Mrs. Wilma Lovelace was my third-grade teacher, and she remains my favorite teacher from elementary school. She was gentle but firm, kind yet no nonsense. Mrs. Lovelace was short, just over five feet tall, with gray hair and a soft voice. She always wore a dress.
About every month or so, she would announce that we were going to have a new seating arrangement in class. At the beginning of the year, we had been allowed to pick our own seats. I chose a spot near a couple of my friends.
Our desks were metal with wooden tops that lifted up like lids. Inside we kept our textbooks, pencils, erasers, rulers, crayons, and whatever other treasures an eight-year-old thought belonged in school. The desks were arranged in rows, with the front of one desk touching the chair back of the desk in front of it.
As the year went on, Mrs. Lovelace started assigning seats instead of letting us choose. I noticed that I was often seated next to classmates I did not know very well. Before long, I would start talking with them and usually end up becoming friends.
Sometimes Mrs. Lovelace would stand right beside my desk while she was teaching. If I was talking too much, she would place her hand on my head, fingers curved like she was playing the piano, and gently press her long fingernails into my scalp. That got my attention quickly.
I thought she just liked to move around the room while teaching. It was only years later, as an adult, that I realized I was the problem. Mrs. Lovelace was not assigning me to sit by students who needed friends. She was assigning those students to sit by the boy who talked too much.
Even after she retired, I would see her sometimes at church, at the grocery store, or at small-town civic events. She always greeted me with a smile and a hug, just like she did when I was in her classroom.
Mrs. Lovelace passed away many years ago, but I still think of her often. I wrote another story about her called Learning to Multiply. She was patient, smart, and kind, and she knew exactly what she was doing all along.
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