A teacher called Madame

I sat in his office, tears streaming down my face. I could hardly swallow. Reluctantly, I took a tissue out of the Kleenex box he had pushed towards me. “I just don’t think you will be able to become a French teacher,” he stated. Not knowing what to say next, I nodded. Then, trying to speak as little as possible, I waited for the conversation to end. When I left, I didn’t look back. All I could think about was how terribly hurt I felt and how terribly dark life seemed. Did no one believe in me? Was everything to turn against me, to tell me I would never make it? 

Fighting back tears, I slowly trudged down the hallway. I was lost. Broken. Alone. Insignificant and incapable. I walked without purpose, not sure where I was going and not truly sure who cared.

That day, something changed in me. Yes, I was hurt, but not permanently. I was broken, but not irreparable. I think I can safely say that I changed for the better; that I had been cut down, and the only thing I could do was learn to grow again. And somewhere in that time of learning to grow again, I think I finally started to understand what Madame meant.

Who is Madame, you ask? Well, let me tell you. And I guess you should know that there are, in fact, two of them.

I first met Madame McFarland when I was a short, freckle-faced sophomore at American Fork High School. Yes, I'm still just as short, but that's beside the point. I adored her right off the bat. She was different than my other teachers because, well, she was an encourager, a fighter, a kind and caring charismatic individual who watched out for small 10th graders like me.

Now, the vast majority of my friends who enrolled in and “passed” high school language classes tell me that they learned absolutely nothing from their teachers. As a teacher, I know that both teachers and students are responsible for the amount of learning being done in the classroom, so part of the problem came from them... But that’s a topic for another day. My point is that Madame McFarland was not one of those let’s-watch-a-movie-every-day type of teacher. No, she ran a strict regime, and people who didn’t work hard or ask for help got guillotined.

Figuratively, of course.

So, did I learn anything in her class, you ask?

Yes. Yes, I did.

Oh, I learned the grammar – the tenses, the si clauses, the “this, that, these, and those’s”; I learned the idiomatic expressions and the weather vocabulary . . .

But unlike all my friends, I learned a lot more than this.

Time travel with me back to the year 2010. I was in French 4 at the time, finally beginning to grasp the language in-between my fingertips (though I still didn’t know the alphabet. . . whoops). I remember Madame McFarland starting class with an enormous smile in her face, just like she always did. But that day was different because she started class in English.

**Insert surprised face**

To each of us, she handed a red sheet of card stock – also with English on it. That's when we all knew that something was up. And that's when Madame began her pep talk of all pep talks. We listened to her expound to us her teaching philosophy, her passion for helping students, and the depth of her sadness when students sell themselves short and choose to believe that aren’t good enough. As I listened to her, there in my hard, blue chair, I started to feel like I needed to believe in my abilities and talents. I will forever attribute my realization to the fact that one doesn’t have to wave pompoms in the air in order to be considered a cheerleader, for  that is precisely what Madame McFarland did. Cheerleader by choice, she stood there and rallied all our inner selves to believe that we could do anything we put our minds to. I still remember looking at the red sheet of paper and listening to her read it to us:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Marianne Williamson)

When she had finished her pep talk and real class started, I carefully slipped the small read sheet of paper into the plastic cover of my binder. And there it stayed.

In fact, it followed me to college. Madame McFarland admonished us to keep our French skills up to par, so I suppose that she is the reason why I had enough courage to sign up for the hardest professor on campus.

Well, that’s what I had heard anyways. Hmm. The hardest professor on campus, you ask? Who is that?

Her name is Madame. Madame Thompson, to be exact. 

The first time I ever met Madame was in her French 321 class. She walked into class with her brief case and a giant smile on her face. She asked each of us where we were from and where we had learned French. I am sure I could barely peep something out like, “Je m’appelle Alissa et je suis d’American Fork,” and then I probably thought something like, “Oh no, is it ‘de American Fork’ or ‘d’American Fork?’ I was terrified to speak in that class because most of the class consisted of return missionaries who had the fluency to speak French far beyond what I was capable of doing, and I felt very unqualified to be there.

Incredibly inadequate.

I always did my homework, though, and to Madame’s eternal credit, she hardly called on me to give the answer, for which I was most grateful.

In Madame’s class, everyone had to give a news report called an “Actualité”, and usually we signed up for the days a long time in advance. I remember practicing my “Actualité” for my FHE group (no one understood it, but who cares), and then for my roommate. I practiced and practiced. When I arrived in class on the day it was my turn to give it, Madame walked in and did something she had never previously done, and that she never did again.

We sang a hymn.

And then we said a prayer.

And I tried to keep myself from crying.

What Madame Thompson could never have known is I had prayed for help and courage to make it through that day because my mind and heart felt like I would not. I knew I was probably not going to give a perfect “Actualité”, and I was probably going to speak really slowly and not know what to say sometimes. But after we sang the hymn Souviens-toi, which I had never heard before, and said a prayer, which I had never known how to do in French, I felt reassured that a Father in Heaven was there for me, cheering me on through everything I was doing. I don’t know how Madame concluded that we needed to sing a hymn and say a prayer that day, but this experience taught me to continue to believe in miracles.

And there were more miracles to come into my life, many of which came because of Madame Thompson. After being home from my mission for a semester, I applied to the Nursing Program at BYU and didn’t get in. I cried bitter tears and wondered what I would do with my educational career. I remember well the night when I sat at my computer, mouse in hand, ready to click the “Drop All Courses” button.

I was ready to give up.

I was ready to believe that I was inadequate to accomplish my dreams.

I did not push that button that night, and in fact, later on, I came to know that I needed to be a teacher instead. This was a leap of faith for me, for I have always considered myself a person who stumbles over her words and can never clearly explain anything (except for how to make toast - I can explain that). But Madame Thompson showed her confidence in me from the very beginning. She believed that I was capable of more than I realized, trusting me to be a student instructor, to write an online course, to give trainings to new teachers, and to be a student on whom she could rely.

I have now been through the fires of student teaching, my first year of teaching, and am hopeful that I will become a better and better teacher each day. I have many, many weaknesses, and sometimes I wonder if I should teach religion instead because I would at least then be teaching something that I excel at !

 Many people wonder why I still call my High School French teacher, “Madame”, and why I call my college professor “Madame” instead of Mrs. Thompson. And for me, the answer is really quite simple.

For me, the word Madame is more than just a title. It means something.

It means years and years of trying hard to succeed, in high school and in college, and the only people who believed in me were Madame McFarland and Madame Thomson.

It means that sometimes, on those lonely days in high school, the only one who cared about me was Madame.

It means that sometimes when I felt like a failure, when phonetics and vocabulary and speaking in front of the FR 411 class were too scary, Madame encouraged me.

It means that when I was walking down that long hallway, nearly 4 years ago now, out of the office of a professor who didn't believe in my abilities nor that I could make it as a French teacher, Heavenly Father knew I could make it because He would give me the help I needed. He already had given me the help I needed. 

Help in the form of a teacher called Madame.

And so it goes. I now carry the title. We'll have to see what this red-headed short and freckle faced Madame is capable of doing.