It must have been 1930 when Inez Stover first began to teach in our town. She arrived in Elmhurst, Illinois full of idealism.

Unfortunately, her first sixth grade class had a crowd of boisterous, rebellious boys. Some of them resented being transferred from the school they had previously attended. They wanted to show who was “top dog.” Miss Stover was their victim.

Their fertile minds devised trick after trick to destroy order in her classroom.

They found her lunch box and locked it in the cloakroom. They caught crayfish from a nearby swamp and put them in the girls’ hair. They captured a huge number of grasshoppers and let them loose in the classroom when it was empty during the noon hour. A cruel comic valentine brought tears to her eyes.

“We did so much stuff to that poor woman, I can’t remember it all,” said my older brother, who was in that class. “I don’t know why we were so mean I really liked her. I learned more from her than any of my teachers. It shows what happens when a group decides to gang up on one person.”

At the end of that first school year, Miss Stover’s doctor advised complete rest if she was to teach again in the fall.

She did return, and when it was my turn to be her student, I also profited from this talented woman. She was intent on planting positive qualities in her students’ lives. She had particularly fine handwriting, and she used penmanship exercises to introduce us to quotations such as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Years later a chance meeting with Miss Stover changed my life.

She invited me to join her Sunday School class of high school girls. I was too shy to come, but she kept asking until I did. Her persistent encouragement brought about life long changes for me as I learned about God.

Miss Stover taught in the Elmhurst school system for some 40 years before she retired. She lived to be almost 100, living in a high-rise retirement complex in Elmhurst. Many children passed through her classroom, and her former students scattered around the world. They wrote or phoned her, making personal visits when they were in town. Her correspondence list was long, yet she faithfully wrote, sending reminders again of the admirable thoughts she tried to instill in their youth.

Miss Stover’s life showed the truth of these words from the apostle James:

^“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4)

A Prayer for Today

“Thank you, God, for putting a people like Inez Stover into the lives of young people. Help me to follow her example of persistence in doing what is right when things get discouraging. Amen.” 

© 1998 Laura Jane Cerling

For more family stories from Laura Jane Cerling check out My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from “Year of the Family” compiled by Becky Cerling Powers

Reprint with attribution only

https://beckypowers.com/

Mother Goose was one of the few books I packed along during our family’s great adventure in Kenya in 1973. At the time, our oldest son Erik was nearly 2 years old. My husband was spending six months on a scientific expedition in northwest Kenya, collecting data for his Ph.D. research. Erik and I joined Dennis during the last three months of the expedition.

I packed only what I could physically carry while still managing to hang onto a toddler through the airports of Chicago, New York, London, and Nairobi. I brought only clothes for me and Erik, a couple of toys, and a few essential books.

Mother Goose entertained

Mother Goose entertained us on planes, in hotels, in tents, and around campfires as we began our nomadic adventure. The first month nearly every day was different—we drove through forests, mountains, and wildlife preserves; we lumbered along beach roads and lurched into the canyons and over the trackless plains of the desert in our four-wheel drive truck. We stayed a few days here, a few days there.

During the second month we lived in a tent in the North Kenyan desert next to a dry riverbed. We followed that up by camping the third month at another desert location near bleak cascades of high rock.

Mother Goose provided security

But no matter what changes we experienced, Mother Goose lent stability to our toddler’s day. Every day, Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Little Jack Horner never failed to sit in a corner. And you could always count on the spider to sit down beside her and frighten Miss Muffet away.

Our African neighbors found Mother Goose appealing, too.

The Turkana of northwest Kenya were a people straight out of the pages of National Geographic. The women wore skirts made of goat skin, and they encased their necks in dozens of bead necklaces made from ostrich eggshells. The men sported mud pack hairdos and went naked except for a single length of cloth, which they usually wore slung under the left shoulder and tied at the right shoulder.

Mother Goose enchanted our neighbors

One afternoon I was reading Mother Goose aloud to Erik under a thorn tree. A young Turkana tribesman wandered by and started peeking over my shoulder at the pictures. I let the young man take Mother Goose over to the dining table, where he was soon joined by a bare breasted teenage girl and two young male warriors carrying long spears.

It was a comical sight—four half-naked Turkana seriously contemplating the pictures in Mother Goose, puzzling over the cat with his fiddle, solemnly discussing the cow jumping over the moon....how I wished I could understand the Turkana language for just five minutes!

That copy of Mother Goose is no longer with us. When it started falling to shreds, I bought another copy for our second child. And then I bought a third copy for child number three. We seemed to wear out one Mother Goose per child.

Mother Goose helps lay an English language foundation

A bilingual kindergarten teacher told me that she always teaches Mother Goose rhymes to her children because it helps them learn English. Mother Goose ushers children into understanding and appreciating the English language. It is a foundation for later reading and writing.

The rhymes are easy to learn and fun to repeat. Repeating them helps reinforce the meaning of the words. The absurd images stimulate a child’s imagination. The color and the cadence of the words introduce children to the sheer delight of language. The illustrations and the rhymes together pull children into an enjoyment of the world of books.

Twenty-five years ago, 5-year-old Jacob started coming to our house every day during the summer while his mother worked. When he first came, he had little interest in books and little patience for reading. But soon he was sitting sit still for 20 or 30 minutes while we read to him. For him, I bought our fourth copy of Mother Goose.

And today, with 13 grandchildren, I’ve kept on buying, and I’ve stopped counting.

Reprinted with permission from Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive

©2020 by Becky Cerling Powers

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https://beckypowers.com/

On Sundays… write a scripture-based blessing for each member of the family that you can pray throughout the year. For example, Psalm 37:4: “May (Name) learn to find delight in You, O Lord, and may You give her the desires of her heart.”

On Mondays…keep in mind that the key to children’s sense of security and intellectual development is a warmly responsive adult. Nothing stimulates children’s minds or builds good social behavior like a warmly responsive, consistently caring parent, grandparent, or other committed adult who responds to kids’ daily needs, encourages creative efforts, sets healthy limits, provides a calm routine and is easily available for conversation.

On Tuesdays… be aware that reading at home is the simplest way to enhance children’s academic performance and encourage their intellectual development. Bedtime is a good time to include reading aloud in the family routine even if kids can read well themselves. Be sure to talk about the stories and relate them to things that happen at home.

On Wednesdays…remember that children learn social skills best by observing and imitating people who are more socially mature than they are. They learn sharing and other social tasks best when they are supervised by an adult who is a good model and lets them know the kind of behavior expected.

On Thursdays… purposely develop the habit of savoring and appreciating what you have at the moment. When you feed discontentment by focusing on what you don’t have, you discourage everyone in the family, including yourself. So look for your blessings, thank God for them, and let your children hear you thank Him.

On Fridays… remember to keep craft, game and project books where children can easily use them. Encourage your children to discover new interests by trying new activities.

On Saturdays… as family annoyances and problems come up, remind yourself to look first at what’s best for children, not at what’s most convenient for adults.

Becky Cerling Powers is a the author of Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive and Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage. She also compiled and edited the faith based stories in My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from Year of the Family. 

Becky blogs at https://beckypowers.com/