my favorite teacher

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Ora Landis is no longer living but she is enthusiastically remembered and loved by her family, friends, and former students.

We all remember exceptional teachers who brought out of us such willing and enthusiastic participation that we were thankful that all of our teachers didn't have this talent and passion because, besides time, there wouldn't have been enough energy to have done it all.

Ms. Landis was one of these teachers. She taught English 101, English Literature, and Greek at Toccoa Falls College for years and years. She walked with a limp and a cane because of a brace on one of her legs. She never complained. She had flaming red hair and a countenance that brightened like the sun when eye contact was made.

Her enthusiasm never wore out. We could all see that she loved what she was doing. On occasion, she would quote from something and laugh ... and the times when we didn't get it and we wanted to know badly enough, we would ask her what was so funny, and sometimes she would reveal it and other times she would laugh again and say, "You'll know some day."

Seeing her position of not pushing forth with information at every possible opportunity, we knew we had arrived at a place in our lives where we had to discover many or most things for ourselves, and without her saying it, we knew it was her job to help teach us how.

One of her techniques was the daily assignment of creating an "impression" which was recorded in a special "impression notebook" which was periodically turned in. An "impression" was her way of saying "figure of speech." As you know, figures of speech are very useful, colorful, and among the basic tools for any writer.

Just for pleasure's sake, here are five "impressions" from the writings of John Steinbeck:

On every side the fog sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut.

Near the beginning of most English classes she would choose someone at random to start, and the turn would go around the room from there with each student presenting a figure of speech to the rest of the class. The ones who were prepared gave their "impressions" confidently, and Ms. Landis sometimes would pause to discuss with us why certain impressions were well above average.

Some of us started out by trying to think of an impression on the spot as the turn crept closer ... and closer ... and closer ... and we either did or didn't succeed. Oh my.

We quickly found that figures of speech were almost impossible to create, unless we had a specific situation in mind which we wanted to express from our own impression of it.

We discovered that the best way to play our game was to kill the time pressure by having one or two impressions ready to go just in case we failed to create a decent one as the turn moved closer and closer. This allowed us to do our homework in class.

It turned out that Ms. Landis knew who we were and what we were doing by the far away looks on our faces as we tried to create with the distractions of the class going on around us. She often chose one of us to begin the exercise.

She was teaching us the process of coming up with useful metaphors and similes and how to use personification and exaggeration in interesting ways.

She made it clear again and again that a big part of learning the process of creating better and better impressions was listening to and learning from the impressions of others. We dropped our immature game when we realized what we were missing.

Her desire was for us to become good at presenting "effects that go beyond language." In other words, she wanted us to become more poetic.

I'm still not very poetic but...

Thank you Ora Landis, thank you.

MM--

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