In Commemoration of a Life Well Lived

I'll be the first to tell you that teaching 6th grade ELA was never a part of my plan. It just so happened that God had other things in mind for me than writing a Great American novel or a groundbreaking Broadway play. When I first decided to teach, I wanted to have seniors in high school. I had dreams of teaching kids that already knew how to write. We were going to write plays and synopses over "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Sir Gawain and the Green Night," all of the literature that enamored me when I was in high school. I wanted to teach about the Beatniks, who went overseas to write about their perspectives of America and American life. I was going to be just like my senior ELA teacher, Shirley Webb, one who inspired me in ways I never imagined possible. (Ironically, I had the pleasure of teaching with Shirley the first two years of my career--in middle school.) So, I worked my heine off and finished grad school and student teaching in a year. My certification was in ELA and Reading, grades 8-12. Now for the job hunt . . .

I submitted resumes and made phone calls to places an hour away. I spent money we didn't have on classroom enhancements--posters, tape dispensers, markers, and more. By the end of summer, I'd had two interviews and didn't get either job. Our bank account was getting ridiculously low. Carl was working hard at a dead-end job that paid a lot less than it should have. I was worrying if I'd made a wise decision about going into the field. I enlisted as a substitute teacher for the fall semester. I spent the first 5 weeks of school subbing in LISD and Frenship, where I did my student teaching the previous spring. I'd given up on getting a real job that year. Carl and I were cutting back on our expenses as best as we could. Then the call came. I interviewed at Dunbar for a position in sixth grade that suddenly opened up. I knew I got the job before I was even told. I thought if I could just stick it out until the end of the year teaching kids that knew nothing about writing, I could move on to my dream job, already having a year under my belt. I had no idea what I was going to teach. I would be the head ELA teacher in 6th grade. My colleague taught reading mostly, but she helped me through a really difficult year. When I was worrying about curriculum, I tried so hard to think back on what I learned in sixth grade ELA. The name Joanna Dunn will forever be in my mind as a teacher that taught me the most.

Joanna Dunn was my sixth grade English teacher. She was old even when I had her. She was extremely familiar with the Branson clan, since she taught my older sisters and younger brothers. Anyone with that amount of experience with our family remembers us long after we left elementary school. She had us spouting off prepositions, identifying prepositional phrases, diagramming sentences, moving to a rhythm while we conjugated verbs. We learned grammar and had fun learning it. I decided to model my teaching after what I could remember, which was quite a bit, of hers. I go into the school year promising my students only one thing . . . that they will learn. I believe Joanna made the same promise to us. We did not always enjoy her classes. She got onto us for yawning in her class. She was tough, and sometimes we moved on when I wasn't quite down with the current concept we were learning. But, she was a good teacher, a great teacher, who was passionate about what she was doing. That passion came out everyday. And, it was obvious.

I saw Joanna just last year. She was older and looked more worn. I talked to her for several minutes, making sure to tell her I still knew all of my prepositions by heart. She was proud to know that I'd grown up and sort of followed in her footsteps. She offered me advice about how to teach certain things and gave me her email address so we could exchange ideas. She was now teaching at MacKenzie Middle School, having moved up with the fifth graders when they converted junior high into middle school and changed the grade levels contained to 6-8. She told me she was having a tough year because of the change and leaving Honey Elementary behind. She talked about retiring in the near future. It was good to see her and to know that she was proud of me.

My brother and Carl, who are basically best friends, were talking last night, and Carl told me that Joanna Dunn was killed in a car accident earlier that morning. I immediately kicked Carl off the computer and looked it up online. Her picture was on the first page of local news. The caption read "Beloved Teacher Dies in Car Accident." I read the story. The jaws of life had to remove her from the wreckage. She was speaking on site, so they thought she might live. Surgery was conducted, and she died before it was over. She was in her 49th year of teaching, quoted at saying she hoped to make it to 50. It made me sad to think about her family and her students, how this happened just before the Christmas holiday. I imagined her granddaughter, whom she was very close to, receiving the news. But, Joanna lived a good life. She was a devout Christian woman, who was passionate about family, friends, and teaching. She touched lives because of that passion. I thought about her all last night, said a little prayer for her family and students. I was sad but didn't cry. She lived a good life, and I suspect that yesterday was her victory, although it was our loss. God rest her soul.