Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Category Archives: school, teacher, teachers, learning, desk, pencil, pencils, magic, wand, blackboard, elementary, washington, lesson, inspiration, life, painting, artist, growth, beauty, coming of age,


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The visit.

I tell you that I’ve seen her face before. Of course I have no proof because she lived in my head.

It was in the first grade when she quietly took up residency. Mrs. Bergstrom was perhaps the first to tie words and art together for me. She joyfully released us downstairs to Mr. Opsahl’s art room. Never unarmed, she sent us off with the discipline of a single file and the mission to create a puppet for a show during our next story time. I see her more clearly now, as this mixture of fairytale and educator. Because didn’t they both give us something to dream of, something to aspire to — and didn’t they both bun their hair, sleek, and tight, I imagined to cut the resistance of all the reality sent to weigh us down. 

So this was my puppet. Part princess, part Mrs. Bergstrom, full-on my imagination. With an empty toilet paper roll, a mound of papier mâché, covered in acrylic paint, she came to life. She later sang and recited words from the chalk board, and she was alive. 

I haven’t seen her for years, not until yesterday when she appeared in my sketchbook. Did she know she was needed? I think so. Did she arrive right on time to cut through all the weight? Yes. 

She reminds me that maybe you need to hear it. Because sometimes you need to hear it from someone who has been there. That nothing is going to be easy, but everything is going to be ok. I smile and know, yes, this is why she came. 

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It’s coming.

I suppose it’s always easier to see it in others when you’ve worn the same face they are wearing. He was waiting for the school bus. Clearly it was the first day. All the clues were there. Just after Labor Day. His hair parted and combed. Book bag empty and pristine. Clothing ironed. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. Clearly he had been standing on the sidewalk for a while. Early on this first morning. He turned his head from side to side. Quickly, as if he could have missed a glimpse of the big yellow wheeled beast in mid turn. 

Empathy is a powerful force. I’m certain he had a lump in his throat, because I could feel one in mine. 

It’s funny how uncertainty works. Because I didn’t begin that way. My first days of school I easily flung myself out to the end of our driveway. Wet hair in the wind. Racing to a bus I knew would be there. A bus I knew would wait for my scurry. A bus I knew , if I were running really late, would go down the road, pick up the wet-headed Norton girls and turn around and stop for me again. 

I suppose it was my father leaving that rolled uncertainty, like a river, into everything I had known for sure. I went earlier to the bus stop. Would it be there? On time? Would I trip? Would it know that I needed it to pick me up, now more than ever?

Because it did, every day. Because my mother was as reliable as that big, yellow bus. Because she flung her doors wide open for me. Waited for me. I became certain again. I stood strong on two legs. Filled with the knowledge that things, people, could be counted on. 

I slowed down long enough yesterday to tell the young boy, “It’s coming.” He smiled. We both stepped into the certainty of the day. 

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Learning.

Getting dropped off was always a production. To be separated from my mother seemed unthinkable to me. Even across Van Dyke Road in the gentle peach of Weiss’s house was just too far. The first visits to my grandparents were excruciating (and you know I loved them dearly). I wrapped myself in the telephone cord line, hoping to get the call of return. Even play dates began with tears. As if the little salty pockets of water would form a stream and carry me back to my mother’s arms. I mention it only to put the following in context — I never cried when being dropped off at school. Even in the uncertainty of my first kindergarten day at Washington Elementary, in my polyester dress, white knee high socks and patent leather shoes, I walked up the entry stairs without looking back. Even before it was proven to be true, school always saved me. 

Through the years, I have had the privilege of going across the country, school district to school district, with my books. From coast to coast, we have stood up against bullying with “I am Amazed.” Promoted self-esteem with “Believe.” Encouraged creativity with “Astonish.” Two days ago I got the message that a school in Canada ordered 100 books of “I’m not too busy.” And once again, I am saved.

The answer for me has been the same since I was five years old — keep learning. Through every trial, every heartache, every wave of uncertainty. Today, once again, I pull up my knee highs, straighten my skirt and climb the stairs. No day is ever the same, but everything is going to be ok. I pull open the heavy doors, without turning back. Step onto the terrazzo floors. And begin again.

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A permanent connection.

I always imagined myself as the number one. Not in the sense of being first, but as the connection to my number two pencil. She never explained it as such, Mrs. Bergstrom, our first grade teacher at Washington Elementary, but I felt it right from the start. It was such a magical connection. When she passed out the number twos they felt like little wands. Little wands that took the words she wrote on the blackboard and put them into our hands. Words that were filtered through our hearts and graphited to the sheets of paper that lay dormant for six years, never to be blank again. 

I was sketching in my book the other day with a pencil that I bought from MoMA. In this book, to gain the desired effect of lightness, the actual paper must be erased away. I couldn’t find my eraser. I thought it was probably down in the studio. Being upstairs, I didn’t want to make the trip. I started looking. Holding the pencil in my left hand, I felt it. I had never noticed it before. It was colored in black, this eraser. Indistinguishable from the rest of the pencil, but it was there. It had always been there. I smiled to the heavenly blackboard that I imagine Mrs. Bergstrom still directs. And give thanks for the magic.  For making me the number one to my number two. A permanent connection. 

If you’re wondering what teachers can do, I offer you this — this giving of an intelligence so far from artificial that it can still be held in the palm of my hand. 

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