Mrs. Norris

Mrs. Norris was short, shorter than me, and I am only five foot four inches. She was heavy, walked, swaying side to side like a penguin. Her hair was thinning, she had a long somewhat curved nose, dark eyes, and rarely smiled. She was my fifth grade teacher. Mrs. Norris was retiring after this school year.


I liked Mrs. Norris. She was mild mannered, ruling the classroom with a fist of iron in a velvet glove. No one got away with anything really, and she was fair. I think I may have been one of her more challenging students that year, but I will never know for sure. Mrs. Norris never gave any indication that one student was more challenging or troubling than another and she taught differently than my other teachers had. She was extremely patient. I remember her careful correction of my sort of friend Tim, over his hand writing, and how she gently and firmly conditioned the students to stop leaving their seats all the time. She worked with a couple of kids to stop fidgeting all the time and helped them to learn to focus on their schoolwork. She really was amazing.

Our teachers ate lunch with us, teaching and correcting us on our manners. They went to recess with us and we played games together as a class. We would compete with other classes at times. This created a solidarity in our group that I missed in later years of school. The grade school was in one building, the high school was in an adjacent building, and the lunch room was in the high school building. Both buildings had their own gymnasium. When it was time to go to lunch, Mrs. Norris would have us all go to the rest room, wash our hands, and line up in single file. She would then lead us down the second story stairs and out of the building, down the outside steps, then down the sidewalk to the high school building, up the steps, and down the long corridor to the lunch room. Each grade and room in that grade was given a specific time for lunch. We would each take a tray, and cafeteria style, get our food handed to us by the cooks and the students working for their lunch. If a student had a financial need, they would go to the cafeteria and work in the kitchen preparing food, handing out food, and cleaning up after lunches. That student would in return get a free meal.

I was always very hungry by our lunch time of 11:30am. Although I was not a fidgeter, I did draw Mrs. Norris’s attention with my impatience. She had spoken to me several times about my rush to be first in line, my irritation with someone who did not move as quickly as I, or my refusal to take the required time on schoolwork to do a quality job. Then, she stopped speaking to me about any of these things.

We were following our daily ritual of lunch one day and I was sooooo hungry. The weather was still nice, it must have been springtime as we were not wearing jackets or dressed up in any way. Mrs. Norris was wearing sandals with low heels on them. I was first in line which often happened. She was soooooo slow at walking. I hated the fact that we had to follow her to the lunch room. This time she was even slower than usual. It seemed as if she had slowed down on purpose. I danced around, stepping forward and back, paying attention to who was out on the playground, and wondering what we were having for lunch today, when I felt a hard bump under my toes. I looked down and realized in horror that I had just stepped on the back of Mrs. Norris’s sandal, and horror of horrors, the back of her shoe had come off her foot!

Mrs. Norris did not immediately turn around. She did not immediately do anything. When she did finally turn around, she looked at me for a verrrrrry long time. Then she said, “Valora…….haste makes waste.” She then took an excruciatingly long time to reach down and slip the back of her sandal on to her foot. Then she slowly…………turned around and began the slowest walk of the entire school year to the lunch room. The other kids in my class were mad at me for how long it took to get to lunch. Our recess time was cut by a full half because of the “sandal” incident.

After the “sandal” incident, all Mrs. Norris had to say was “Valora, haste makes waste”, and I would realize what she was speaking of and concentrate on slowing down. To this day, I will start to get in a rush, things begin to go wrong, and I will remind myself that haste makes waste.

Mrs. Norris retired after my class. I still remember her with fondness. She taught me a great lesson and did so without denigrating me or nagging. She was a wonderful teacher who used the “Old School” method of teaching which is waiting for the opportunity to teach to present itself. The school lost a wonderful teacher when she retired.