Don't forget the importance of student involvement and teacher involvement in school success

My mother took an unusually keen interest in my childhood education. In addition to being my mother, she was my teacher from the fourth through the seventh grade. She taught at one-room schools in the Ozarks over yonder, and I was one of her students.

At school, my mother was the teacher. She worked hard not to show favoritism. The one time she turned into a mother at school was when I was struggling with fractions. I was supposed to be doing an assignment from the Warp's Review Workbook, and I wasn't getting much accomplished. My mother explained how to do the problems -- again. She must have thought I wasn't paying attention, because she whacked the top of my head with a No. 3 pencil. I grasped enough math that day to get me through high school.

When my younger brother was in third grade, my mother was no longer teaching. His teacher sent home a note saying David was doing so poorly in math that he might get failing grades. I don't know if any pencils were involved, but my brother saw the light. After getting a computer science undergraduate degree, he went on to get a master's in math and then a doctorate in math theory.

I'd say my brother and I benefited from parental involvement, wouldn't you?

"Parental involvement" is a big deal these days. It is where much of the blame for failing schools is placed. How many years have we been using this excuse?

Yes, pushy parents are likely to see completed assignments, better grades and a high school diploma. But gobs of students from less-than-desirable home situations manage to excel in public schools and become successful adults.

Parental involvement may be a leg up for many students, but a good education rests on a three-legged stool. The other two legs are student involvement and teacher involvement.

Here are three vignettes of teachers who have held up their third of the stool:

Ludmila Vavra Weir. Before Ludmila Vavra married Ben Weir, the irascible newspaper publisher who gave me my first job as editor, she was the daughter of a baker. Ludmila wanted to be a teacher, and after completing her college education began to teach in Maryville, Mo.

As summer drew to a close and thoughts turned to school supplies, bus schedules and lunch money, Ludmila went to work two or three weeks before the first day of school. She called the parents of every child who would be in her elementary class and made arrangements for an in-home visit. During the visit, she would talk about what her students would be learning that year, what they would need to do to be successful, what they should bring to class and when each mother would be expected to provide cookies or cupcakes for the whole class. Ludmila thought it was important to give mothers a job that contributed to the success of the whole class.

Ludmila knew her students. She knew which ones could use thriftshop clothes to replace the torn rags some of her students were so embarrassed to wear to school. She knew which students had health problems that might interfere with their learning.

Bottom line for Ludmila Vavra: She believed every student could succeed. There are hundreds of successful men and women who can attest to the fact that she was a success too.

Leola Rayfield: Mrs. Rayfield (I have never called her "Leola" in the 55-plus years I've known her) was my first-grade teacher. As some of you may recall, I am not embarrassed to say she is the first woman I fell in love with. Five-year-olds, as you know, fall in love fairly easily.

Mrs. Rayfield taught at Shady Nook School two and a half miles from the farmhouse where I grew up. By walking a mile up the hill to the highway, I could catch a ride with Mrs. Rayfield in her spanking new black 1951 Ford, whose color matched her raven hair.

As teaching styles go, Mrs. Rayfield was a gentle teacher, preferring to coax and encourage rather than criticize or punish. With 16 first-graders (in a one-room school with eight grades), she had her hands full.

Not only did Mrs. Rayfield's students succeed, their progress was of keen interest long after they left her classroom. Two or three years ago Mrs. Rayfield called my mother to see when I might be home for a visit. On the day I arrived, there was a scrumptious three-layer cake waiting for me. How many of you have first-grade teachers still baking cakes for you?

Bottom line for Mrs. Rayfield: Students are not ciphers, They are more than scores and grades and attendance certificates. Her students became part of her long, beautiful life. And we all benefited, often in ways most of us don't even understand.

My mother: The week before my mother died last June, she was remembering some of the students she taught in those one-room schools: Shady Nook, Mill Creek, King (the same school she attended as a child), Dale and the one across the road from the Boyer farm whose name I have, I just realized, forgotten.

Simple things made my mother the happiest, especially laughing babies. Her children and grandchildren were high on her list. But it was visits from former students nearly a half-century later that gave her so much joy, finding out what they had done with their lives, measuring their success by their happy marriages and the photos of bright-faced children and grandchildren they carried in their purses and wallets.

My mother was soft-hearted. She had grown up during the Great Depression and knew, coming from a large family, the hardships of keeping a bunch of school-age children clothed and fed.

At the peak of her teaching career, my mother's contract called for teaching an eight-month school year for $900 (that's right: nine hundred for the whole year). Some of that went for small gifts that would brighten the day of an eighth-grader moving on to high school in town. Or eyeglasses for a student struggling to see the blackboard. Or a bottle of Corn Huskers Lotion to soothe the hands of children who did heavy farm work.

One day we were at the shoe store in town. My mother was asking the clerk about a particular pair of Buster Brown oxfords. Were they well-made? Would they stand up to hard wear? Could they be polished for church? Could they be resoled when they wore out?

All the time I wondered why she was looking at shoes several sizes too large for me. When she saw the look on my face, my mother said, "They're for Charlie. His family can't afford to buy his shoes. It's too cold to go barefoot," as most of her students did until the first frost. It was mid-November.

Bottom line for my mother: Children who had no reason to anticipate generosity learned the value of giving -- and receiving -- help from someone who cares.

There are thousands of teachers today who are as caring, concerned and compassionate as Miss Vavra, Mrs. Rayfield and my mother. They are blessed with the success their students and their former students achieve.

Solving the nation's education woes would be easy if every parent honored these teachers with something as simple as their participation and cooperation, or if young students could see that aiming to please their parents and their teachers was worth the effort, or if education were more about exploring and understanding and less about "standardized" anything.

The fact is, most parents do care, and most students try to do their best, and most teachers give all they can to their students. It's the ones who don't who spoil the opportunities for all the rest.

In a few weeks, Missouri will have a new governor and the nation will have a new president. I have a suggestion for both of them.

Mr. Nixon, add more teachers to the Missouri State Board of Education. And Mr. Obama, when you tap the next secretary of education, pick a teacher.

And then get out of the way.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editorial page editor of the Southeast Missourian. E-mail: jsullivan@semissourian.com.