A Teacher’s Legacy
And a mother’s influence on her son
By Rick Alloway
As the calendar flipped from July to August, I began to be filled with the annual creeping sense the summer was drawing to a close and soon it would be time for school to start again. That sense was heightened by a trip to buy shoes Sunday where we encountered a store filled with families stocking up on new school footwear. I have always anticipated the start of a new school year. I enjoy the uptick in activity on campus and the anticipation of the return of students. This will be the start of my 37th year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism & Mass Communications, and while I am experiencing all the usual emotions associated with this time of year, something feels … different.
We are still navigating our way out of a two-year pandemic that caused us all to change how we approached our jobs and our relationships. But now, in addition to that, we face a heightened sense of distraction because of growing scrutiny of the education industry for what seems like increasingly political purposes.
As I have often done throughout my teaching career, I have reflected back on what my mother would think of all this. She was a public-school teacher; a powerful and influential role model as I was growing up and the reason I teach today.
My mom, Elizabeth “Libby” Alloway, became an elementary school teacher in her 40s. I was far enough along in school that she felt comfortable working outside the home and scratching an itch to examine education as a career. After completing her classwork and getting her certification, the Lincoln Public Schools hired her to teach fifth grade at Saratoga Elementary School. Her spot in Room 215 at the south end of the second floor was one she would hold proudly until her death from cancer in 1977.
Even though I was attending a different elementary school, I felt at home at Saratoga since I spent a lot of time there helping my mom dress her bulletin boards, clean her classroom, helping her close down the room for summer and open it back up again in August. I got to know many of her colleagues, and I learned the profound respect they had for their profession and for the children entrusted to their care.
That care extended well past mastery of their assignments. I got a sense for how involved she was with her students by listening at the dinner table to her concerns for them, like the boy who came to school in midwinter shivering with no coat because his family could not afford one. I recall hearing her crying late one night while telling my father about a student who showed up one day with a black eye, and, while the student claimed he had simply fallen, his averted look and hesitant responses to her questions told her a different story.
Because of her love for her students and the responsibility she felt for them, she did everything she could to make their time together valuable. She often spent her own money on supplies for her classroom because she wanted it to look inviting and safe. I believe the families she served sensed that dedication and concern. She got lots of nice thank you notes from parents, and at Christmas each year, she received gifts (even though the school policy discouraged that) — often home-made and always heartfelt.
Yet, even then, we heard the occasional dig at “lazy” teachers who only worked until 3:30 in the afternoon and got to goof off all summer long while people with respectable professions were hard at work. Like a lot of K-12 teachers then (and I assume now), my mother spent her afternoons and often evenings preparing lesson plans and grading projects. She spent her summers in professional development, attending seminars and workshops, preparing for the coming academic year and taking courses toward her PhD in elementary education. She was just a couple of courses short at the time of her death. Summers were anything but relaxing for her, though she always carved out time for our annual family vacations she loved so much.
One year, the Nebraska State Education Association distributed bumper stickers that noted teachers can have a lifelong impact on their students. My mom proudly placed one of those stickers on the family car.
The veracity of that bumper sticker’s message would be conveyed to my family after my mother died from lung cancer at the conclusion of the 1976–77 school year. My father and I received an outpouring of affection from students and their families, past and present. I remember opening the door to our home the week after she died to see a stranger who tried to speak, but, choking back tears, simply extended his arms to offer a loaf of home-baked bread, and then turned and left. The note attached to the card indicated he had been a student in my mother’s class a decade earlier. Years later, he was still moved enough from having spent a school year with her to bring an offering of respect to her family. My father and I cried at his gesture. We learned of a move by some in the PTA to commission original artwork in her honor for the wall outside her classroom.
That was 1977. Over four decades later, new neighbors moved in across the street from us. I went over to meet them, and one of them, upon hearing my name, asked if I had a relative who had taught at Saratoga. When I replied that was my mother, he said she had been his fifth-grade teacher 45 years earlier and added “I loved your mother.” A lasting impression, indeed. I can’t tell you what that meant to me.
My mother is the reason I went into teaching. I agreed with her that teaching had the power to change people’s lives in a positive manner. I have tried to take to heart her philosophy of listening to students — really listening — to their concerns, their dreams and what they see as their challenges. I have tried to keep their needs ahead of my own and do all I can to help them be successful.
Starting my 37th year at UNL, I would like to think education is still a powerful force for good. Ask folks to list somebody who made a lasting, positive influence on their lives, and often one of the responses will be a teacher or a coach.
Yet, today, teachers, and the curriculum they teach, are increasingly finding themselves in the middle of raucous and sometimes angry shouting matches at local school board meetings. Educators at all levels are fodder for suspicion on talk shows and as talking points at some political rallies.
I know this is not new. I recall driving home from work at about this same time a few years back and hearing a syndicated talk radio “personality” issue a warning to parents to be cautious because they would soon be sending their students back into the clutches of dangerous teachers just waiting to indoctrinate them into the path of progressive thought. I remember being both bemused and angry at this suggestion, since I found it to be such fear-mongering, and also so insulting to the students — to their own children. Anyone who has ever led a class will tell you students are very capable of making up their own minds about things, thanks very much. And if there is an instance where there is verifiable, documented evidence of a teacher acting in an inappropriate manner, there are procedures in place to deal with that.
What seems to have ramped up in the past couple of years is a seemingly orchestrated use of dog-whistle terms when referring to teachers and what they teach.
Public schools have become derisively referred to, even by our state’s elected leaders, as “government schools” as though being taxpayer funded has somehow become a mark of shame and dishonor and cause for mistrust and contempt.
Teachers have now morphed from indoctrinators into “groomers” of their students. They are accused of being “woke” — a word whose definition could well have fit my mother’s awareness of the conditions faced by some of her students sixty years ago, but which now has been co-opted by forces she could not have imagined.
One of Norman Rockwell’s famous “four freedoms” series painted in the early 1940s depicts a man standing during a town hall meeting to express an opinion. I am struck by the respectful, thoughtful looks of those around him. They may not have agreed with him, but they respected his right to voice his thoughts. Rockwell stated the inspiration for that painting came from his attendance at an actual meeting in his town where a young man rose to speak in opposition to a popular proposal. Rather than be shouted down, the others in the audience allowed him to speak and thoughtfully considered his counter proposal.
I can’t help but contrast that image with those of school board meetings today where angry voices, sometimes spurred on by outside influencers, have created a disruptive and combative climate.
According to a story published last month in the Flatwater Free Press, a film making the circuit from one end of the state to the other, implies, among other charges, that teachers are actively showing pornography in their classrooms and grooming their students for sex with pedophiles (“Minds Polluted? Film Claims Teachers Are ‘Grooming’ Students. Experts Say It’s Filled With Falsehoods;” Flatwater Free Press; July 15, 2022) because of their delivery of approved content relating to sex education and gender issues. When pressed by the article’s author for clarification or proof of the film’s claims, meeting organizers refused to comment and directed questions to the film’s producers, who also refused comment. Independent experts contacted by the article’s author indicated factual inaccuracies about the film’s content. One respondent to the article agreed with the claims made in the film and stated (without presenting any evidence) that today’s teachers college graduates are no longer the kind folks like my mother, but are instead “purple haired she-beasts” determined to impose their own sexuality on school children.
I really wish I could talk with my mom about the current state of the field she so loved. I have to think she would be saddened at these developments, and I would love to get her perspectives.
The college-level version of this debate, of course, centers on Critical Race Theory, now being used as a catch-all for a wide range of grievances about university curricula. Even though nothing I teach in my audio production and vocal performance courses is overtly affected by the anger generated at CRT, I am mindful of the effects of that anger on higher ed in general, and on academic freedom and the pursuit of truth and knowledge in all academic areas. Logic indicates to me that much — if not the majority — of the criticism comes from folks with little to no first-hand experience in what goes on in a classroom, but who are, instead, motivated by the talking points and catch-phrases being bandied about by others. I don’t know the larger motivations. I have my suspicions, but I always suggest to students they should be cautious of commenting based only on suspicions.
Despite all of this, I remain optimistic and enthused for the start of another school year. My office door will always be open to anyone and everyone. I look forward to meeting my classes and helping my students launch their careers. As always, I look forward to discussions about all manner of issues and being of help in any way I can. I look forward to listening and trying to make a positive difference in the lives of my students. It’s what I’ve tried to do for 36 years. It’s what my mother taught me.
