I loved teaching. It gave me purpose and I learned something new every day. Looking back as a New York inner-city high school teacher of social studies and English as second language for over 36 years, for me teaching was a lifestyle. It consumed most of my free time. Often, teachers do not have enough time to make all the individual comments on every essay, homework and class work assigned every day. It is just physically impossible with over five classes and 176 students every day. It is just not feasible. Then, of course, there are the lesson plans, letters home, phone calls, record keeping and much more. After school, a teacher also has family and other obligations. My mother helped me fill the gap by giving me a helping hand. This she did because she agonized over the fact that I was suffering from multiple sclerosis and profound fatigue.

For the last five years of Mama’s life, she was my teacher’s aide. Mama was ill and homebound suffering from a debilitating and fatal bone disease. So, she suggested that she could help me mark my Social Studies homework to help her get over her boredom, giving her something to do and helping her son at the same time with all the work he had.

Mama read the homework every day and made voluminous comments related to grammar, style, and content.
Mama gave students encouragement, insight, and confidence in her suggestions. Sometimes she used humor. Sometimes she gave examples to support an argument. Sometimes she gave examples to crystallize or refute a notation. Sometimes she would direct students to other sources of historical information. She always encouraged students to improve as she walked them through and toward greater progress and understanding. The students would ask her questions relating to the subject, and she would make sure she would research the answers. I remember reading her comments. She paid particular attention to each individual student. Her comments offered support, encouragement, and direction. Sometimes she even provided diagrams, timelines, comparisons to literature, or some other relevant anecdote to make her responses more explicit and understandable for the students.

Mama was an exemplary coach and teacher. She knew how to transfer knowledge.

Her suggestions and advice were insightful, creative, explicit, and meaningful to all the students. Her painstaking notes to my students became legendary. Students would marvel over the fact that mama’s notes were on the mark. She would write a page or pages of notes relating to their work.

Every class received feedback every day. This really encouraged my students to write, to do their homework and sometimes even to write me notes in response to the helpful suggestions my mother made.
Every evening, she would look forward to my dropping off my classes’ homework and picking them up early the next morning before school. This gave my mother a sense of pride and purpose knowing that she was making agreat contribution. Mama prompted students to do well and they in turn appreciated the work that went into her extensive notes, comments, and constructive criticism.

Mama did not like watching television. Instead, she preferred to write letters to her friends and family. My mama loved history, writing and students. I never told my students who wrote to them. They thought it was me. As a result, they showed me great respect, having learned much through mama’s critiques. Mama worked hard on homework until the day she died. The first time I entered the homework into my grade book after my mother’s death, I cried like a baby. I realized all the wonderful work she did. I often wonder how many hundreds of students were affected by mama’s notes.

The day before mama died, she thanked me and told me how much she looked forward to making comments on their homework and entering them in my grade book. Just one more act of kindness my mother performed that has made all the difference.

My mother was my co-pilot. My mother was my best friend, but I did not realize this at the time.