Small Wonders:

“Pat needs to increase his efforts in oral participation . . . He needs to place more emphasis on neatness rather than hurrying through his work . . . He did not work as hard as he should have in several areas.” — comments on my sixth-grade report card.

And as true today as when Mrs. Grossman wrote them 31 years ago.

In a world where few people stay with the same employer for more than a few years, Mrs. Grossman is an anomaly. She told me her first name is Barbara, but I refuse to believe that elementary school teachers have first names.

Her first teaching job was at Glenoaks Elementary School, and that is where I found her one recent rainy day, in the same classroom, 38 years later. As I sat in my old classroom — taking in the smell of damp leaves, wet kid and eraser dust — the memories came flooding back. It helped that the desks were the same ones I sat in back then — someone please remind me where that California Lottery money is supposed to go.

But mostly it was this woman, my teacher, the unchanging face of my school days.

From the eyes of a child, teachers don’t so much seem old as ageless. Ask them how old their teacher is, and they’ll have no idea. But I never expected Mrs. Grossman to be so youthful, more so today than when I sat in her class. Maybe being around children so long has something to do with it.

“It’s still neat to come to work here,” she told me. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing.”

Another rarity for workers of any kind.

My visit was not without motive, I had to admit. I’ve been harboring a dark secret for 31 years.

Back then, Mrs. Grossman held a reading competition called the “Room 15 500.” On a bulletin board was a race track sectioned like a game board. For every book you read, you moved your race car ahead one space. While other kids advanced their cars 15, 20, 25 books, I remained dead last. Two books. And then the admission:

“I didn’t even read those books, Mrs. Grossman.” I was 11-years-old again, ashamed and in trouble. She looked at me with the wizened, gentle authority that all good teachers have.

“Well, you might have been just as honest as the child who claimed to read 15 or 30.”