{"id":2355,"date":"2011-02-24T05:04:27","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T13:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/?p=2355"},"modified":"2011-11-16T09:40:30","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T17:40:30","slug":"a-tribute-to-an-extraordinary-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/24\/a-tribute-to-an-extraordinary-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tribute to an Extraordinary Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week\u00a0I found out about the death of my favorite high school English teacher, Miss Lois Body, at age 96. I’m sure that many of us have had teachers who have made a significant difference in our lives – Miss Body (pronounced bow dee<\/em>) was one of those amazing people. \u00a0I stayed in touch with her over the years visiting her whenever I’d return to Springfield and sent her copies of my GertrudeandAlice children’s stories which she seemed to enjoy.<\/p>\n

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Springfield High School ( Springfield, Illinois)<\/p><\/div>\n

I had Miss Body as the teacher of an Advanced Placement English class when I was a senior. The class had only five students some of whom I’ve stayed in touch with over the last forty-four years. \u00a0One of them asked that we each write a tribute essay. \u00a0Here is mine.<\/p>\n

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A TRIBUTE: MISS LOIS BODY (1914-2011)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Overall, I must say that I really didn\u2019t like high school. \u00a0Chalk it up to the usual Holden-Caulfieldian angst, hormones or the cliquishness that was rampant even in pre-Facebook and pre-Twitter days. \u00a0Whatever, it was not a good time.<\/p>\n

Had it not been for Miss Body and the Advanced Placement English class – five students strong: Alan, Becky\u00a0 Les, Norma and me – there were not many moments of joy at Springfield High School. (I have continued to call her Miss Body, even though she was really a Ms. Body. \u00a0She was a woman, however, who did not need Ms. Steinem\u2019s prefix to know who she was and how she got there.)<\/p>\n

Miss Body\u2019s classroom was reconfigured both physically and emotionally for the five of us.\u00a0 Six, blonde wood desks with their share of carved graffiti hieroglyphics on the desktops were placed in a semi-circle for our daily class at 11 A.M., if I recall the schedule correctly.\u00a0 Miss Body would almost always join us in the circle, very rarely going to the blackboard except to write an assignment on it.<\/p>\n

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Have a seat, a la the 1960s.<\/p><\/div>\n

What made the class special was that as soon as you stepped into that classroom, you felt as if you were in a safe house, away from the pushing and chatter and peer pressures of the hallway outside.\u00a0 Even if you hadn\u2019t completed your assignment for the day, you knew that Miss Body\u2019s admonishment, though firm, would often be followed by a slight smile and humorous statement, both of which you knew meant \u201cget down to business.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The must-have high school accessory...many, many years ago!<\/p><\/div>\n

Though the class was not a free-for-all nor structured in the independent-study format just rearing its head in both high schools and universities in the late 1960s, it was a place where ideas were freely expressed, freely accepted, and freely encouraged.\u00a0 Miss Body\u2019s lesson plans established the loose guidelines, but we were expected to run with those plans and make them our own.\u00a0 \u201cBeing empowered\u201d was not yet in vogue in that decade, but that\u2019s what was happening among those five fortunate students.<\/p>\n

Writing exercises might involve reviews of books that we were assigned or ones which we chose.\u00a0 For one assignment I chose Henry Miller\u2019s \u201cbanned\u201d TROPIC OF CANCER<\/strong>. I don\u2019t recall how I was even made aware of that book, but a friend somehow got it for me from the backroom of an adult bookstore!<\/p>\n

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A well read copy with the "good parts" marked!<\/p><\/div>\n

We would read our finished essays aloud or exchange them and read them to each other followed by discussions of what worked and what didn\u2019t work. Oh, to have the paper I wrote about Miller\u2019s book! \u00a0Miss Body\u2019s astute insights, cultivated over more than thirty years of teaching, invariably included her assessment of how much time each student writer had actually spent on writing his or her essay, again followed by her telling smile.<\/p>\n

Our year together in that classroom went by too fast.<\/p>\n

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Miss Body, 2005 with a dog pal !<\/p><\/div>\n

(photo courtesy of Harriett Ann (Smith) Sidoli, SHS Class of 1958)<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember our last class and maybe it\u2019s because in reality there really was no last class.\u00a0 We have all gone our various ways in the past\u00a0 forty-four years experiencing the joys and tragedies that fill one\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

But I am certain that much of what we\u2019ve each accomplished is rooted in what transpired in that circle of six desks with an extraordinary teacher and her all-knowing smile.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week\u00a0I found out about the death of my favorite high school English teacher, Miss Lois Body, at age 96. I’m sure that many of us have had teachers who have made a significant difference in our lives – Miss Body (pronounced bow dee) was one of those amazing people. \u00a0I stayed in touch with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[101,160,196],"class_list":["post-2355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-henry-miller-tropic-of-cancer","tag-miss-lois-body","tag-springfield-high-school-springfield-illinois"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2355"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3441,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355\/revisions\/3441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}