fourth grade--Charlotte Surdaki and the loss of grace

Miss Charlotte Surdaki was my fourth grade teacher. She was not a young woman. She was perhaps in her early 40's and was swift to politely correct any student who called her Mrs Surdaki.

"I am Miss Surdaki, not Mrs Surdaki."

Her white porcelain skin was impeccably made up with deep red lips to accent her exotic beauty. Her hair was jet black which she wore completely off her face in a classic chignon at the back of her neck. She wore tailored clothes which matched her cool, calm and collected personality. Our class loved her. I loved her. She treated us with respect and we felt as though she enjoyed teaching us.

Miss Surdaki made our classroom fun in an orderly way. We worked hard on our regular schoolwork, but she also gave us little bits of fun information to hold our interest. She told us we would be losing our teeth at a quickening pace and not to worry. We were not actually falling apart.

Miss Surdaki also encouraged us to stand tall and proud when we recited the Pledge of Allegiance and to sing loudly and clearly our national anthem. She's the one who told us the national anthem's "sweet land of liberty," was not, "sweet land of liverty," and had nothing to do with our liver. Her enthusiasm for us and our class was uplifting and I just knew this would be the best school year I'd ever had.

Then one day, all was not well in Mudville. I cried when she told us she wouldn't be our teacher anymore. It was a blow to the gut that I will never forget. My classroom in paradise was gone.

Miss Surdaki's mother had become ill and it fell her responsibility to take care of her. After the Christmas break our class was given to Mrs Arnold who was already teaching her own fifth grade class. We were moved into her classroom with the fifth graders for the second half of the school year and taught in one room school house style.

What a difference a day makes. Everything changed. Mrs Arnold was a longtime, no nonsense school teacher who didn't have a fun bone in her body. She wasn't impolite to us, she just wasn't as polite and as graceful as Miss Surdaki had been. Her motto seemed to be,

"School is work. Do it"

There was no charm. There was no beauty. There was just the business of learning. Our job. So we worked joylessly and even though I was glad when that school year ended with Mrs Arnold, I took with me the joy of learning I had gotten from Miss Surdaki. She had made school as beautiful and as exotic as she was.