Mrs. Harris
Heritage Middle School – Lansing, Illinois USA
By: Sharon Collins
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;”
For me, That One Teacher has always been Mrs. Harris, my 8th grade language arts teacher at Heritage Middle School in Lansing, Illinois. I am sure she never knew the profound effect she had on me and on my life.
Mrs. Harris had her way of doing things and we all learned to do them her way. The way our notebooks were set-up followed very strict guidelines. The headings of our assignments were meant to follow her example, always. Her classroom set-up was rows of desks, not table groupings, not a discussion circle. Everything had order and structure.
It’s interesting to me that the process and outcomes of her class were so opposite.
She had high expectations that were unwavering. We rose to those expectations because we believed in her knowledge and trusted her kindness. She was interested in us as individuals. She asked questions about our lives and our thinking. She laughed. We laughed together. She was a quiet and gentle giant although I remember her as absolutely tiny. Her classroom was the highlight of every single day.
Some of what we were asked to do as students in her class was to memorize poems and great writing. Every word. Every capital letter. Every punctuation mark. We would write them and write them over and over again, “until they were written into our souls.”
Two of the pieces, still burned into my brain, are Robert Frost’s, “The Road Not Taken” and Abraham Lincoln’s, “Gettysburg Address”. Looking back now, I believe Mrs. Harris to be a bit of a subversive, carefully curating her classes to make us independent thinkers and rabble rousers.
At that point in my life, age 13, I had never considered that literature could be about me and my thinking rather than the characters or subjects about which they had been written. Mrs. Harris let us know, these words, these beautiful words were about us. They were about me. A revelation (and maybe also a revolution) had taken place and from that moment forward, I recognized that everything I read had something to do with me because I was the reader and interpreter of the words. It was my view, my thinking that I truly owned for the first time.
Because of her teaching, I began to trust myself and cultivate my own way of thinking. I found my voice. I decided then that it was fine for me to do life, my way.
From then on, I have trusted my instincts to lead me, especially at crossroads. When “two roads diverged” throughout my life, I like to think I chose many roads less traveled. I hope that make you proud, Mrs. Harris. It has made all the difference.
Thank you, Mrs. Harris, for having me write these words onto my soul. Thank you for making them a part of my mental make-up and my world view.
“I shall be saying this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”