Miss Susan Dreyer

pre-kindergarten Betty with her raspberry harvest

Betty began kindergarten this year. 

In the months preceding Betty's starting date, her two siblings would gather round her telling her about her new-to-be kindergarten teacher, Miss Dreyer. 

"When Miss Dreyer comes to work she wears the same colour. Her jacket, her skirt, her shoes, her purse. Either it’s a pink day, or a blue day, or a yellow day.” 

There was a longing in their voices for the good old days of kindergarten with Miss Dreyer, a teacher didn’t like having bullies in her class. 

If an altercation happened, or a stand-off between two kindergarteners  happened, Miss Dreyer would run over to the apparent loser, perhaps from a fall of being shoved, or the indignity of having someone take something from them. 

She would say, “Oh, are you alright?”   Apparently Miss Dreyer gets down low, looks right into the child's eyes and the tone of her voice is soft and loving as she speaks to the child.  We can only imagine that Miss Dreyer teachers in high heels, for when her walk is modelled it is not the walk of someone who has on good tunners or walking shoes.  Quiet, small, quick steps.  So darling, watching the older kids take on the "Miss Dreyer personna".  

It seemed to Michael and Alice that feelings, hurt feelings and how to heal them, was the highest objective on the kindergarten teacher's agenda. 

And here’s the best thing about her, or the memory she left with the older kids. On the last day of school she looks each one in the eye and said to them, “I am going to miss you. Please come back and see me.”

I wonder if any of them do.

Maybe I have the answer to my question.

Michael and Alice know how to revisit Miss Dreyer, for they did it in their explanation of how school would be for Betty.

Arta

PS  Since the telling of how lucky Betty is going to be to go to kindergarten, Bonnie and I sometimes declare "Miss Dreyer" days and when we take on that wholey loving vocal tone that we heard in their voices our accidents and disappointments, our whole days go better.