Miss Harvey

It is funny how things trigger your memory.  I got my yearbook and I saw a picture of one of our deceased teachers, Miriam Harvey.  Miss Harvey was a math teacher at Jemison High School.  She was an old maid.  Her eyes were a little weird and her grey hair had a blue tint to it.  She was small and frail looking.  I had her for seventh grade study hall, tenth grade algebra II, eleventh grade geometry, and twelfth grade advanced math.  I knew her before I had her as a teacher.  My aunt, a beautician, was the one that gave her that blue tint.

Miss Harvey called me her best student ever.  She made math so simple with her teaching methods.  First, she asked if there were any problems we could not work.  Second, those students that could not work a problem would go to one chalk board to show what he/she knew.  Third, another student who worked the problem, and for an extra “A”, would go to another chalk board and work it.  Finally, the student that worked the problem would explain to the one who could not how to work the problem. 

Miss Harvey constantly challenged me to go to college.  One particular time she asked if I knew a certain student.  I did.  She reminded me that he was at Auburn University and was the top calculus student there.  She said that I was smarter than he.  I figured (remember I love math) she was just trying to get me to go to college.  We frustrated one another over the college thing. 

Finally, one day I asked her why people went to college anyway.  My parents were very anti-educational. Their perception of college educated people was not very high.  They thought of them as being better than them and as smart-alecky.

Miss Harvey said that people go to college to get an education, to get a good job, and make more money.  I responded that some go to be a smart aleck.  That did not resonate very well with Miss Harvey.  She said I called her a smart-aleck and I got on her bad side.

One day she caught me as I started home.  I never carried books home, having finished my homework at school.  (I took books home to study for tests sometimes.)  She marched me back to my locker to get books to take home.

Another time, the biology teacher and the principle got me and some other “A” students to play a prank on Miss Harvey.  There was a mump epidemic in school and Miss Harvey had never had them.  They gave us bubble gum (a no-no in class) and had us pretend to have the mumps by placing gum in our cheeks.  When we all went back for the laugh the whole episode turned into a fiasco.  When we told her the biology teacher and the principle had us pull the prank, she told us they would never do a cruel act such as that.  When we went to principle, he told us we went too far with it.

That prank got me kicked out of class and ten demerits.  Those demerits, along with some other demerits from a series of unfortunate events, got me kicked out of the beta club.  I had all “A’s” except for an “F” in conduct. 

Miss Harvey was sponsor of the beta club and I was president of the club my senior year.  I felt her wrath.  She told me that no beta club member would have an “F”.  I maintained the required grades for membership, but she got her way.  I spent the remainder of the school year trying to be reinstated in the beta club.  The club overruled Miss Harvey and I got back in the club.

Miss Harvey retired at the end of the school year in 1971.  Her life was Jemison High School and her students.  When I returned to college in 1983, I went to the nursing home to see Miss Harvey.  She smiled when I told her that I was going to college.  She saw something in this “Knot head” I did not see.  When I read of Anna seeing Jesus I think of Miss Harvey.  She was a wonderful Christian teacher.

And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.  And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem (Luke 2:36-38 KJV).

Oh, by the way.  Miss Harvey had someone read the Bible and have devotion every morning in her home room class.