|
Breland retired teaching in 1971, after a "glorious career" of 41 years, and the memories, the students' antics and other stories sprinkle into her conversation as though they happened days, rather than decades, ago.
"Miss Welty wrote the stories, but I taught them," Breland said, convinced she enjoyed the better end of the deal. "It's more fun to look at their faces, by far, and see their reactions!"
"Dreams and books are each a world," is one of her favorite quotes. She opened worlds for scores of students, through literature. Former students helped a lifelong dream of hers come true in 1994, raising money for a trip to New York and a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. "I stayed in a suite. I mean, I had it all!"
Former students, even those now seniors, are still boys and girls in her eyes. "Sometimes I look at them and they're bald-headed, and have got on hearing aids. But you step up and cup their little faces, and you can see the child you once taught. They don't change that much.
"I told a boy, 'Y'all are part of me.' He said, 'Miss Breland, it works both ways.' "
There are times she misses the classroom and the children. "Some days I'd give anything to be back. There's one little boy in church, in the first grade of school, and I think, ooh, I'd give a million to teach him. He's so smart and cute!" Her sister, Kathleen McAlister, 94, teases that the teacher's tone is still alive at the home they share.
Breland is proud that she's only missed one class reunion, and that due to a hip injury. "But I'm not sweet 16 anymore. I have to choose where I go and how long I stay. I can't be the old teacher I was. ... To thine own self be true."
The grammarian within remains feisty. At Books-A-Million the other day, she was searching for a book, and she was in a hurry. "A young man was standing there as I went into the store, so I asked him, 'How can I find this book as rapidly as possible?' and he said, 'Go back there to the big red sign and ask them where it's at.'
"I said, 'Where it's at?' People in the other aisle just roared," she recalled, laughing. "They said, 'You must've been an English teacher.' I said, 'I still am!'"
|
