From Madame Barth (sur la Pont d’Avignon, le stylo, le crayon, le cahier) to Madame Hoffer (who taught me, unintentionally that out of the most miserable situations comes the greatest hilarity) to Madame Silverberg (drill drill drill drill drill) to Madame Salamon (drill drill drill drill drill) to Madame Hinkle (finally, a breath of fresh air).

About drilling: this is one of the most effective forms of torture. One is forced to keep very focused for long periods of time on something from which one gets no short-term gain. Sure, I wouldn’t mind drilling if I longed for the goal that drilling would help me meet. But I never had a fantasy of running around France and being able to converse in that language. Madames Salamon and Silverberg were well-dressed, well-behaved drill sergeants. They never strayed off the path! No goofing! No anecdotes! This is an unfair statement. Carrie Rosenberg had no trouble getting Madame Salamon to reveal details of her personal life (of course, not on class time, but afterwards). I … guess … I … just wasn’t interested enough.

And after all that drilling, voila! Here is Madame Hinkle, my personal favorite of the French teachers, perhaps partly because she got to teach the best material (we were reading short works of literature). Her voice was the sweetest, her accent the loveliest. And to me she looked like a fairy godmother. Sitting in Madame Hinkle’s class was like lying on a comfortable sofa with your eyes closed and having a friend slowly, slowly, read you a story that you desperately want to hear. Our class was only beginning to be competent at reading, so we proceeded at a snail’s pace. Her manner of getting across the material to us was so gentle, she was like a physical therapist who heals without causing pain. If I ever have need of a physical therapist, I would like him or her to be like Madame Hinkle or Coach Golden. She was such a sensitive mirror of the books we read. Sometime she had to tell us (really hint or suggest) what we were supposed to feel (because, plodding along awkwardly with the text, we lost sight of the point of the story). This extremely slow pace allowed for us to experience every nuance of the books. For me, she became the characters. She was the father and the blind girl in La Symphonie Pastorale. She became every character in L'Etranger. And she wasn’t even doing the reading. I can still hear her say ‘l’Arab.’ I was so haunted by the story during the days we were reading La Symphonie Pastorale that I’d be in a daze long after her class was over. I was haunted for twenty years by the memory of that book. Finally, in my thirties, I got it out of the library in an English translation (of course I don’t read French anymore, or any other language I ended up studying) and tried to exorcise the demon. I only partially succeeded. I will try again in a few years. Does anyone remember The Man Who Walked Through Walls? I heard many witticisms about this teacher over the years, some coarser than others, but I always felt that they couldn't be about the Madame Hinkle who was my teacher.

Lastly, a bit about Madame Barth. Here was the real thing. She loved her country. She wanted us to love her culture. Remember the posters in that room? That ROOM. Wendy Segal once whispered to someone within my hearing: She must have been very beautiful when she was young. I had never thought about it before, but yes, I could imagine her young, her hair freed from the bun, skipping through the streets of Paris … and then I suddenly felt sick. How did she get from that fantastic scenario to this stinking, overheated, mustard-colored cave of a classroom, with gated windows so sooty no natural light would ever pass through, the furnace belching and hissing just behind the wall, and with classes of students who were not at all on her side? I felt guilty, as if I were part a gang of uncultured thugs who were trying to bring her down. She showed us many slides of France. She was swelling with pride as she described the various scenes. Sadness was also there, because these were old slides. Again, I felt guilty. Fly away little bird! Go back to your country! Are we keeping you a prisoner here?

In Madame Barth’s class, I got a lesson in the importance of not passing judgment on people of advancing years and from other cultures, but the lesson often made me queasy, not because I had to force myself to love French culture (no problem there), but because she seemed uncomfortable. Anyway, I still remember all the words to Alouette! When I belt it out with mock seriousness and all the gestures, I can really make my kids crack up.

One last memory: the most profound moment in Madame Barth’s class for me was provided not by the teacher, but by Emily Singer. Madame Barth asked the class, was anyone able to write Qu’est-ce que c’est? on the board. Only Emily raised her hand. She went up to the board and wrote the sentence as easily as if it were her name. For the first time, I really understood that construction (intro music to 2001; Bom…Bom…Bom ……….Dah Dah!…..Boom boom boom boom boom…)

Amy Farber