to her face) "Ferdinand the Bull" - after a lovable Disney cartoon character who liked to sit quietly and smell the flowers.

As a Sister of Mercy, she wore a bulky black habit, her head mostly covered. I couldn't have told you her age, other than "grownup." Now I know that she was a mere 21.

I soon lost touch. Years and decades passed. Sister, I later learned, served nearly a decade as a missionary in Jamaica, becoming headmistress at a school.

Four years ago, during a school reunion in Ohio, we former kids visited her convent. Sister Mary Leinen (her family name) smiled and called out names as she recognized child-faces amid our wrinkles. We bent down to her wheelchair and embraced her.

Later, I visited her again for lunch, bringing along my daughter, a first-grade teacher, to meet my first-grade teacher.

Last spring I carried that note, intending to schedule another lunch but not knowing she would die soon at 72. It's too easy to put things off, and I regret that I did.

Teachers such as Ann Christiansen and Sister Mary leave imprints on the lives of children who, so soon, grow up.

My grandson Jonathan, learning to read, stands at the gates of wonderment - a very special place called first grade.

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