Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Klem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs. Today. I want to dedicate this podcast to all the great teachers out there who inspire their students to move forward or become great in their lives.
[00:00:21] Sometimes I think teachers get a bad rap. Of course, it's like anything. But right now, especially, I do think that teachers don't get the appreciation oftentimes for the things that they do, even behind the scenes that parents might not even know about.
[00:00:42] Working hard to make sure that kids of any age are moving forward in a positive light.
[00:00:51] So for me, I had three.
[00:00:55] I have three stories that I'm going to share with you today.
[00:01:00] One was one of my student teachers when I was in the first grade. One is about one of my high school teachers, and the last one is about a teacher that I had in junior college or community college. I went there to get my prerequisites before going on for my bachelor's and ultimately my master's degree. But these three women impacted my life. I mean, this is a great thing about getting old, really. You can look back on your life and think about the people that have been in your life that have made a difference for you. And when I look back, these three women come up every time because they encouraged me or they made me feel special. Let me put it to you that way. And you know, that's not always easy to do when you're a kid because kids are distracted. I'm distracted most of the time, so I'm sure they. They struggled with me. So let me begin by first telling you about my student teacher when I was in the first grade.
[00:02:06] So my student teacher's name was Ms. Lloyd.
[00:02:09] And I don't know what I did that was so remarkable for any other student, from any other student in my first grade class. I have no idea.
[00:02:21] I don't know if she just randomly chose me or if there was something, but I think I was bossy. I've always been bossy. So it could have been something about me being bossy.
[00:02:33] But I can be quiet, too. So I can go. I can be very laidback or I can be bossy. So I have. I live kind of a dichotomy in my life, and I've always been like that. So maybe she said she obviously saw something that she thought was worth paying more attention to. And how I know that is one day I came home from school and my mom said, Ms. Lloyd is going to be coming for dinner. I go, what do you mean, Ms. Lloyd's coming for dinner? Why? I'm not sure I said it like that. When I'm. I had some curiosity as to why the student teacher from my first grade class would be coming to dinner. She just wants to observe you in your own environment.
[00:03:22] Huh? What does that even mean? Mom? She just wants to see how you play. Okay, so she's coming for dinner? Yes, she's gonna come for dinner tonight.
[00:03:33] And she's writing a paper for her thesis. What's a thesis? You know, I. All of this was way, way, way, way, way, way over my head. I had no idea what my mom was talking about. I had no real understanding why my student teacher would be coming to my house. I remember interactions with her in class. Of course I was polite.
[00:04:01] I like to have things organized. I'm pretty sure I was bossy, though. If I. I look back, I have to ask some of my friends if I was, they'll be like, there's no change.
[00:04:12] So whatever. I know they had me work with other students that couldn't read that well. So I would help students with reading. I would help students with math, which, when I look back on it, why is that you're. I was just a student. I remember we were broken up into three groups, group one, two, and three. And group one was the smarter kids. I don't know if they still do things like that today. And then group one would work with group three. And I know I was. I was definitely in group one. And I remember working with a couple of boys and trying to get them, you know, to be able to read and. Or pick up a math quicker. So maybe it was from that. I have no idea. I don't even know if that was her idea in the class or what. But anyhow, she did come to dinner. She came to dinner that night. I was. Felt so awkward. I remember that much. And we talked. She asked me questions. It didn't seem like it was anything earth shattering.
[00:05:17] We had a really good time. She was there for a couple hours and then she went home. And then I went and talked to my mom about it. Why was she here anyway? Mom, what was that really, really all about?
[00:05:32] And my mom said, well, she's writing her thesis paper for graduate school and that means nothing to me. I had no understanding. She had to write a big paper for college and she was using you as an example is how she ended up phrasing it to me. To me, it didn't seem like any big deal. I didn't feel special from that night. I didn't really think a thing. Thing of It.
[00:05:59] What I found out later is that my mom was going to use it for anything. It was kind of like a torture thing. So anytime I started to misbehave or argue with my brother, my mom would say, what do you think Ms. Lloyd would think about this? Who cares? You know what I mean? I mean, that was like a weapon in her hand, you know, I didn't get spanked, but I always had Ms. Lloyd hanging over my head.
[00:06:26] Years went by, and I never really thought that much about her until I saw a picture from the first grade class, and there she was. And I always remember thinking, I wonder what was in that paper? My mom never got a copy of the paper or anything, so who the heck knows? But Ms. Lloyd, I'm definitely was an influence in my life because my mom used that as a way for me to behave better because the teacher thought so much about me.
[00:07:01] So that's what I think about Ms. Lloyd. Thank you, Ms. Lloyd.
[00:07:06] The second teacher that I had who was phenomenal, can't say enough good about her, was in high school, and her daughter was actually in our class.
[00:07:19] So I became friends with her daughter before, you know, really becoming familiar with her. I didn't have her as a teacher until I became a junior in high school. And as a junior, I took her class. She took. She taught English literature, so she taught us about Shakespeare, she taught us about the classics, like Moby Dick.
[00:07:48] She was an interactive and dramatic teacher, and she used all of her tricks to keep all of us, A, entertained, and B, how could we ever forget anything that she was teaching us? Because she mesmerized us in the class. I mean, she was incredible. Okay?
[00:08:11] But my real first couple interactions came really not from her being a teacher. I consider her more of a mentor. And it was because her daughter was such a good friend of mine. So freshman year, I had gone over to their house, and she said. She always called me my little friend. And she was tall. She was probably 5 10, and her daughter is like 5 foot 11. You know I'm a shorty, right? I've told you that many times. I'm like five one and a half, five two. So they towered over me. I never really thought much about height in my life. Thank God, right? It didn't seem to phase me that I was short, but she always called me my. How's my little friend doing? She would say to me, So I came over after school, and she said, don, I want to show you something. Come here, my little friend. So she. They lived in this beautiful brick House.
[00:09:14] And I'll just never forget that house. All of us loved her house. It was filled with antique furniture. It was just a spectacular house. But the thing that I'll memorize mesmerized most of us was that it had an elevator. So you would take the elevator from the first floor to the second floor. I mean, why would you need it? Probably somebody that lived there at one time maybe had a wheelchair. But nobody that was living there needed a wheelchair. So we just considered that the coolest thing. Emily lives in a house with a.
[00:09:46] An elevator. I mean, it was great.
[00:09:49] But on that day, she said to me, I want you to come in the back room. I want to show you something. So behind her kitchen was a little breakfast nook. And in a little closet area was her washer and dryer. So she took me over to the washer and dryer, and then on the washer and dryer, she had had a bunch of papers printed out. Papers. And she said, these are the scores from the tests that all the standardized tests that all of you just had finished taking. I don't know how long ago it was, and I'm sure I wasn't really that interested either.
[00:10:31] Those tests, when my daughters were in school, were called meeps. So I don't know what they were called back then, but they were a Michigan education, some kind of standardized testing. And she said, I want to show this to you. You need to see it. And so I'm like, okay. So she gets the papers out, and she goes, look here, you. And then she named another fellow female student. You two scored the highest scores of anybody in your class.
[00:11:02] And she says, I find it so interesting because you two are the youngest two in your class. And that is true. The other girl actually was a month younger than me. My birthday's in October, and her birthday was in November. And actually, I think she was smarter than me. She scored higher than I did, but she wanted me to know that I had scored really high on that test.
[00:11:28] You know, I'm a freshman in high school. I'm just trying to survive the social change and boys and grades. I mean, I just wasn't really that interested in it at the time.
[00:11:41] But she wanted to make sure that I knew how smart I was. She wanted me to know that I never really thought about it again after that. Isn't that awful? I just never gave it a second thought.
[00:12:00] But I know she thought a lot about me, because when I got into June to. To the later grades of high school, so a junior and senior, my Locker was right across the hall from her classroom. And it was at a time where I was pretty much over being in school. I remember I just.
[00:12:24] We got to go back again. I was ready to move on. I think I had senioritis, maybe even earlier than most. Probably towards the end of my junior year, I was just over it. And so one of my friends and I would often skip the 1 o'clock class and we would drive over to another town that was, you know, 15 miles away and get a hamburger at McDonald's. Our town didn't have McDonald's yet, so it was a big deal meal to eat at McDonald's. And then when I came back to school in time for the 2 o'clock class, she would be waiting for me at my locker.
[00:13:06] Oh, yeah. And she'd be like, where have you been? And I go, went to get a hamburger at McDonald's. Not very exciting when she says, I don't really like that. I'm like, oh, yeah, I bet you don't. I don't think I did it very often after that because I always knew she was going to be watching me. You know, she had her eyes on me, definitely. The other thing that happened is after I got out of high school, and I told that story previously, but if you hadn't heard it, I took the first year off. I was 17 when I graduated. Then I went back to. I started college for a year, made it through the first year, but I was paying for college and I couldn't really afford to go back the second year. And so I. That's when I decided that I was going to go into the Navy. So I came home and I saw my friend, her daughter, and she said, I want to bring you over to my house. My mom hasn't seen you in such a long time. So I was like, great. So she brings me over to her house, and she said, mom, guess what? Dawn joined the Navy. And the first thing her mom said to me is, oh, I'm so proud of you for going to Annapolis. I started. I mean, when I look at it now, I don't know if I laugh. Then I probably explain, no, no, I'm not going to Annapolis. But when I look back on that conversation, I can't help but think that she had all the faith in me that I should be doing something great like that. She thought, and she wanted me to know that I had the brains to be able to do something special in my life. And that did live with me. After I left her house, I thought about that conversation a Couple of times.
[00:15:03] So flash forward, I go into the Navy, I get out of the Navy, I'm living in San Diego with my ex husband. I know I'm going to be going back to nursing school.
[00:15:15] And I also know that eventually we're going to not be living in Southern California. We know all of our family, his family was from New England and my family was from Michigan. So we knew we were going to be moving back because we wanted to be closer to our families.
[00:15:33] So I decided what I would do is I would apply to San Diego City College, which is a community college, and I could just get all my prerequisites there, make sure they were all acceptable prerequisites. And then when I came, come came back or moved back, I should say to wherever we were going to be, then those credits should be accepted at any college. So I was, I thought that this is a good plan. I'm kind of excited about it.
[00:16:08] We lived in a nice apartment that was right across from Balboa Park. This is a plug for Balboa Park. For anybody that's never been to San Diego and wants to go on vacation, you have to go.
[00:16:25] Balboa park is one of the most spectacular parks I've ever been to. I mean, it's just amazing. The old Globe Theater is there, there's Botanical Garden there, there's museum. The Museum of Man is there. It's just beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. It's worth seeing. And going to San Diego City College was not a hardship for me because I would walk through the park every day on my way to college. Of course, I had to take all the pre testing to make sure that I was eligible for math. If can I skip math? Do I need an English class? Those kind of things. So I didn't have to take a math class, which I was happy about. I was able to pass the math test. But the English class, they said you probably need to take an English class.
[00:17:19] I'm like, yeah, that's fine. I love English, no problem.
[00:17:23] So the first day of school, I go in and the, the professors enter, probably your late 50s that's going to be teaching the English class.
[00:17:34] Well, I mean, it was an English class, it wasn't a literature class. I think in my mind I had English and literature associated as the same thing. And clearly they're not. So right out of the gate we're getting all this homework on sentence structure, paragraph structure, how to put all of this together, you know, dangling participles and all of that, which I can't stand I'm going to be honest with you.
[00:18:07] I. I'm like, oh, my God. And she was giving us quizzes every week, and I think I was getting, like, a C plus in that class. I was struggling. It was not my favorite class. I'm like, I gotta pass this class. I gotta get through this. I got. I got other things I need to take. I don't want to be worrying about sentence structure. Okay, so be. The first half of the class was all about sentence structure and, you know, verbs, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, how to, you know, where they line up in a sentence, making sure you have the right tense, all that kind of stuff.
[00:18:51] And I. I think we had, you know, like five or six quizzes, and I was getting between a C plus and a B minus, which in my mind was completely unacceptable.
[00:19:03] The second half of the class, we started doing writing. So now you're putting what you've learned in the first half together into essays. I'm like, okay, hopefully I'm gonna do better at this part. Well, I was doing okay. I mean, I did get a couple A's on some of the papers that I wrote, but she usually had some kind of negative feedback to give me. And I'm like, my God, I had no idea that it was gonna be so hard.
[00:19:34] But I took the class in the fall. So we're getting towards the end of the semester Christmas break, right?
[00:19:45] And I'm like.
[00:19:48] She says, I think we had, like, three classes left.
[00:19:54] She says, for those of you who are not happy with the grade that they have in this class so far, I'm going to give you a chance to earn extra credit. You only have to do this if you want extra credit.
[00:20:14] So I'm like, extra credit? I think I can do that. So she says, you need to write an essay. It can be on the topic of your choice, but in your essay, you need to demonstrate that you have learned all the principles of sentence structure that I have been teaching you throughout this semester.
[00:20:36] I'm like, oh, my God. All right, I'm gonna take this on. I have to take this on.
[00:20:43] So I walk through the park, and I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about my dad. Because my dad grew up in a really poor family, and he didn't have great Christmases when he was growing up. It's the Christmas season. I said, I'm going to write a story about my dad. It's going to be fiction, but I'm going to put my spin on the story.
[00:21:08] And I ended up writing a story about how we decided to surprise my dad for Christmas, and we bought, like, a train to go around the tree on a train track and a bunch of toys that he may have gotten, like a Slinky or something like that when he was growing up. Like, funny toys that would go with that time or, you know, a model car, those kind of things.
[00:21:38] And then we. When it was Christmas Day, we would turn the train on, and he would see that all the gifts were from him to try to get over kind of the crappy childhood that he had. So that was the theme of my story.
[00:21:55] And I proceeded to sit down and write it out. That was before we used typewriters or anything. Cod, I'm getting older than dirt now, But I. I wrote the whole thing out. I still have the story. Of course I do, right? I never throw anything away.
[00:22:15] I wrote the whole story out the second to the last day of class, I handed it in. We had one more class left, and that was exam.
[00:22:28] So I'm like, here it is. Here goes nothing, wish me luck kind of thing, right?
[00:22:34] So all week long, I thought about that essay. I just wondered, am I going to get through this class? Am I going to get through this class? Right? I don't want to take a final exam. I'm not going to do good on those damn dangling participles. I just know I'm not going to do well on the. The portions of the sentence. But hopefully the paper will be good enough to keep my grade elevated. I'm gonna do the best I can.
[00:23:04] So the last day comes, I think I'm kind of dragging my feet, walking through Balboa park, thinking, ugh, right? You know how it is. You're dreading the meeting. And she wasn't exactly the most pleasant woman. I'm telling you, she was tough. She was a tough knot.
[00:23:23] So I get to the class.
[00:23:26] I'm getting ready to go into the class, and she's waiting at the door for me. I'm thinking, oh, God. She goes, dawn, here is your paper, your extra credit paper.
[00:23:43] You do not need to take the final exam. I said, what? I'm thinking, what did I do wrong? Was it that bad? She says, that paper was incredible.
[00:23:55] It demonstrated that you had learned every single thing that I was trying to teach you in this class.
[00:24:03] And because of that paper, A, you do not need to take the final exam. And B, I submitted it to a writing contest for the college.
[00:24:14] I'm like, what? She said, yes, congratulations. You got an A in the class. Have a wonderful holiday. And with that, she Turned around, closed the door, and that was it. I think I stood there for about five minutes going, what in the heck just happened to me?
[00:24:34] It was the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me. I was beside myself.
[00:24:42] So I walked back through the park. I wasn't walking with dread. I was skipping along. I stopped by a little flower stand. I bought myself a big bouquet of flowers. I proceeded to walk home. I was so happy.
[00:24:57] I was so happy.
[00:25:00] On a side note, I saw another professor that next day, and he said, I read your essay. Your teacher, Mrs. So and so, had submitted for the writing contest. I want you to know that your essay would have won that contest, but she submitted it too late. If we would have gotten it on time, you would have been the winner. I thought it was amazing. And I was like, oh, my Lord. Oh, my Lord.
[00:25:35] So you see, I have lived a long life now, pretty long life.
[00:25:43] And I still remember all three of those women and how they influenced my life in a positive way.
[00:25:56] Really very positive.
[00:25:59] And I think there's a lot of kids out there that have the same things going on right now with teachers.
[00:26:07] We shouldn't be so quick to always point out the negative things. I get tired of it, actually. And then the political climate that we're in right now, we're so divided. We should be remembering more good things, good, influential things, things that people have done to make our lives better.
[00:26:30] I think that would be a good thing. I know I sound like a Pollyanna and I'm not really, but negativity can be wearing and positivity can be uplifting.
[00:26:46] And I'll just leave you with that.
[00:26:51] Thank you for listening to my story today. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to listen. We are going through a website overhaul, so milkman.com is going to be a little bit different now. I'll still have the episodes on there, but I'm going to start to sell merchandise. I bought these really cool bags that have my logo on them, and they're like those bags that you can take to the farmer's market. The good thing about these bags, though, is that it has a plastic bottom insert so you can carry heavier things with it. And if something spills on that, then you can take it out and just wash it. It's not even a problem. So I like the bags a lot so that we'll be selling those. And then I'm also selling a couple other things. Nothing too expensive.
[00:27:42] All the details will be in there on how you can get one if you're interested or purchase anything that you're interested in. And we're going to be working on that this week. So hopefully within the next couple weeks you'll be able to buy anything if you're interested in getting something.
[00:28:01] And then, of course, we're always trying to update it to make it easier for all of you to have access to the website.
[00:28:09] Don't forget to subscribe. I'm not trying to make any money, but I do want to try to get as many local listeners as I can, because if I can spread any positivity or make people feel better about some situations that they've been in in their lives, that would be great for me.
[00:28:34] Again, thank you so much.
[00:28:40] Until the next time.
