A Word Fitly Spoken

September and schools around the country are in full swing for another academic year. I thought I'd take a nostalgic look back to my own school days - a loooonng time ago! This incident is an example of how a teacher can have a profound effect on a student without even being aware of it. But this is true of even us ordinary people and keeping that in mind would be a good thing. The 'words of our mouth and meditations of our heart' should always build up, not tear down.

My first grade teacher promoted me to the second grade for the last three weeks of the school year. Since I was already a year younger than most of my first grade classmates this promotion made me two years younger than my third grade classmates. But 'book learning' does not equate to emotional maturity and I cried a lot.

I liked school and always did well in my classes. Despite the fact that until my last three years of high school I never attended the same school an entire school year. I started school at five years old and began a lifelong love affair with reading. Lessons always came easy for me, I think because of my facility with the written word.

Being so much younger, and smaller, than my classmates each year, moving to different schools often plus the poverty in which we lived did little to instill self-confidence in me. I was always shy, afraid to speak up, even when I knew the answer.

But something happened during my eighth grade year that planted a slow-growing seed of self-esteem in my spirit. We lived deep in rural Georgia farm country and my father sharecropped for several years. This meant that I and my siblings, along with most of the country children we knew, missed at least a couple of weeks of school in spring to help with planting the crops and in the fall to help with harvesting.

My eighth-grade math class was taught by a Mr. Smith, whose first name I do not remember. Mr. Smith gave the class a test soon after my return to school following a week's absence.

When he handed back my test, he said, "You made a good grade, Sylvia. If you hadn't been absent last week, you'd have done even better."

Those words were like an electric shock to me. Being the principal as well as my math teacher, Mr. Smith was a strong authority figure to me. I'm sure my face lit up and I glowed the rest of the day.

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pitchers of silver." I had probably heard those Biblical words from the pulpit or a Sunday School teacher for my family attended church, though not exactly every Sunday. At the time of Mr. Smith's complimentary remark about my math prowess, I never connected that verse in the Book of Proverbs with real life. But it certainly fit. Thank you, Mr. Smith.