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Excerpted Inspirations #234

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • Jun 22
  • 0 min read
[On her first day at a one-room schoolhouse, Elizabeth Ann is surprised to be jumped from third-grade reading to seventh. The surprises keep coming.] She always “got” her spelling in less time than was allowed the class, and usually sat idle, looking out of the window until that study period was over. But now the moment she stopped staring at the board and moving her lips as she spelled to herself the teacher said, just as though she had been watching her every minute instead of conducting a class, “Betsy, have you learned your spelling?” “Yes, ma’am, I think so,” said Elizabeth Ann, wondering why she was asked. “That’s fine,” said the teacher. “I wish you’d take little Molly over in that corner and help her with her reading. She’s getting on so much better than the rest of the class that I hate to have her lose her time. Just hear her read the rest of her story, will you, and don’t help her unless she’s really stuck.” Elizabeth Ann was startled by this request. She had never heard of such a thing in a schoolroom. She felt very uncertain of herself as she sat down on a low chair in the corner away from the desks, with the child leaning on her knee. And yet she was not exactly afraid, either, because Molly was such a shy, tiny, roly-poly thing, with her crop of yellow curls, and her bright blue eyes so serious as she looked hard at the book and began: “Once there was a rat. It was a fat rat.” No, it was impossible to be frightened of such a funny little girl, who peered so earnestly into the older child’s face to make sure she was doing her lesson right. Elizabeth Ann had never had anything to do with children younger than herself, and she felt very pleased and important to have anybody look up to her! She put her arm around Molly’s square, warm, fat body and gave her a squeeze. Molly snuggled up closer, and the two children put their heads together over the printed page, Elizabeth Ann correcting Molly gently when she made a mistake, and waiting patiently when she hesitated. She had so fresh in her mind her own suffering from quick, nervous corrections that she took the greatest pleasure in speaking quietly and not interrupting the little girl more than was necessary. It was fun to teach, lots of fun! She was surprised when the teacher said, “Well, Betsy, how did Molly do?” “Oh, is the time up?” said Elizabeth Ann. “Why, she does beautifully, I think, for such a little thing.” “Do you suppose,” said the teacher thoughtfully, just as though Betsy were a grown-up person, “do you suppose she could go into the second reader, with Eliza? There’s no use keeping her in the first if she’s ready to go on.” Elizabeth Ann’s head whirled with this second light-handed juggling with the sacred distinction between the grades. In the big brick schoolhouse nobody ever went into another grade except at the beginning of a new year, after you’d passed a lot of examinations. She had not known that anybody could do anything else. The idea that everybody took a year to a grade, no matter what! was so fixed in her mind that she felt as though the teacher had said: “How would you like to stop being nine years old and be twelve instead? And don’t you think Molly would better be eight instead of six?” Dorothy Canfield, Understood Betsy (1916), pp. 75-77

 
 
 

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