Those of you who have been involved with the school for a while might remember my telling stories of Miss Bisbee, my exceptionally memorable first grade teacher. In the last several weeks surrounding the death of Joan Spiker, The Country School’s stellar first grade teacher from 1983 to 2007, my mind often drifted to a comparison of these teaching legends. Both were larger than life figures -- Joan metaphorically and Miss Bisbee literally. Both were unpretentious, both ensured that their students had a firm grounding in the basics, both believed in order and structure, and both created classroom environments whose atmospheres were palpable. But the similarities of these first grade teachers, people destined to be amongst life’s most important influences, ended there.
Miss Bisbee was, of course, a teacher of another era. Even a six year-old could sense, though, that one of her primary goals was control. An imposing woman, Miss Bisbee used fear to keep all of our boisterousness in line, regularly going so far as to pinch us, sit on us, or squash us into a wall if we misbehaved -- all with a smile and a laugh. Miss Bisbee’s brand of firmness was backed by fear, by exuding a forbidding persona, by suppressing our energy. Enthusiasm and exuberance, it seemed, were to dampen. Work was to be done dutifully but not zestfully. When necessary, Miss Bisbee enlisted parents as co-enforcers, not partners, in the educational enterprise. In those days parents didn’t question the teacher, at least not within earshot of their children. So if Miss Bisbee called home about a certain overly noisy student, all the talk was about how to conform to her expectations.
Joan Spiker, on the other hand, was always an encouraging presence. She was also firm, but she used suggestion and guidance as a way to channel student energy in a positive direction. Joan could tell it like it was, but she also displayed a consistent gift of identifying each student’s unique strength -- and then developing it. She addressed, but didn’t demean, weaknesses, and she held high but reasonable standards for each child. Her classroom’s tone and activities sprung from the needs of the children, and that meant at times there was joyful noise, clutter, and play. Inquisitiveness and interest were fostered, and activities could get messy, but the students were always the starting point and the constant focus. Instead of being forbidding, Joan shared her interest in nature, her experiences like being present to hear Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “I Have a Dream” speech, and her good common sense. She drew everyone in, and while she wasn’t overly “warm and fuzzy,” kids knew she was fond of them.
There were definitely good things about Miss Bisbee. She taught most of us to read, she showed us we could behave and focus, and she revealed her humanity when she ran from the room in tears the afternoon that President Kennedy was shot. But what a different, superlative kind of energy Joan Spiker fostered. The trajectories she launched seemed boundless. I have often thought that I wish I had been in her room as an early learner, but at least our family was blessed by our two oldest children having had her.