I can still see it today: a bulletin board in my second grade classroom, all decked out for spring: a white lamb with a pink nose, a furry rabbit sniffing a daffodil, and smiling yellow baby chicks in raincoats and boots. The chicks are holding umbrellas to protect themselves from the sprinkles of blue cardboard raindrops, as pink roses, yellow lilies, and purple irises are springing up around them. 

The saying “April Showers Bring May Flowers” is spelled out in bubble letters, each one stapled or tacked to the bulletin board, which is covered in faded green paper, the edges covered by a pink scalloped and corrugated border.

It rained a lot that April, and for once I got to take the absentee report to the office. I was so proud my teacher had chosen me, for almost always, the same two students were the ones picked to run some errand of vital importance. 

My teacher had her favorites, and I was not one of them.

“Marla, you’ve got a raincoat. Take the report to the office this morning.”

The gray sky drizzled a chilly mist, but I was not disappointed. I pulled on my raincoat and walked deliberately to the office, head held high. 

Maybe the teacher’s attitude toward me had changed. She had yelled at me all because I couldn’t find the number “1” in a search-and-find coloring sheet.

“It’s right there!” she cried, her finger stabbing a hole in my paper. “You mean you can’t see that?”

All I saw was a rocket.

I sat in the back of the room for a substantial portion of the year, my last name beginning with a “W” placing me in my assigned spot. To this day my mother blames the beginning of my astigmatism from straining to see the blackboard. 

But it wasn’t all bad times. We said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” at the start of each day. I excelled in multiplication drills. During the Pilgrim unit, my teacher led the class through making hand-dipped candles and stitching quilt blocks. My mother made me a Native American costume, complete with fringe and headdress, for the Thanksgiving feast. I was in the top group in reading.

“Rockets,” the teacher would say, “it’s your time.” And we would go to the kidney table and complete assignments in our readers with our teacher.

By the time I was in second grade, I could read my Bible, but I had made up my mind that I would never be “saved.” A visiting preacher to my small Baptist church had delivered a sermon on the dangers of dancing, but I took ballet and tap lessons, which I enjoyed very much. If becoming a Christian meant giving up dancing, I was out.

But God had other plans, and it was also while I was in second grade that I was saved, on the last night of a revival, after holding on to the pew during the invitation on the previous nights, my heart pounding away.

I couldn’t wait to get to school to tell my teacher. 

She was standing in the hallway talking to another teacher as the school day was beginning. Students were settling into classes. Maybe this was a good time, before class started. I was so excited to tell her the good news.

I got her attention by saying her name once, then twice.

“Not right now, Marla.”

But it had to be now. “I got saved at church last night!” I blurted out.

My teacher glanced at me, and said, “Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to someone else! What did you say?”

“I got saved last night at church.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said nonchalantly, and she resumed her conversation with her co-worker.

Maybe I should have waited. Maybe I shouldn’t have interrupted her. Maybe she was having a bad day. These are things I have thought of in the years after, but at the time, all I could think was how her reaction made me want to shut down, to be quiet, to not tell about my salvation.

I have thought of my teacher often. She has followed me all of my life, cropping up here and there when I least expected it. She is a church goer. Her husband has passed away. She’s been much kinder to me as I’ve gotten older. We make small talk, for we are both adults now. 

She actually seems to like me.

I’ve made my career in public education, and my second grade teacher has had a lasting impact on the way I treat students, teachers, and parents. Most of my time in education has been spent in administration; needless to say, there have been many times when I have responded to students, parents, and teachers out of anger rather than from a place of grace and patience.

And I have humbled myself and apologized. 

I will most likely never receive an apology for the things that happened to me in the second grade. It’s all well and good. 

What matters is that I’ve forgiven my teacher. It has been over forty years since I was a second grader, when I got saved at a spring revival during a rainy season of my life that has yielded growth in more ways than I could have possibly foreseen.

Whether in the schoolhouse or in the checkout aisle, when I am short and impatient, my teacher’s face appears.

When I am tempted to yell, I remember the worksheet with the rocket.

When I don’t want to take time to listen, I remember how she made me feel.

And maybe most of all: I remember the fresh excitement I had as a new believer. I remember the desire to tell others of what had happened to me. I choose to focus on the memory of receiving a new, abundant life and not my teacher’s reaction.

I’m thankful to my teacher for these lessons, and even more: all those hours at the kidney table only sharpened my reading skills, and it wasn’t long before I came across a story in the Bible about David “dancing before the Lord with all his might.”

I didn’t feel too guilty about dancing after that.