Lillian Secrest Buie's Weblog

June, 1983: Retirement From Teaching After 25 Years

Letter to children, June 3, 1983:

It's really been a week of mixed emotions, but who could really feel sad about not being in school the last two hectic weeks? I'm gloating while others fret over completing final forms which nobody ever looks at, making out exams, juggling figures trying to pass undeserving kids who have loafed all year and are now desperate because they may not graduate, and cleaning out the accumulated junk of another school year.

Teachers arrive home wiped out only to read another article in the newspaper (when they finally have time to relax for a moment) lambasting the public schools and complaining that school teachers aren't worth the pittance they are paid. So, as a whole, I'm happy about retiring and looking forward to this next era of life. Of course, the children, especially those who had been bedeviling me most this semester, sprouted halos on Tuesday and wrote loving tributes in the book they gave me and acted like they couldn't bear to have me leave.

Everyone is making me feel very special. Aunt Mary made the loveliest set of mats and table runner, which must have taken months, and wrote a note saying she wasn't smart enough to write a book or a poem but wanted to do something. I told her the ability to create something so beautiful was more brilliant than a bit of writing...

A speech to the Rotarians was Superintendent Jones' last order for me. It went off so well I felt like something of a celebrity. Mr. Sullivan told me that Mr. Jones spent 45 minutes at their principals' meeting that afternoon talking about it and me.

Teacher Receives Her Reward

Excerpt from Laurinburg Exchange front page article.

One of Scotland County's best-known teachers will be honored this week with the 1979 Outstanding English Teacher Award, presented annually by Lenoir Rhyne College and the North Carolina English Teachers Association (NCETA).

Lillian S. Buie of Scotland High, who has had a hand in helping local students develop for 23 years, will receive the award Thursday at the Jane S. McKinnon Center at North Carolina State University.

In a letter recently received from the NCETA, informing her of the upcoming presentation, Mrs. Buie's teaching record is applauded. "Your background and the testimony of your colleagues provides grounds for all of us to honor you," it says.

Buie, who began teaching fulltime in the Maxton system in 1957, said, "I feel both excited and grateful. I am always happy to see teachers recognized in any way. We sometimes get the brunt of criticism. I accept it on behalf of all teachers."

The award is the first such recognition for Buie, who began teaching in Scotland County at the old Wagram High School in 1960 then moved to Scotland High School after consolidation in 1967.

She tried to downplay the importance of the award, noting that such presentations do not necessarily make better teachers. She surmised that the award came as a result of her studying at York, England this past summer and teaching both advanced and remedial English programs at the high school. "It's your ability to communicate with different types of students that counts."

But many of her students and teacher peers will tell you that the award has been long-deserved. In an article in the high school newspaper, "The Bagpipe," Buie is described by a former pupil as being concerned about "caring and sharing" among her students. One of her trademarks is her requirement that all of the students in each of her classes know each other by name before regular classwork begins.

"That's the first test they get," she said at her home on Bundy Street in Wagram Sunday. "Until they know each other, they are not going to share or care." She hopes the interaction among students that she promotes helps melt the geographical and racial barriers that sometimes divide people."

Born and reared in Monroe, Buie graduated from Duke University in 1940, earning her Phi Beta Kappa key her junior year. She comes from a line of teachers, her great-grandfather having served as an instructor at Wake Forest University. All three of her daughters are teachers.

She gives credit for her demand for excellence, ironically, to her retarded son Johnjon. "Because of him I have little patience for those who don't use their God-given ability to read and write," she said.

Recalling Ignorant and Fanatical Responses to 'Inherit the Wind' and 'The Learning Tree'

By Jim Buie

One of my most eye-opening experiences as a youngster was reading "Inherit the Wind," the story of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Tennessee in the 1930s, when the renowned progressive lawyer Clarence Darrow defended the right of a science teacher to teach evolution.

I read it in a high school English class. I was particularly inspired by the character of Henry Drummond, (a.k.a. Darrow), who  at one point in the play, says:

"Fanaticism and ignorance are forever busy and need feeding. And soon, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward. Backward! Through the glorious ages of that 16th century when bigots burned a man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind."

The teacher, perhaps anticipating that some parents might not appreciate the play's promotion of scientific reasoning over Biblical creationism, said we would read it in class, but there was no need to take the play home, and she would collect the texts each day. But one of the other students who as a teen impressed me because he was so self-assured, but looking back on him years later I view him as insufferably smug -- sneaked a copy home and showed it to his narrow-minded father, who was on the school board. He wanted the teacher fired, and the school superintendent relented, claiming that the play was an offense to "community values."

My mother, also an English teacher, defended her colleague to the superintendent, asking him pointedly which "community values" such a play was offensive to? Did he mean the hypocritical values of church deacons who whispered racial epithets?

An authoritarian former Marine, the superintendent was not pleased with my mother's comeuppance, and punished her by demoting her and assigning her "dreg" classes the following year.

My mother got into more trouble when she taught 'The Learning Tree' by Gordon Parks, about coming of age in the era prior to civil rights. A local minister denounced the book on his radio show, claiming that it contained profanity and a rape scene. A mob of parents showed up at a school board meeting demanding that the book be removed and the teacher fired. One parent expressed her concern this way:

"Our children should not be readin' about profanity and immoral sex at school. Why, they already hear and see too much of that AT HOME."

My mother was persuaded by a concerned friend NOT to stand up before the impassioned crowd and attempt to defend her teaching of the book.

The school board reached a compromise -- the one or two parents of students in my mother's class who did not wish their youngsters to read the book would be given an alternative assignment, and could sit in the library during discussion of the book. The Learning Tree and a few other books would be placed on a restricted list in the school library.

1964: Teaching Her Students 'If I Had A Hammer'; '500 Miles'; 'Cruel War'

September 1964 (Lil was teaching at Wagram School in Scotland County, which consisted of all all 12 grades. This was before city and county schools consolidated.)

I hate machines and for that reason they do not aid my teaching. The little boys in my classes are far more interested in how the machines work than in the information they supposedly convey.

I didn’t arrive home from work until 5:30, and missed my appointment with the hairdresser, so she could do something about my hair that sticks up and won’t go down. Ruth very kindly gave me a late appointment, so at the moment I have a neat, attractive hairdo.

I got home too late to witness Strom Thurmond’s departure from the Democratic Party. Our “loss” is actually a gain, and the Republicans’ loss. They are welcome to him. We should have turned him out long ago.

(Our principal at Wagram School, Mr. Charlie Parker, heard the eighth grade singing “500 Miles,” “Cruel War,” and “If I Had A Hammer” today and came in my classroom to join us. He said I had done such a good job teaching music, and the children sounded so good that he was going to ask us to sing in chapel on Friday, and also for the PTA. I wrote a speech for Eddie Johnson to read relating the songs they sang to our American history and literature study. The students did beautifully, and so many parents at the PTA came up afterwards to compliment them on their beautiful harmony. The kids were thrilled, and I had a great time sitting on the front row acting out all of the emotions. I’m really enjoying the sixth grade, because they are young enough to like having a fool for a teacher. In fact, they don’t even recognize that I am one. They just respond.

Do you think I should act out “If I Had A Hammer” for the entire student body? We are now struggling with transitive and intransitive verbs. I really don’t know what is so hard about them.

I’ve really had a right easy two days with the seniors out selling ads for the annual. That meant an extra study hall for me, and I got caught up on my paperwork. I spent one period today checking Beta Club memberships, and found to my dismay that our president is ineligible this semester. We have one active senior now, two juniors, six sophomores, and will probably pick up three or four freshmen  next month. Not very good, is it?

1965: Letter to Daughter Ann and Roommates After a Tiring Day Teaching At Wagram School

May, 1965 (Lil was teaching at Wagram School. All 12 grades attended classes in one building. This was before Scotland County and city schools consolidated.)

Dear Girls,

Today seemed 50 hours long and my head is still splitting. None of my students knew anything, and my usual enthusiasm came through canned. My cold has settled into a perpetual sinus headache which seems to have affected both my brain and personality. Several students had “paper-itis” – they didn’t show or got sick slips so they could go home and finish them up. It is the end of the six weeks, so I have to give two tests tomorrow, and I am sick of papers.

The Junior-Senior is Friday, and nobody has followed through on responsibilities. Junie is upset because her parents won’t let her go with Ronnie. They each invited someone else, but she got all emotional in school today and had to go home. That isn’t like Junie.

To daughter Ann: Guess what I did last night? Made towel curtains for the bathroom! When Earl sees them, your goose will be cooked, and he will start looking elsewhere. He already suspects you take after your mother in the matter of interest in housekeeping, and curtain creation. At least the towels are colorful and pretty and keep onlookers on the outside. It took me 15 minutes which is about all the time I have for curtains. Kathy and I got the giggles putting them up because we hit everything except the nail.

She had a horrible day at school today, too. Mrs. Memory made a crack about the noisy sixth grade, and Miss Mary Livingston told her that her engagement picture was hideous. Mary Odom says Miss Mary is driving Philip wild. She stops the class in the middle to pray over the children (this was after the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning teacher-led prayers in school). I guess she does need additional strength to get through the day, but I think she is praying that they’ll break their necks or drop dead in some way. She isn’t a very loving teacher. Kathy has also lost her teacher’s register and says she’d rather die than tell Mrs. Memory. It is a rather vital record of all her students. I told her that Pascal Stewart lost his register regularly his first year, and it always showed up eventually. It seemed that Mr. Parker announced at every teacher’s meeting that Mr. Stewart had misplaced his register again.

Good night, sweet dreams and God bless you.

What's In A Name?

Teaching in a poor county with a lot of illiteracy and semi-literacy, I have been shocked and amused by the names of some of my students. What self-respecting parent would name her daughter Pandora, I thought? But then came Telephany, spelled t-e-l-e-p-h-o-n-e.

When I asked "phe-molly" who she was named for, she said "they named me at the hospital." Her name was spelled f-e-m-a-l-e.

Then there were the twins, Regina and Vagina.

My daughter, a fifth grade teacher in Florida, claims to know of students named Tequila, Sangria, Lasagna, and Diarrhea.

A colleague claims he knows a child named "Sha-th-ead," spelled "s-h-i-t-h-e-a-d." Naming your child that constitutes child abuse!

Learning to Appreciate Poetry

Poetry offers a universal pleasure. But students initially resist the study of it, fearing it is beyond their grasp. They are convinced they dislike poetry with esoteric language and ambiguous meaning. They have to be re-educated to realize the natural love of rhythmical language goes back to nursery-rhyme days and continues in their infatuation with folk, rock, and rap lyrics.

I begin my introductions to poetry with nursery rhymes and rhythmical games. Students compete to see who can remember the most "Mother Goose" verses; they vie with each other to see who can best clap out "Pease Porridge Hot" or sing "Three Blind Mice." From there they begin writing parodies of these old rhymes about themselves and each other, enjoying both getting the rhythm and teasing their classmates.

These games are previews of more difficult ones, such as parodying the unique rhyme scheme of Robert Frost's "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening" or Browning's"Pippa Passes."

In dealing with the sensory aspect of poetry, I use the journal approach, asking students to listen carefully during the school day and to record in concrete words what they have heard. On another day, they may write of tastes and smells in the school cafeteria or science labs. On still another, the emphasis may be on sight or touch.

My Philosophy for Teaching English: Helping Students Find Their Authentic Voice

For years I was disturbed the the lack of content in student analysis of literature. Our English elective curriculum at Scotland High School in Laurinburg, North Carolina, included a one-semester course called "Writing About Literature." Its purpose was to prepare seniors, most of whom had already been accepted into a four-year academic college or university, to write an acceptable version of the "500-word" theme, because it was so often the major assignment of college freshman composition classes. 

Teaching the form was not difficult. Bright adolescents could imitate a pattern and quickly learn to include an introductory paragraph, a clearly stated thesis, documentation of that thesis, and a conclusion. With guidance and careful editing, they learned to avoid major grammatical errors and awkward sentence patterns. However, their attempts usually lacked an "authentic voice," and were frequently as dull as dish water. Student content lacked conviction and style. Meaningless repetition was often their chosen technique to reach the required 500 words.

After grading a particularly disappointing set of themes, I decided that the fault lay in my teaching more than in my students. I dreaded reading their themes even after a stimulating study of Shakespeare's Macbeth, a favorite piece of literature. My students enjoyed the play. Certainly the witches's scene appealed to them, and they spontaneously applauded my sleepwalking scene. I was pleased with their scores on the standardized objective test given to all classes studying Shakespeare -- but I dreaded grading their themes on character analysis. I feared that most of their compositions would seem to be "tales told by an idiot...signifying nothing."

How could I encourage originality, critical thinking, and style?

These same students had written quite interesting personal autobiographical compositions in Theme Writing a year earlier. Perhaps their problem was that we teachers of Advanced Composition (Writing About Literature) were driving a wedge between the writer and his work by emphasizing form to the exclusion of personal reaction. We were stifling that "authentic voice." We demanded:

• the third person instead of the first,
• a clearly stated -- almost sterile -- thesis statement indicating three points to develop,
• direction quotations from the selection to document that thesis
• reinforcement (translated by students as reiteration) in the conclusion
• the use of the literary present
• a well-developed opening paragraph proceeding from the general to the specific, ad infinitum.

No wonder that our students were concentrating so hard on the way to write this magic "approximately 500-word" paper that they had lost all spontaneity or personal feelings about selections that they had thoroughly enjoyed reading and discussing.

Could English teachers help students develop an acceptable form for writing literary criticism and still encourage them in self-expression, perceptivity, and sincerity?

They had learned the form to please us and to earn acceptable grades; they seemed indifferent to content. Perhaps if we were as enthusiastic about ideas as we had been intent on organization, they would "learn by contagion," a phrase I picked up from Dr. James Britton of London when attending an Institute for English teachers at New York University.

I decided that, like my younger students who were engrossed in personal narratives and descriptions, these adolescents could also benefit from the journal approach.

Hereafter, my classes would react to the selections under consideration in their journals before even considering analysis. Encouraging students to respond honestly and concretely to short fiction would help uncover their authentic voice.

By allowing literature to evoke memories of their own experiences, students began to "feel" their interpretations of stories, and their writing developed an extra quality that might be called style. I like to think of it as their lost authentic voice....

Since taking this approach to teaching, I have seen my students earn grades of A and B in contrast to the ubiquitous C's of their predecessors. I'm not offering a magic formula for teaching writing, but can from my own experience highly recommend the personal approach. When students understand that the "authentic voice" means that an audience is ready to listen to their views and to be impressed by their style, they are motivated to perform well. -- From "The Teaching of Writing" by Lillian S. Buie, Carlton Press, Inc, New York, 1983.

• Google "Authentic Voice"

What Makes Teaching a Blessed Profession

August 22, 1984: I love having parents go over their children’s good standing in college English and giving me credit. I love having ex-students of the past greeting me with affection and appreciation alight in their eyes and voices. And I love having parents of present students tell me I retired too soon. Today our doorbell rang and there stood a bearded young man in his late ‘30s, grinning broadly as he asked, “Remember me?”

“Malcolm Currie,” I exclaimed, giving him a big hug. The last time I saw Malcolm, he had come bo my door at Scotland High School, and I could barely get past the lump in my throat as I gazed at the pale young man on crutches, one leg gone. Today, Malcolm expressed amazement at my memory. “How do you do it – you have have taught a thousand teenagers and we change!” I didn’t tell him I knew of only one who had lost a leg in Vietnam, for my husband John didn’t notice that one leg was artificial.

It’s moments like this that I know teaching is the most blessed of all professions.

Learning Becomes A Fun Game

Classroom activities are fun and interesting. When I became the assistant to a doctor at the world's leading medical center, during dramatic literature class, I had the undivided attention of the students. With horror they listened to the explanation that fellow classmate Mary or Hans had a terminal illness -- a rare blood ailment, and that they could only be saved if they could find three friends who would undergo experimental treatment with him, and willingly interrupt months of their personal lives and perhaps even threatening them with the dreaded disease. At that I let the victim search among his classmates for companions in the venture. I think they are now ready for our study of "Everyman." (And I feel indebted to Dorothy Heathcote, one of the greatest teachers of the century.)

In theme writing class we played my version of Grammar Basketball. Class reverberates with cries of "time"; "foul"; "my ball." There was actually great enthusiasm for the correct usage of "lie"; "lay":; "sit, set"; "rise"; "raise"; and even for transitive and intransitive verbs. One girl didn't understand why she "lost the ball" on "axed," after correctly adding -ed, but a black classmate caught her error quickly and took over.