8th Grade English

Ruth McDowell taught 8th grade English at the Mr. Pleasant Junior High. My Mom said we were distantly related to her. She was from the Salem area and so was my mother’s side of the family. She was much feared by most kids and known to be a stickler for grammar and spelling. Not being so great at either I was really worried about being in her class when I got to eighth grade. Unfortunately, she was the only 8th grade English teacher so it was inevitable for everyone.

She was strict and even the toughest kids didn’t mess around in her class. Her room was at the top of the south stairwell on the third floor and there she reigned over that end of the building and all the way down the stairwell to the ground floor. If a kid misbehaved anywhere on the stairwell you could hear her yelling all over the building. She would order the child to come up stairs to her room. In those days the kid would dutifully walk up the stair to face the scolding. Seventh graders shuddered when they heard her voice. There were stories about kids in trouble with her and never being seen again.

When the first day of school rolled around I was pretty nervous about that English class.
I had Mrs. McDowell for 3rd period. After hearing all of the stories about her I expected it to be a nightmare…a yearlong nightmare. The grammar, the research paper, and everything else just seemed overwhelming.

As I walked into her room for the first time she greeted me and called me by name. She mentioned admiring my mother’s poetry and how much she respected my sisters. I thought, “Oh boy! I have heard this before!” Usually it was followed by something like, “So what happened to you?” but not this time. She told me she looked forward to having me in class.

That year we worked systematically through the research paper and what had appeared to be overwhelming seemed manageable. I can’t say that I did a great job on it but I got through it. It was hard for me to grasp the idea of the research paper. We weren’t really doing research but just restating in our own words what someone else figured out. Having done some real research in my adult life I can’t say the experiences I had with it in junior high and high school were of any value. I wonder how many people are researchers when they grow up? Not many but the “research paper” was a right of passage for all of us.

I probably learned more in that English class that year than all the other years up to that point. I actually, really read books for the first time and my interest in reading exploded. I even started reading the newspaper everyday and anything else I could get my hands on. While she did correct my grammar in my writing she encouraged me and was very positive about things I had written. I felt empowered by her!

At the beginning of the school year Mrs. McDowell told us we needed to memorize a poem by the end of the year. It was a requirement. We could get it out of the way as soon as we were ready or wait until the end of the year. She said we should pick a poem by someone we admired. I talked to my Mom about it and she suggested Robert Frost. After reading some of his poetry I picked “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I surprised myself by learning that poem in a few days and Mrs. McDowell heaped on the praise when I recited it to the class after just a couple weeks of school. My whole eighth grade year was positive for me and my confidence grew tremendously.