Teaching Across Generations: I see you, I hear you, and I respect you
A portrait of Bonita Peterson and her 32 year experience as an educator.
Growing up as a young child, my Aunt Bonnie, as we affectionately call her, was the teacher in my life. As far as I had known she had been teaching since before I was born and she would still be teaching long after I’ve surpassed the age of her fourth grade students. I still hear her voice in my head whenever I’m spelling words out, “N-I-EEEEEE-C-E is how you spell niece”, or even the common adage as “i before e except after c”. They’re as ingrained in me as my dad’s voice I still remember constantly reinforcing to my 5 year old self, “A’int isn’t a word”, in trying to teach me to code switch.
One of my earliest memories was in Aunt Bonnie’s classroom. She loves to tell the story of when I was with her in her classroom, probably around the age of three, and another teacher had given me a banana, to which I thanked her. Apparently her class thought it was funny that I was so polite to an adult. But of course she reminded them that this is the standard to which they should be behaving not the other way around.
Timescale to a child is extremely dilated. To a small child, reaching fourth grade is an abstraction. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it was a milestone when I finally reached the fourth grade, the age of Aunt Bonita’s students. But of course, this was the year that she was moved to teaching fifth grade. I had to wait a year in order to finally reach the age of her classroom.
Bonita realized her passion for teaching very early on in life. When she was in kindergarten, her teacher had to step out of the classroom for a few minutes. Instead of leaving the class to the anarchy of five year olds, she asked Bonita to take over the class and continue the lesson. This wasn’t a completely random choice. The teacher knew of Bonita’s maturity and ability to lead from knowing her grandmother who worked in the cafeteria and lived across the street from the school.
As she got older, she used to play school with a chalkboard with her sister (my mother) and her cousins. Somehow she would always end up as the teacher.
Years later when Bonita was in college and had an undeclared major, an introductory to teaching course caught her eye. From being in that class she knew that she would become a teacher.
One can imagine that classroom management with elementary school children can be quite difficult, especially when one routinely ends up with the students that have given teachers a hard time in previous grades. From day one, Bonita establishes the class rules and atmosphere and discusses with the children the necessity for each rule. This creates a dialogue about the class rules rather than them being dictated and helps to set up expectations for the students.
“I see you, I hear you, I respect you, and I deserve the same”. This is the phrase she repeated every year to each classroom which served as the basis for mutual respect and the basis of her teaching philosophy. Students did not want to disrespect her as a teacher by misbehaving because they themselves did not want to be disrespected. Being in her classroom was of course an honor. Every student since kindergarten coveted a spot in her class. Even dealing with misbehavior, Bonita followed this creed. Instead of scolding the kids or singling them out in class in front of their peers, she made a mental note and she would talk to them around recess or lunch time to speak to them one on one.
Often times Bonita found that some of the students labeled “troubled children” were causing trouble because they were not being challenged enough in class. They acted out because they were bored. On some occasions she would ask for permission to put the child in the advanced classes for a week and if they could do the work, she would have them moved there for the remainder of the year.
Bonita’s classroom wasn’t all just about the rules though. If you talk to anyone who attended her class, you would always hear about how much fun she made learning. Children learn through play and making learning fun and engaging is one of the best ways for them to truly internalize a lesson.
Bonita says her way of doing this is to always try to teach in unexpected ways. When learning comes in different forms, students cannot get lulled into the rhythm of normalcy and potentially get bored from always having their expectations met. This keeps students excited for what will come tomorrow. Bonita’s students always looked forward to her classes.
Imagine if you will, you are a nine or ten year old student in her classroom. You’re sitting there talking with your friends, awaiting the teacher’s arrival. The door opens but there is a small delay. You wonder why the teacher didn’t just zoom into the room as she always does each day. Then you see a cane emerge as the teacher enters the room hunched over putting all her weight on the cane to the point her hand is shaking with glasses on the tip of her nose. Her hair is miraculously grey and she has somehow gone senile. This woman is not Ms. Peterson, but instead “Aunt Sally”. “Aunt Sally?!” the other children exclaim. Is this supposed to be a joke? Halloween has already passed! What is Ms. Peterson doing? All of a sudden one of your classmates, who unbeknownst to you is clued in on the joke, exclaims, “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally!”. Whenever Aunt Sally did anything silly or senile, this student would exclaim “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally!” You and your peers practically have the phrase seared into your memory. And then Ms. Peterson begins teaching about the order of operations: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. It suddenly clicks! Now whenever you see a math equation that looks difficult at first, you repeat to yourself ““Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally!” and you are able to solve it! This is a normal day in Ms. Peterson’s classroom.
Bonita today is currently retired, having taught her last class eight years ago. She still misses the experience of teaching children and occasionally helps out at her church with the after school study program. Teaching is a vocation that does not end when you leave the classroom.
At the end of her final year of teaching, her school planted a tree in her honor which bears her name. Her legacy lives on at the school as generations of successive students and faculty will know the name Bonita Peterson and her lasting influence, even if they never had the honor of knowing her personally. This tree honors the thirty-one years she spent teaching there. The roots of the tree portray the firm educational foundations she has left countless people.
Bonita routinely hears back from former students that either followed in her footsteps and became teachers themselves. Some of them even taught alongside her. One is even a principal. Others thank her for how much of a difference she made in their lives.
One former student had tried to reach out to Bonita after he had graduated from high school, but he was upset to hear that she had retired. A few days later Bonita was taking her aunt (no it’s not Aunt Sally!) to the grocery store and he recognized his former teacher. Lighting up upon seeing her, “It must be fate! I was looking for you,” he remarked as he recounted to her how much of an influence she had on him. Before being in her class, he had been given the label of a “troubled child”. He said that no one in the elementary school had believed in him and he was constantly reminded, whether overtly or unconsciously that he wouldn’t amount to anything. Well it turns out that he was the manager of the entire meat department and it was all thanks to Ms. Peterson, who was the only one who believed in him. She pushed him academically to levels he had never been pushed before and she constantly reinforced to him to block out the negative voices he heard about himself. She gave him the strength to keep moving, to believe in himself. When asked what she thought she did which really impacted that student, she simply stated, “I saw him, I heard him, and I respected him.”
