Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: teacher


by Leave a comment

Braided.

Being blonde and from Minnesota, it was exotic to braid one’s hair. And even more so when it was wet. To sleep in the kinks to come upon morning’s release. Probably the most daring of all, was to do it before fourth grade picture day at Washington Elementary. 

I was horrified when I saw myself in the mirror. Flat on top, and then a sea of crinkled mane, then straight once again at the ends. It wasn’t a hairstyle so much as a triangle. I brushed and brushed. As if the faster strokes would release me from this nightmare. There was no time to shower. The bus had already made one pass on its way to Norton’s and would soon be coming back up the hill. 

I was tall for my age. Always in the back row. My only hope was that the inexperienced photographer had no light training and I could hide in the shadows. In my stocking cap I apologized to Mrs. Paulson, who’s skirt was ironed and blouse was bowed. I pulled it off of my head. She wasn’t an expressive teacher. Not overtly emotional. She touched my shoulder that day, for the first and only time. Her fingers pressing in with “an everything will be ok.” I’ve never seen that photo again. But her kindness remains.

I never braided my hair again. Never really thought about it, until I painted this girl yesterday. But I have written about Mrs. Paulson so many times since then. Because she made a difference in my life. 

It matters, what we do. Every day. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Taut.

She was not unlike most of the super powers that I watched on Saturday mornings. All were contained in the tightest of fashion. It’s why, I imagined they could move through the world so easily. And so it was with Mrs. Bergstrom. She stood in front of our first grade class at Washington Elementary. No loose ends. Her hair slicked back in a perfect bun. Her black pencil skirt smoothed without wrinkle, making it impossible to see where the chalkboard ended and her waist began. That’s how all the words got in, I thought. This seamless transition. And wasn’t that her superpower, all those words that she spelled out, sounded out, drew out. I wanted some of that power. Just to stand in all that “super” for even a moment. I leaned forward in my desk. Pulled up my neck. Straightened my back. Reached one leg behind the chair to make myself into the straightest line. To create a path for all that knowledge she was passing our way.

It’s easy to let a day go by. To let the passage of time slouch us over. To drape in the fray of worry and get caught in every dark moment. But that wasn’t how we were taught. Not how I was taught. So I wipe the chalk from my hands and smooth them down my skirt and I stand. I stand tall. “Gather it in,” my heart tells my brain — be taut — despair can only slide down, slide off. And it occurs to me how similar the words are. This taut and taught. And it straightens me. Lifts me. Letting go the fray, I Bergstrom to the front of the morning.  

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

The Strand.

It was the first gift given to us by Washington Elementary, and one of the most lasting. Plopped randomly on our mats behind her big wooden desk, Mrs. Strand stood before us. We all accessed this new situation. Some through tears. Others laughter. I looked around. Of all the boys and girls, David Holte was the only one from Van Dyke Road — surely an ally if I needed one. One eye remained on him, the other scanned the room. Everything was unfamiliar. Even this way of sitting, cross legged. For the past 90 days or so, I don’t remember even sitting. When the sun came up my legs began to move rapidly, only to come to a screeching halt as it set in the evening. Hands on my bent knees I marveled at how quick they were to obey. So ready to relinquish their bronze color. To give in to the lavender-white just around winter’s corner. My toes still jiggled, perhaps all hope was not lost. They kept time with my fluttering heart. What could she possibly give us, I thought, that was worth letting go of August. Then she asked the question — “What did you do over your summer vacation?”  Thoughts were now audible. There was an excitement in the room. Sweaty thighs lifted above mats. Arms shot in the air. All of it danced above our heads — every lake splash, every bike ridden, baseballs soaring, car windows open, dogs barking, wagons pulled, Dairy Queens and Crazy Dayz on main street — all alive! How did she do it? Even with the windows closed and the door shut, everything got in. We still had everything. And when we shared, we had even more. 

I won’t forget this gift she gave. (It’s not lost on me that it was indeed a “strand,” — one that connected us, and led us forward.) I use it every day. 

August 15th sounds its warning of summer’s end. I miss how easily I used to jump from a cross legged position. I miss my mom. But, joyfully, it still all gets in. All the splashes of laughter and comforts of love. There is still so much more to learn. Days to welcome with fluttering toes and hearts. I’m ready — ready for more. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

On her way.

“Quand on voyage dans ce livre-ci, le plaisir d’apprendre fait ricochet”

(“When we travel in this book, the pleasure of learning ricochets.”)

Each week in the fifth grade team room of Washington Elementary, we took a Spelling Trip. Without our knowledge or permission, we were learning — spelling, geography, grammar, even math — as we created stories of voyages around the world. There was an excitement to the learning, not seemingly present in our other lessons. Even before Miss Green asked who wanted to read their story first, hands shot up across the room — one arm lifted by the other, as if the height indicated the actual height of enthusiasm, not to be outdone by the verbal ooooohs and aaaahs that did indeed ricochet throughout the room.

I suppose the best teachers do this — create a lifelong voyage of learning — with a ticket that never expires.

Tucked securely in my pocket, I would take this ticket to my first meeting with a publisher. I didn’t have a manuscript for a book, or even a plan really, but I had a meeting, and a ticket. He wanted to hear something that I had written. I read to him, “a door in the forest.” When I finished, he raised his hands in the air and said, “You just took me on a trip!” I smiled and thanked Miss Green in silent cheers. He published my first book that year, “I am Amazed.”

I’m reminded of it all this morning, reading the quote on the back of a VanGogh book. From Washington Elementary, to the south of France, it is all a voyage of learning. A series of ricocheting ooohs and aaahs. I pat the still-pocketed ticket and begin today’s journey. I’m on my way.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

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. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Off the bathroom floor.

Summer’s heat was still trapped inside the junior high gym when we began volleyball practice, just before the beginning of the school year. That, combined with three months of no training and unsupervised candy runs, was enough to turn my stomach. I could feel the rumbling at my feet, moving past my belly, up through my chest. I scanned for my escape route as the red line of my body’s thermometer was reaching my throat. I raced up the stairs. Across the catwalk. Through the wooden doors. Slid across the freshly polished terrazzo floors into the “girl’s room,” and let go of the rainbow of summer treats.

“No!” I screamed into the floor as I heard the wooden door creak open slowly. Because even in this fragile state, I knew who it was. I could see his gray shorts and gray shoes through the gap. Mr. Zappe, our coach. “Are you OK?” he asked. “I’m fine,” I said with an undertone of please, for the love of all that’s holy, close the door. “You know there’s a bug going around,” he continued. “I’m fine,” I said, still horrified that he could see me in this wretched condition.

I’m not proud to admit it, but we all thought he was so weird. When I think about it now, it was only our junior high minds that mistrusted his over-exuberant enthusiasm. But lying on the bathroom floor, I was in no mood for one of his get-up-and-go pep talks. “You know Connie had a touch of it…” Oh, my gosh, he was going to humanize himself by bringing his wife into the conversation. To think of our teachers and coaches as human beings, well, it was just gross. He kept talking. His large glasses were perched between the door opening. I knew the only way to make him stop was to return to the gym floor. I washed my face amidst the sea of his “atta, girl”s and returned two pounds lighter to the gym.

Care doesn’t always come wrapped in the package we think it should. We can be supported in a million different ways. Even loved. I think I’m getting better at the recognition. I hope so. I hope we all can.

I heard myself give someone an “atta girl,” the other day. I laughed aloud — I am so weird! Zappe-weird!

Our world, our days, are going to be filled with many a bathroom floor. The grace, I suppose, comes in how we get up, and how we treat those who try to lift us. Thank you, Mr. Zappe. I’m still in the game!

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Flash.

It was Mr. Rolfsrud who taught us about the flashforward at Central Junior High. He stood tall, polyester suited in front of our class, and took us through the technique with great detail. He neglected to mention that it would also happen in our real lives. 

Listening to an audiobook during my walk yesterday, the author lept the characters into the future. And seemingly in that same flash, I was in this other country. It was as if this decade, this epic novel I’m writing, was simply paragraphed. Maybe that is the way with all living. 

Not at first I suppose. Summer steps in our youth seem eternal. But then, without our knowledge or permission, the pace quickens. Steps become leaps. Leaps turn into bounds. And finally, mere flashes. 

The moment of clarity in the book skipped my heart a little. The moment of clarity in my life did the same. But I wasn’t afraid. More grateful. I simply raised my hand, waited for him to call on me, and thanked him for my love of words. I promised him I would use it all. And kept walking.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Still. And again.

In Mrs. Strand’s kindergarten class at Washington Elementary, there wasn’t a problem that sitting still couldn’t solve. If we were too hot, “Sit still,” she would say softly. Too excited. Too nervous. Too tired. Too anything. We solved it all by sitting quietly at our desks. In the saving grace of her whisper, we knew everything would be ok.

I listen for her voice, still, and still. Those calming words that told us not to run away from it, but just be in it. I think we often get afraid to feel. We want to fight it. Push it away. Outrun it on the playground. It’s a lesson I’m still learning. Even knowing it. Living it. Creating it on the canvas, I still have to keep learning. But she was right, Mrs. Strand. And when I allow myself to just feel it, calmly, trusting the words that my five year old self found to be true, it is then that I can breathe, recover and become. I can love, still, and again.

I sit in this morning whisper, and know everything will be ok.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Further.

As the extreme heat continues in southern France, I can hear her voice. “Just sit quietly,” Mrs. Erickson said, pulling down the long black shades of our third grade classroom windows. Returning from the heat of recess under a sun that grew stronger bouncing off the black paved playground. A sun that said, “Come on, it’s almost summer, just stay, play a little longer!” But she rang the bell and we dragged our feet inside Washington Elementary. Sticky thighs against the wood seats, we wriggled and squirmed. We could barely sit, and quietly seemed impossible. “Just relax,” she urged. “Lay your heads down on your desk.” We placed our sweat-slicked hair on arms folded across desktops. The whispering began. Heads bobbing with playground secrets that needed to be released.

“Shhhhhhhh…” she said from the front of the class. “Think of the water,” she said. Living in the land of 10,000 lakes, it was fairly easy to bring to mind your favorite lake. Our heart rates slowed as she described the waveless water. The calm of the blue. The coolness, first on tippy toes. Then ankles and shins. Cooler still on thighs. We smiled flat cheeked on our desks. “Will you go further?” she asked. We shook our faces. “Whoop!” she exclaimed, “Up to your waist!”

Completely distracted now from the heat, as our ever-coiffed, nyloned and dressed teacher had “whooped” just for us. “Go all the way under,” she said. For me it was Lake Latoka. I held my breath and went down, down, down. It was so cool. “Look at everything,” she said. “The fish, the rocks…” And we did. For ten minutes we swam from the calmness of our desks.

She led us slowly back to shore. Lifted our heads. And then, no pun intended, dove into the math lesson of the day.

Whenever I think of my favorite teachers, I think of the question, “Will you go further?” Because that’s what they did for us. Daily. Took us beyond the lessons, into the living. It’s a question I continue to ask. In love, and trust, and hope, and forgiveness, in curiousity, creativity and knowledge — I want to go further! I want us all to go further.

If you want it too — maybe you can join me — all together now — Whoop!

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Posture.

It just occurred to me this morning who she looks like — the woman I painted on my bookmark. Mrs. Paulson. My fourth grade teacher at Washington Elementary. Never during that entire school year did I see her undone. Hair coiffed. Dress pressed so impeccably that I waited, watching for a wrinkle to appear. She wiped the chalk from her hands on a cloth that sat on the corner of her wooden desk. Not one to plop, she lowered herself slowly into her wooden chair. Her fitted dress followed. Not fighting, as if it knew the routine, and I guess it did. When she rose again from that wooden chair (too elegant to just “get up”), she smoothed her chalk-free hands firmly down the skirt of her dress, and it responded perfectly. Wrinkles never dared the hands of Mrs. Paulson. She stood tall. We listened.

Of course she taught us subjects and predicates. But she constructed more than sentences. For those of us paying attention, and I have to believe that most of us were, (as so elegantly commanded), we received lessons that far exceeded the normal classroom. Some might say, “Well, anyone could do that,” and that may be true, but not everyone did, nor does.

In the fourth grade I began to think about things like posture and elegance. Mrs. Paulson saw to that. Shoulders high and back, I sit at my desk and try to pass it on daily. With the help of all those who came before, I have indeed found my place.

Shop Now!