Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Other Side of Mrs. Wood
Mrs. Wood was a tough old bird. She had a mean streak that was the basis for many rumors. I remember hearing stories of her intolerance first hand from my older sister. So, I had been listening to tales about 5th grade for quite some time. Unfortunately, Wood was the only 5th grade teacher at the time I entered the 5th grade. I had no other option. That was the longest year I spent at Woodsdale.
From my ten year old viewpoint, Mrs. Wood was definitely the teacher from "Hell" especially when compared with having spent the preceding year with the lovely Miss Holderman, the 4th grade teacher in the adjacent classroom.
At the time 1st grade through 5th grade classrooms were on the first floor. Mrs. Wood’s classroom was right in the middle of the hallway with the school bulletin board on her outside wall. It was a high traffic area. Under that bulletin board was a hardwood bench seat. I hated that seat.
One of Mrs. Wood’s favorite punishments was to have a "naughty" student sit on that bench so that all the other students could see and know that you were being punished for something you did in her class. I remembered one instance when I got banished to the hall. Ed Bachmann farted and Andy Bates and I couldn’t stop laughing. Mrs. Wood kept asking us why we were laughing. Andy and I refused to rat on Ed. We just couldn’t seem to stop laughing. Mrs. Wood said something like “Mr. Meagle! Mr. Bates! If you two will not stop disrupting the class, maybe you would like to spend the rest of the class out in the hall.” And out we went.
I do not remember any other teacher employing this form of punishment. It was quite traumatic. I remember the humiliation as students joked and said snide things when they walked by. We all know how cruel kids can be at this age. It got so bad with a few of us that our parents went as a group to complain to Mr. Hile. As I recollect, Principal Hile ended this practice of public humiliation. Hile had his own methods of discipline, but that’s another story.
I have many fond memories of my time at Woodsdale School, but 5th grade was not one of them. My apologies to Mrs. Wood; it must have been very hard to be judged so harshly by 10 year olds year after year. Maybe that is the reason she was wound rather tightly.
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Fifth grade was not my best year at Woodsdale either, and Mrs. Wood was still the only game in town. Following on the heels of Mrs. Johns(t)on and our lovely sing-alongs, Mrs. Cornell who permitted me to walk up and read the blackboard because I was blind as a bat, and Miss Holderman, who remains one of my most favorite teachers, Mrs. Wood reminded me of the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Howard, while I don't recall a bench outside her room, I do remember spending some very tense time standing outside her door for giggling. What made it worse, aside from the public ridicule of my oh-so-caring classmates, was if Mr. Hile walked by. Your protest may have worked for your class, but Mr. Hile did you carry forward with the ban of this practice. The highlight of that year for me was the creation of a large diorama of the Ohio Valley during its early years. We worked for weeks drawing the imagined settlements on brown kraft paper stretched on a table top. One of my fellow students was in charge of drawing tree stumps representing the remains of trees felled for the building of log cabins. I made a crack about their looking like Tommy Tooth (remember that demo when we were in grade school?), and she and I ended up on the playground in a full-fledged fight complete with kicking, biting, and hair pulling as we rolled around on the ground. That info was sent home to my parents... I don't remember the punishment, but it may have involved a hairbrush....
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