Mae Whitby had wanted to be a teacher since about second grade. She begged to go to normal school after she graduated from high school but her mom said that a woman's place was in the home and anyway, Dave Whitby was crazy about her and his dad owned a whole section and Dave was an only child and six hundred forty acres wasn't nothin' to sneeze at.
So Mae married Dave, had three children, Duane, Davy and Diane, and won blue ribbons for her pies at the county fair. It was a good marriage. Dave was a good, hard-working, loving man - a wonderful husband and an excellent father. She had a good life. Dave farmed with his dad until his parents built a house in Elkton and retired. They had plenty of money and more luxuries than Mae ever thought she'd have. The kids were healthy, well-behaved, responsible and did well in school. Davy was a bit of a clown but what fourteen-year-old isn't? Duane was seventeen and Mae worried about him getting drafted after he graduated in the spring, but that was eight months away.
So, Mae had a good life and was happy, but she'd never got over wanting to teach. When Diane turned eleven, Dave told Mae that the kids were old enough now that they could be left unsupervised in the afternoon after school. He'd go no farther away than the barn and if he had to leave the place, he'd get his mom to come out. Because of the war, there was a teacher shortage. Why didn't she check with Central Michigan in Mount Pleasant and see what it would take to get ready to teach? After all, it was only eighty miles away. Maybe she'd only have to go over a couple days a week.
Dave was like that. Mae deeply loved the man. He tried his best to give her not only what she needed but also what she wanted.
Because of the war and the teacher shortage, the people at Central Michigan were more than willing to work with her. They arranged for her to have to come to Mount Pleasant only on Fridays to meet with her professors. The college even got the Ration Board to give the Whitby's a "C" gas sticker so Mae would have enough gas to make the weekly trip. All of her courses were to be what they called "independent study", something they would never have done had the supply of teachers been more plentiful.
They found with Mae that they had made a good decision. She was a very bright woman, diligent and thorough. She completed her license requirements in two years-the usual normal school requirement at that time and in the fall of 1942 began teaching sixth grade at Elkton School.
She loved teaching but sensed a barrier between her and her students. She didn't understand it. She had always loved kids and gotten along well with them. It had not occurred to her why until Jack Ferman "brought her back to earth." Now she wondered why she had bought into the fallacy that country people were less intelligent and sophisticated than city people. She had been teaching as she'd been told to teach, like a sophisticated "city" teacher would teach. Those were Miss Shelton's exact words. Miss Shelton also insisted that a "professional" teacher should demand proper decorum from her students.
Miss Shelton must have been seventy. The war had kept her on much past her usefulness. She would go out to schools and observe and mentor new teachers. That no-nicknames thing had been a directive from that old prune. Her idea of decorum came from her own pompous pseudo-sophistication. Early on, Mae had thought she had to do as she was told, however.
Mae, as she gained experience, came to realize that Miss Shelton was about as up to date as the one-horse shay but she stuck to the no-nickname rule because she was still a probationary teacher and Mae thought Miss Shelton's word was law with the state. But, Jack was right. Kids should learn in the same context in which they lived. What was it about schools that made some people act like asses and what was it about some country people that they let a few vocal, haughty, city-bred pseudo-sophisticates affect their self image?
How stupid could she be? She knew that she was just as intelligent as any student she had come across at Central Michigan and was now embarrassed that she had allowed that old country bumpkin saw, in which she had never believed, to affect her work for two years. She should have stood up to Miss Shelton. They needed teachers. They wouldn't have fired her. But some of that country girl insecurity lingered. She had thought it was best to do as she was told.
Do city people really look down on country folks or do country folks have a kind of inferiority complex? Mae wasn't sure. She knew that there was an attitude of mild prideful resentment of city people among some of her rural friends. But Mae's cultural experience was broader now. There were several students her age who, like her, were becoming teachers because of the war-created shortage. They, city or country bred, treated Mae as a respected equal. It was the kids just out of high school who were the foolishly arrogant city slickers. Why had a mature woman allowed adolescent arrogance to affect her self-image for two years?