Thank You, Mrs. Walker.
Recently, I checked my LinkedIn profile for updates before heading to bed. In the app, I found the nicest comments from @SherryNorquist regarding a conversation she and @StephanieGorham were having about a recent post of mine describing what it’s like to prepare for a nonprofit Board meeting. At the end, Sherry wrote, “you should be a writer.”
I said to myself, “Thank you, Mrs. Walker.”
The number of times I’ve uttered those words to myself stretches beyond my recall.
Let me explain.
Mrs. Walker was my 5th grade teacher. She wasn’t particularly warm and fuzzy. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, she was a former prison guard in New York State’s Attica prison who ultimately left to become a teacher. (Google Attica prison riots for context.) I don’t know if this was a school myth or if there was any truth to the whispers, but I was simultaneously terrified and in awe of her. She gave off those vibes to my 5th grade self.
Whomever she was in her former life, Mrs. Walker was absolutely determined in her second career. Most important to me, she was determined we were going to have the best scores in the school (the state?) on a 5th grade standardized writing test. It is/was a two-day writing test that was administered in NY. I have no idea if they still administer this test. (It’s not germane to this blog post.) My nerdy self was happy to comply to achieve her goal.
She made us buy a 3” binder to hold all our writings (hand-written of course!) for the year. For those of you too young to know what this means, in ancient times (pre-1995) this was the equivalent of saying you better think about increasing your cloud storage capacity – the free version isn’t going to be enough.
“Yes, Mrs. Walker.”
And write we did! We wrote every single day, about every single subject, and style acceptable for a 5th grade class. Everything was graded and included comments. In hindsight, I have no idea how she managed to do this with a class of roughly 25-30 students and still teach other subjects.
For you grammar nerds out there… don’t worry – I’m sure she’s somewhere cringing at me for starting that previous paragraph with an ‘and’ and for the other grammar errors I’m undoubtedly making.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Walker.”
We filled our binders – and then some. Yet not a single one of the writings from my 5th grade year stand out in my memory. There was no special piece or style that changed the trajectory of my young life. What changed my life was that I learned how to write on command in just about any situation.
When September 11, 2001 happened, I lost my first job out of college and leaned into my strong writing skills to scramble into a new career in nonprofits writing grants...
“Thank you, Mrs. Walker.”
When I wrote that grant proposal to a donor who needed it in 30 minutes and we got the funding we desperately needed…
“Thank you, Mrs. Walker.”
When the plane carrying my keynote speaker couldn’t take off due to a hurricane and I needed to write a speech for my boss compelling enough to keep people interested for an hour long luncheon…
“Thank you, Mrs. Walker.”
When I wrote my cover letter to the Sandler Center Foundation and Annie Sandler specifically mentioned how my writing stood out from the rest of the candidates.
“Thank you, Mrs. Walker.”
And when I spend this weekend slamming my way through a complex term paper for my graduate school program at Harvard University, I will say to myself…
“Thank you, Mrs. Walker.”
Right after I finish that paper, I’m going to see if I can find you or your family to say, “Thank you, Mrs. Walker. You changed my life.”
Lisa Baehre
Executive Director
Sandler Center Foundation
