It seems that every news item sent to us at the News-Herald this week has something to do with going back to school. I know students out there don’t want to think about it, but school is starting soon. My teacher friends probably don’t want to think about it either, but they don’t have any choice. They are already back in the classroom, preparing for the onslaught of kids.
All of this talk about school—and pictures of school buses—reminds me of a school experience that I had not in the fall, but in the summer. Because I was struggling in math, I had to attend summer school in between third and fourth grades.
The math part of the experience was awful. I don’t think it helped me at all because I still suffer from math anxiety. I am one of those people that gets mocked because I have difficulty making change. It’s not that I can’t do it. It just takes me a little more time. And I prefer having a pencil and piece of paper for math problems. In a situation where I have to complete a math calculation in my head, I freeze. My mind goes blank and I’m once again standing next to Mr. White’s desk, panicking because I don’t know if a + b equals c.
So summer school was not a success for me. At least not in the math department. It didn’t make me comfortable with math. It certainly didn’t make me want to work math puzzles. Sudoku is a craze I will never understand.
However, summer school wasn’t a total waste of time. When the math torture was over, I had some free time to wander the halls before it was time for the bus ride home. I invariably ended up in the art room. There was no pressure there.
Art teacher Mr. Spelman was there, but he didn’t pay too much attention to the elementary school summer students hanging out. He let us tinker with whatever art supplies we wanted, giving minimal direction. I was able to experiment with linoleum block printing, making one of the ugliest fish prints imaginable. He taught us how to make scratch drawings: coloring a blank sheet, painting India ink over it, letting it dry and then using a sharp stick to create a beautiful, colorful pattern. He must have let us waste a gallon of Elmer’s Glue as we mixed it with paint and produced what I now realize was resist art. We even got to try our hand at wood-burning.
I’m not a lot better at art than math. I have never mastered dimensions and angles and shading and all those technical things that artists know. But I don’t mind. If I try an artistic endeavor, I do it just for me. I don’t have art anxiety.
But the despair of math or the delight of art are not what I’ve been thinking of in the lead-up to school starting. No, I’ve been thinking of a joyous experience that happened on the bus ride to summer school one day.
I didn’t mind the bus ride to school at all. Kenny Lovaas was the bus driver and he was a firm, but gentle presence, making sure the rowdy kids behaved and left bookworms like me alone. It was nice that he was our summer driver too. Because only Kenny would have had the patience to give a handful of students the experience of a lifetime.
On a sunny summer day, as the bus lumbered along the then-unpaved County Road 7, a gangly young moose appeared out of the woods, stopping in the middle of the road to stare at our big yellow bus. Kenny waited as the thrilled kids on the bus watched the clumsy looking animal. After several minutes, it turned to move on—right down the middle of the road. As it sauntered down the road, Kenny followed at an amazingly slow speed as it jogged from side to side on the road blocking us from passing. We followed for several miles before the goofy animal finally plodded off into the woods.
That is still one of my favorite childhood memories. And if it hadn’t been for summer school, it wouldn’t have happened. So despite the math torment, barely redeemed by the art experience, summer school was a success after all.
Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion.
Lorraine Anderson
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