Teaching as a form of kinship

Remember who your teachers were.

– 2 Timothy 3:14

The School Sisters of Notre Dame were founded in Bavaria in 1833 and, per their name, were a teaching order, particularly dedicated to the education of Catholic girls. Ten years later, the sisters were asked if they would come to America to teach the children of the rapidly growing number of German immigrants. In 1847 the sisters arrived in the States and, after some initial setbacks, finally established a foothold in Baltimore under the aegis of St. John Neumann. A year later the saint asked two of the sisters to accompany him on an expedition to seek out mission opportunities for the congregation. Among the mission territories eventually established were Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. And over a hundred years later, I, a grandchild of German immigrants, attended one of the SSND’s schools in a middle-middle- to upper-middle-class suburb of the original Milwaukee mission.

There were three classes per grade at the school, each with at least forty children. Although there was a smattering of lay teachers—Mrs. Angelo in third grade; Mrs. Green in fifth; (a man in sixth!) —they somehow seemed beside the point. True, it was kind of fun, even a relief at times, to have a lay person for a year, and they were all very nice in their way, but the sisters were clearly the soul of the school. They were what gave it its gravitas, its mystery, its strangeness. They were what made going to Catholic school (something you sensed the first day of first grade) so wonderfully weird.

School Sisters of Notre Dame - from their alumni website

The three-teachers-per-grade broke down into a fairly easy typology for a young student contemplating his or her next level of Catholic education: there was The One Everybody Wanted; The One Nobody Wanted: and The One Who Was Okay. For second grade, The One Everybody Wanted was Sister Lawrence Marie. Sister Lawrence Marie had dark, deep-set eyes that were still warm, still lively (unlike some of the older sisters), a ready laugh, and was widely regarded among the student body as a fun teacher. My older brother and sister both had Sister Lawrence Marie and could barely describe how much fun she was. “You’ll see,” they said, “—if you’re lucky.” Sister Caroline was The One Who Was Okay. She was tall and thin and had an ethereal air about her, though it’s quite possible she was simply distracted. Her room was at the front of the building, so it got good afternoon light, all gossamer and gold, and I recall walking past it—with a hall pass for the boy’s room—hearing Sister Caroline’s tinny soprano as she led her young charges in song in their celestial chamber of light.

Sister Paul Vincent, however, had been assigned (perhaps exiled) to a room that seemed to have once been part of the school’s physical plant, and indeed the boiler room was directly off the classroom. To get to it, you had to go through the school auditorium, take a door to the right of the stage, then go down a fairly dark hallway and a short flight of steps. The room itself was set a good five, six feet below the level of the playground, so the windows, covered by industrial-grade grates, were set very high in the walls and, when other grades were having recess, you could see legs—only legs—running past the windows. Thus, for geographic and aesthetic considerations alone, Sister Paul Vincent was The One Nobody Wanted.

There may, though, have been other reasons as well. I think she may have had a reputation for being strict, to which my personal experience of her can somewhat attest. I can’t recall whether I was talking in church or talking in class, but I was talking somewhere and Sister didn’t like it. My punishment was the forfeiture of a recess period, during which I was to remain standing at my desk with my finger at my lips in the international sign of silence while Sister sat at her desk correcting papers. Behind me I could hear the children frolicking on the playground; could picture the happy legs running past the windows. Occasionally, it seemed, a pair of legs would stop while someone peered down through the window to observe my penance. (A voice: “What’s that kid doing?”; then laughter…) And I suppose I did feel penitent, though there was never a question of my crying. I wouldn’t give her that satisfaction. Besides, there was also something about the chastisement that I found, I confess, keenly enjoyable. It was so…performative. So much more effective and affecting than writing “I will not talk in class” a hundred times (which I had also done; I was apparently a rather chatty child). But: standing at your desk; silent, still, as the whole world raged (or rather: played) around you. Rejecting that world with its silly games—its hopscotch, its jump rope, its freeze tag--with a simple yet defiant gesture. With silence. It felt bigger somehow: bigger than me; bigger than Sister. It felt religious.

But she introduced me to other performative aspects of religion as well, less punitive but no less impactful. I first volunteered to be a parish catechist ten years ago and was assigned to teach second grade. Shortly after hitting the “Send” button on the e-mail accepting the assignment, I experienced a minor panic attack: trembling; that cold, kind of itchy feeling at my medulla oblongata. The holy part of the panic was a humble acknowledgment of the enormous responsibility I had just taken on. The less holy part was simply my not-so-healthy relationship with responsibility in general. (“I can always quit after the first year,” I reassured myself.) To calm my nerves, I tried to remember something from my own second grade catechesis. I immediately saw myself standing on a small chair at the front of the classroom, my arms poised in a vaguely otherworldly gesture I had clearly lifted from a holy card, announcing to a little girl kneeling in front of me that she was going to have a baby and she should name him Jesus. It was silly, it was cute—and it was profound. It made me feel what it was like to be part of the extraordinary story Sister was unfurling for us and gave me a connection to the Incarnation so intimate in its innocence that I still remembered it over fifty years later.

Oddly enough, I don’t remember at all what Sister Paul Vincent looked like. Not a single detail. Not a sharp nose, a weak chin; a mole somewhere. Pretty hands. I think she may have been short. (She wasn’t fat. I’d remember if she was fat.) I googled her and found her obituary on the SSND’s Midwest province website. She was ninety-three when she died, and by then was wearing pants suits and being called Audrey. She had a very nice smile. She didn’t look strict at all. But even seeing the photo of her in her original habit didn’t ring a bell. And it’s fit, I suppose, and actually a compliment, that of a woman who had dedicated her life to a teaching order I should primarily remember what she taught me. Sister Paul Vincent first taught me grammar and phonics. (I now work as a proofreader and copy editor.) She taught me cursive. She showed me new things I could do with crayons, construction paper, colored chalk. (The obituary said that the year she was teaching me she was also finishing up a bachelor's degree in art.) And she prepared me for First Communion. And I suspect it was in that preparation she was indeed very strict, strict in the most wonderful way possible.

The people who teach us claim us somehow. We often refer to what we owe them as a debt. But it isn’t a debt. It wasn’t participation in a transaction, not with the sisters. It was participation in a blood line. It wasn’t a transaction; it was a transfusion. I feel it every time I have my second graders act out a Bible story; every time I put my finger to my lips to quiet them. Every time I’m “strict”. Every time I receive Communion. It’s then that I realize how deep all of this goes, this primal grace resonating through my own religious life. For, even though I was with the Jesuits for several years and am currently a Benedictine oblate, I realize these days, more and more: I’ve always been an SSND.