Sixth grade, I believe it was. That was the year I had one of the most unusual, fascinating, and ‘non-traditional’ teachers of my entire K-12 ‘career’! We loved her. And we learned a lot.
She was young – a first- or second-year teacher, I’m guessing – but we thought she was old. And wise. Not to mention great fun. We only knew her as Miss Fules back then, of course – we rarely knew teachers’ first names. It wasn’t until much later, as we kept coming back to visit her, that we discovered that her first name was April. Imagine having a teacher named April Fules! Looking back, it certainly seems appropriate! And it might explain a lot.
Miss Fules was borderline outrageous much of the time, and we loved it. She loved to have fun, and she loved for us to have fun, but her famous ‘one raised eyebrow’ always meant we were treading on thin ice, and we instantly pulled back. She was hilarious, but always demanded common sense and thinking, and always stretched us to want to learn more.
She would love to watch and see if we were getting her occasional jokes, which she would deliver with a straight face, but also with a twinkle in the eye. One day, she told us she had placed an ad in the paper and had sold her homing pigeon. Then with just the slightest hesitation, she added “for the 22nd time!” and, eyes twinkling, watched to see if we would get it. Most of us didn’t at first – but by the end of recess as the joke spread, we were all chuckling. As I look back on it, it was her way to get us to always pay attention – and think.
Another time, she told us she had discovered where Capt Hook had gotten his infamous ‘hook’: “At the second-hand store,” she said, with only the slightest hint of a smile. Most of us didn’t need recess to figure that one out.
Toward the end of that year, out of nowhere, she announced, eyes twinkling, that she was looking to sell a ‘prill’. Fools that we were, did any of us want to buy it? That’s just the way she phrased it. We were puzzled. None of us had heard of a ‘prill’ and it was so unlike her to call us ‘fools’. When we tentatively tried questioning her, she only laughed and said “check your calendar, kids!” And then she moved right into math class before she would let us go to recess to figure it out. At recess it dawned on us that it was the first day of A-pril, and we began to grin.
Around the end of March, as Spring arrived, one of us asked if there wasn’t some way she could let us out of school early that year. Always willing to play, she paused, smiled, and said, “tell you what! If everyone makes an A on the end-of-March spelling test, we’ll see what happens!” We were excited!! Lo & behold, through an act of God, or her choice of easy words, or perhaps her lenient grading, all of us made an A. When we reminded her of her comment, she said, “Hmmm. That wasn’t quite a promise,” she said, “but let’s get through April First, and then we’ll talk”.
And the stories she would tell!! One I remember was a complicated story about an ape that was running a con game with other members of the animal kingdom. As the story ended, Giraffe commented that Ape was the darndest swindler he’d ever seen. “When he is on a roll, Ape Reels Fools in faster than anything!”
I hope you enjoyed our beloved April Fules memories. I see it’s time to release you for recess, as I seem to hear her voice saying “check your calendars, kids”!
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