The “Name Your Teachers” meme is going around Social Media for Teacher Appreciation Week. It asks, "Can you name your teachers, K thorough 5?” Well, sure! That’s easy. But I dug a little deeper, and instead of listing a bunch of names, I pulled some rough notes from a memoir I’ve been working on.
Kindergarten — Miss Marie Gabella — Staten Island, NY
This woman was nightmare-inducing! Miss Marie had BIG hair, garish makeup, and was 400 pounds of SHEER TERROR. She insisted we call her by her WHOLE name. “Yes, Miss Marie Gabella!” She would crawl in late and yell, “I drove all the way from New Jersey to teach you brats!”
Is New Jersey all that far from Staten Island?
Miss Marie's class was slow moving and insanely tedious. I wasn't satisfied gluing elbow macaroni to plate to spell "Tree Friend" for Arbor Day. I wanted real work (as much as a 5-year-old could do). Exasperated, I boiled over one morning and said, “I’m bored.” Miss Marie picked me up by my hair and threw me across the room. “Bored now?” she asked.
No, nope. Not bored. I'm good.
1st grade - Mrs. Lange — Staten Island, NY
Not nearly as bad as Miss Marie, but the opposite of a "fun gal." Mrs. Lange made a point of letting me know that I was/am a huge freak. She would ask me, “Why can’t you be like the other girls? Look at Melanie, and be like her!” Melanie was, by all accounts, perfect — smiley, popular, and put together (you know, for a 6-year-old). One afternoon, when Melanie was painting during art time — in her immaculate smock without a hint of splatter— she produced a perfectly formed pink flower. I, on the other hand, painted my entire canvas black, prompting Mrs. Lange to storm over to my station.
“What!” she said, “On God’s green earth is THIS?!”
“It’s the inside of a cave." I waited, expecting praise for my masterpiece. Met with silence, I said, “It’s dark inside a cave.”
Her face dripped with disgust and anger as she turned and walked away.
The Big Move to California!
2nd grade — Ms. Takagi — San Gabriel, CA
Welcome to California, weirdo! New school, new culture, fish out of water/freak show time! Amid the surf, sand, and carefree vibes of 1970s SoCal, my New Yawwk accent made me sound like a bricklayer from Queens.
My new teacher, Ms. Takagi, was great — half the time. She upped my reading skills to the point that I was devouring thick and nerdy Beatles biographies at age 7. But all wasn’t perfect in her classroom. The first day, she turned on the TV and left us alone to watch The Electric Company, and she didn't come back for hours! (Which seemed awesome at the time). She also said weird stuff like, “I can drive by your house and look in your windows. I'll know if you don’t do your homework!”
Determined to make friends, I sat at a crowded lunch table, eager to try the Wilson School Special — mac and cheese. I took one bite and projectile vomited on everyone.
That day I learned that I cannot go near 99% of cheeses. I also learned that nicknames spread very quickly.
Still, thank you, Ms. T, for the stellar reading skills and the life-long love of music books!
Even Bigger Move/Cultural Shift — Palos Verdes, CA
3rd Grade — Mrs. Wallace — Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
We moved to Palos Verdes to escape the revolting brown/orange air that landed my brother in the hospital with asthma attacks several times a month. “PV" is a lush green coastal town — an affluent peninsula dotted with rambling ranch houses and trotting horses. The main draw for families are the award-winning schools and the crisp ocean air. Sounds idyllic! But culture shock waited patiently for our arrival.
My first day of school, a classmate asked me what kinds of stocks I own. Confidently, I answered, “Yellow and green.” The kid thought I was a dumb-shit, and my teacher, Mrs. Wallace, didn’t know where I fit in either. (I still sounded like Leo Gorcey, circa 1942). I was promptly tossed into “Speech Improvement” with two kids from Japan — Yoshi and Haruto — who didn’t speak any English. (Though Yoshi could say “baseball” pretty convincingly). I guess the school figured my New York “dawg” and “wahtuh” qualified as a foreign language.
Despite the rocky start, this was an okay year. Mrs. Wallace was a fine teacher. She taught us cursive, assigned “5-a-Days” and did all the expected 3rd grade stuff.
Third grade — done! Not too bad! But nothing, NOTHING could have prepared me for the impending DIARRHEA STORM of 4th grade. For this section, I am changing the teacher's name. Not out of respect for her, but for her family, who is — presumably — related to this monster.
4rd Grade — Mrs. Newman — Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Oh Holy God in HEAVEN. Mrs. Newman was the meanest, nastiest person I have encountered in my life — even to this day! Newman refused to call me by my first name, opting for my exceedingly ethnic-sounding (for PV) Italian surname, Falanga. However, she would tack-on “kid” at the end. Glaring from her desk, she would scream, “Falanga Kid! Get over here!” When I asked why she only called me by last name, she said it’s because another girl in the class has the same first name, “And I like her better.” When I turned in assignments, Newman would sniff my paper, roll her eyes and say, “Pee! Uuuuu!”
But that's not a big deal, right? This is a grumpy, unsatisfied woman who will be in a kid's life for what — a school year?
A few months in, things got really weird.
Turns out that Mrs. Newman was sitting on an arsenal of ethnic epithets, waiting to someday unleash these outmoded slurs on a petite, Italian-American girl with a funny last name and a New York accent.
Some of these terms, I'm sure, hadn't been used since the 1940s! Including:
Guinea
Ginzo
Dago
Meatball
Greaseball
And the classic, "Wop" — which she shot at me rapid-fire all year.
Later, I found out that Mrs. Newman's young daughter had cancer, and some say this accounted for her horrendous teaching methods and poisonous demeanor. While her child being ill is horribly sad, and I was very sorry to learn this, thanks to Mrs. Newman — I spent that entire year as an extremely depressed dago/wop.
5th grade — Mrs. Brown — Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Hallelujah! I was assigned to Mrs. Brown’s class! Rumor had it — this was the "smart" class. You had to test in to Mrs. Brown's room, and keep your grades high to stay. I don't know how I made it as I was a crushed, demoralized, shattered shell of a 10-year-old. But here I was.
Mrs. Brown had a reputation for being the BEST teacher, and after years of neutral to life-ruining teacher experiences, I felt a giant sense of relief. Even better — everything great I’d heard about Vivian Brown turned out to be true! She was one of those life-changing, inspirational teachers you see on the news or in Edward James Olmos movies.
Still, entering her classroom on that first day, I was entrenched in my post-Newman PTSD. I had zero confidence, no ability to look a teacher in the eye, or smile, or act like a human who wasn’t raised in a wolf cage. But Mrs. Brown would not let me shut down. She assumed her kids were smart and good, and she expected the best from us. Her class was fun, entertaining, at times challenging, and always ultimately positive. She indelibly shaped my future — I would have never developed my interest in writing, broadcasting, and improv comedy if not for V. Brown. Bonus: we had a cat in our class! (RIP, Sam). I also met some incredibly smart and talented people in her class who I’m still friends with today, and I’m pretty sure they feel the same about this incredible teacher. She turned my year, my attitude, and my life around.
Thank you, Mrs. Brown. You will never be forgotten!
Coming Soon: Middle School Punk Rock Shit Storm.
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