My Teachers: Mrs. Steely

I’m not sure how many of the 20 or so kids in my first grade class would look back on that school year of 1986 – 1987 and say Mrs. Steely was their favorite teacher of all time. I’m pretty sure a couple of kids wouldn’t. But I would have to say she was mine.

 

Just this week she came up in conversation as I was telling someone about my love of history. Because she inspired that love. To be honest, I don’t remember what our history book even looked like, and I can’t remember what was in it. But I do remember her pictures and her stories of her trips to the Statue of Liberty, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Oh, how I wanted to see those places!

 

In the small town of Lewisburg, Mrs. Steely was one in a long list of teachers who knew exactly who I was. Her husband, Coach Steely, had coached both my parents in various sports as well as taught them math way back when they were in junior high. She knew my grandparents. She knew my uncles. She knew my aunts. She probably knew more of my distant cousins than I did. But having Ogilvie blood pumping in my veins didn’t do me any favors. Mrs. Steely wasn’t that kind of teacher. In her class, everyone was equal. And if you crossed the line she set for you, you faced the consequences of your actions. She is the only teacher who ever put me in a corner. I disobeyed and was whispering during rest period. Me and enough friends that she almost didn’t have enough corners in the classroom to put us all in (she used the cloak room, too). I don’t think one of us ever did that again.

 

Mrs. Steely ran a tight ship. When she said she had eyes in the back of her head, you believed her. She was firm in her discipline, but fair. She expected every one of her students to work hard and do their work well. I remember messing up on a math page because I didn’t listen to the directions. I didn’t get put in a corner for that, but I also listened up from then on. Because she was a teacher I didn’t want to disappoint. Partly because of which family I belonged to and I was afraid a bad report would get back to my grandmother, but mostly because Mrs. Steely was just the sort of teacher whose expectations you wanted to achieve. Or at least I did.

 

In 2016, I saw Mrs. Steely again at my grandmother’s funeral. She still knew who I was. I was still partly afraid she had told my grandmother I had been put in the corner once. But mostly I wanted to tell her I had been all the places she had talked about: the Statue of Liberty, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. And so very many other places I would have never imagined going if she hadn’t made history so real for me. And that is something I will always be grateful for.

 

Me in First Grade.