Lessons of Hope

When I was in high school, the best occupation I imagined for myself was that of an English teacher like my ninth-grade teacher, Hope Spillane. I was among the decades of sweating South Carolina high schoolers sardined in humid classrooms, lit by her teaching. Some of us became teachers. All of us absorbed her lessons directly, indirectly, defiantly, delightedly . . . I can recall no single lesson, honestly. Instead, I recall sitting before her, feeling like I was the only student in the classroom. I recall conversations, stories, and questions that led me to lessons.

In the best of all possible worlds, every teacher makes a student feel like the most special student—but the feeling Mrs. Spillane was indeed “carefully looking” at me seemed confirmed when she appeared at one of my poetry readings in 2014. More than twenty years after she taught me in high school, she drove three hours from Columbia to hear me read at her college alma mater, Agnes Scott College in Georgia. She appeared again in
2017 when I read at the University of South Carolina, where she received her master’s degree in English literature. Writing about great teachers prompted me to reach out to her again, but my research revealed she’d passed away in June of 2020 at 81. I don’t know who to contact with my condolences and gratitude. I place her name here with the other great teachers.

While researching her whereabouts, I found a local news photo of Mrs. Spillane holding a book signed in my half-legible, left-handed signature. Her eyes and smile twinkle intently in photos just as they twinkled in her classroom. It was the kind of twinkling look that could make every photographer feel like a former student in her long, warm career. I think I signed the book, “for Hope! 1st teacher, 1st bringer of the word or world”? I can’t quite make it out, but both sentiments would be correct. She was the first to show me that a teacher is someone who brings “the world” and “word” to a student. The hastily/nervously written note is not nearly enough acknowledgment for her impact.

Other than the middle-school crush who may or may not have read the love poem I wrote her, Mrs. Spillane was the first person to see my poetry. When she appeared for my reading at Agnes Scott, she carried a copy of the high-school literary magazine she started for students. My first poems appeared in it. I won’t dwell on those terrible poems, but Mrs. Spillane read them with a look I had not seen before for something I wrote down. A teacher is our first witness.

Mrs. Spillane’s obituary includes a few notes from students lucky enough to have had her. It also says she “reinvigorated her poetry and short story writing after retirement. Then, surprising everybody, she very successfully pursued an avocation in painting natural landscapes and nature scenes of the SC coast and Edisto Island.” Mrs. Spillane’s artistic interests didn’t surprise me. She taught with the empathy and patience of a practitioner. She was the first to show me how the best teacher sees the presence of a student; the best teacher sees the future in a student. The best teacher remains a student. Her love of literature was the love of the teacher and student, the love of the writer and reader.

Mrs. Spillane encouraged closely reading multitudes of words and worlds. She made me feel I contained multitudes. In my sophomore year, she invited me to join the journalism club. I can’t recall a single thing I wrote or drew in the club; I only recall the special art pen I got to use: the rOtring ArtPen (currently $40 online, “Take your sketches to the next level with the rOtring ArtPen, designed for precision, control and versatility in all of your sketching projects.”). Mrs. Spillane purchased it for use in the club, and I may or may not have shared this magical pen with the other journalism club artists. I think of King Arthur’s Excalibur when I try to express the power I felt using it. The pen held a special power because I believed she purchased it for me. She often let me take the pen home, and she encouraged me to use it for my own journaling. I’m sure she bought many such tools and instruments for many students over the years. She made her students feel they contained multitudes.

By my senior year, I aspired to be an English teacher like Mrs. Spillane. There were no artists, no teachers, and few high-school graduates in my family. When I feared I might not receive a full college scholarship somewhere, I told myself I could get a job teaching somewhere.

I would marry my high-school sweetheart and lavish her with words and paintings. I dreamed of teaching English literature by day, coaching basketball after school, and painting in the art building at night. Other times, I dreamed of teaching AP Art by day, then leading a controversial after-school poetry club, while writing a novel at night. Mrs. Spillane made me believe a teacher contained multitudes.

These days as a Distinguished Silver Professor at New York University, I am guided by the lessons in the look of Hope Spillane.

My writer self, wielding an enchanted pen, looks at observation as a kind of reading, and reading as a kind of witness, thanks to her. I’m unsure who to contact to celebrate her legacy, but I know sharing just a bit of her impact with other teachers celebrates her glory. I celebrate the unseen, unacknowledged glory of her teaching. I celebrate the unseen, unacknowledged glory of teachers.

Copyright © 2024 by Terrance Hayes

TERRANCE HAYES’s award-winning poetry collections include So To Speak; American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin; How to Be Drawn; and Lighthead, which won the National Book Award. His poems have been featured in Best American Poetry and have won multiple Pushcart Prizes. He is also the author, in prose, of To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight and Watch Your Language. The recipient of a Whiting Award, a MacArthur “genius” fellowship, and other honors, Hayes is Distinguished Silver Professor of English at New York University.