The Teacher Was Supreme - Lorna (Niemela) Letourneau
New Ipswich Historical Society
FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region
Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.
Lorna (Niemela) Letourneau
During the war, I went to the Dublin public school and rode the bus. We had a nurse at school; an older lady and kind of domineering. We had an hour for recess and I was right there with the boys: I had seven brothers. I mean, I knew how to play ball. And I got hit by a bat; I was the catcher. I got hit in the mouth and it split my lip, so I had to go into the nurse. The nurse was horrified. She said, “You’ve got to go to the doctor’s or the hospital and get a stitch.” She couldn’t do this without my mother’s permission, so she had to take me home. And I had to hold this thing on my lip, and when we got home my mother wasn’t there. She was out visiting one of her Finnish friends, having coffee. So we went there and the nurse was explaining to my mother. My mother said, “Let me see.” And she said something in Finn to her hostess, who came out with a Band-Aid(™). My mother said to the nurse, “You are not going to put a stitch in that girl’s lip. She’ll have a big bump there forever and she doesn’t need to have any big bumps. It will come together fine.” And she squeezed my lip together and put the bandage on it. And she said, “Now go back to school.”
Well, the nurse was livid. I remember sitting in that car on the way back and she was sputtering, going on and on about my mother. But I didn’t have any big bump. I loved school; I would rather have gone to school than stay home because home was nothing but work. And I loved to read. I had this place in the attic where I would sit and hear my mother yelling for me. My brothers and I all won the Audubon Society Awards because we knew more birds than anybody else: our parents taught us.
When I graduated from high school, I realized I had missed out in not playing sports. And the reason I couldn’t was because I was a girl and my mother was not going to let me walk home from Carr’s Corner: three miles. She was very protective. She would warn us about a few cousins we had that were not so nice. She did it in a very discreet way but, we knew.
My mother didn’t know anything about registering or helping me get into college, but she not afraid of meeting people and trying new things. And I think it was because of the contact she had in working with wealthy families in Dublin. Two days before the fall semester started at Keene Teachers College, a teacher from Dublin helped me get admitted. I was accepted on my high-school marks. I was there for four years on scholarship. In my junior year at college, I didn’t have much to eat because there was no money provided in the scholarship for that. And this is where your background plays a part: you have that fortitude. I never felt sorry for myself and I think that was the key. In college, I got right into sports. I was in every team sport there was and among five girls chosen to be all-stars. My senior year, I had a scholarship and lived at home. I paid the college $36 for the entire year because I had tuition paid through my scholarship. And then I had to serve as a teacher in the State of New Hampshire for four years: that’s what the scholarship required.
I’ve been involved in a private-school endeavor, Victory High School, six years, but I taught for 22 years in a public elementary school. I have 40 kids, grades nine through 12. When I first opened, about 70 percent came from a Finnish background. As the school has grown, about 50 to 60 percent are Finnish. Students are saying, “I’ve never done so much work. I’ve never learned so much.” This approach offers discipline, a morality they can’t get in public schools, and the fact that I pray with students. Our students have Bibles because it’s a Christian school. I found children who have not attended church or don’t belong to the Finnish community sometimes have no spirituality at all. I have to show them what a chapter and verse is. We usually start with a simple lesson from the Book of John—easy to understand. Students often choose to do Bible first. I’ve had some boys—big, rough, tough guys—say, “I’m going to be late tomorrow. Will you hold the prayer? I want to be there.” I open school at seven in the morning. Students who work in construction arrive early. They come in and work until about 10:30 a.m. and they all have jobs. In order to attend my school, you must have a job; that’s why it’s called an alternative high school. And students get academic credit for their jobs. Some are working 40 or 50 hours a week. Some require them to leave very early in the morning —five o’clock—because they’re at a distance. So they might stay at school for long days on Monday and Tuesday and do four days’ worth of assignments. They then go to work and get in two full days. Many are paying me out of their own pockets. One—I’ll call him Steve—was using pot. So I prayed, “I really need God’s wisdom. How do I approach this whole subject? Do I have the right to do it?” I sensed Him telling me to read John 3:16, and at first I couldn’t believe it—why would he want me reading that? So I turned to it and as I continued to read, there was a part that said: For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.- John 3:20-21 So I said to the students, “This is the verse I’m going to read and I have a purpose for reading it.” I was bold enough to say, “I know that here in this classroom some of you are doing things that are not right. And I know you know who you are. I know too that the light of which the Bible speaks is here because it says that where two or more are gathered in His name, He is among them. And I know that some of you feel very uncomfortable about it, and I think it’s time you addressed this for your own sake as well as mine. It can hurt the future of this school if you’re going to continue to do this. So it’s up to you. And that’s all I’m going to say.”
I can’t even begin to tell you how hungry these kids are for morality, for decency. The day after Steve found out I knew he was using pot, he didn’t come to school. His mother found out. That night I got a telephone call on my answering machine and I thought, “Oh, boy...” She said, “I called so-and-so. And I asked him if Steve went to school and he’d better not lie to me and #$%*&@!...” I thought, “This kid has to live with this.” She went on and on—I can’t even remember half of what she said. I was asking the Lord to give me help in answering her. Finally I said, “Look, I’m not upset that Steve didn’t come to school. I know why he didn’t and I’m going to share it with you. Your son smokes pot.” She said, “You know? I said, “I’m not going to throw him out. I’m going to try to help him. He couldn’t face me. He is being changed inside and it’s hard for him. And he feels bad. He knew that he was going to be in trouble with you because he skipped school.” She said, “Well, he lied to me!” I said, “He had no choice but to lie. Because it was so great within him that he didn’t know what to do. But it’s okay. Let him come back.” She said, “Well what should I do? I was going to take him to lunch and everything, that little #&@#*$&%!” I said, “Take him to lunch and don’t say a word. You know something: love, done correctly, is strong. He knows when he comes in tomorrow morning there’ll be extra assignments.” And he came into school the next morning. I said, “Oh, good morning, Steve. There’s a little extra work today. I guess you know why.” He did it all. Graciously. And as he left, he didn’t just barge out the door. I was very busy and he came and found me and said, “Oh, Mrs. Letourneau? See you later.” Many students have said, “I wish I had had this school structure when I was a freshman.” And many have taken extra courses in summer so they finish in three years. Some of the boys—you would look at them and think to yourself, ‘They couldn’t be students!’—have been unbelievably good. They have a scholarly depth I could not believe, especially English literature. We also offer American literature, world literature, and masterpieces: Shakespeare and all the good poets. When I do morning exercises, I build students up and tell them one of the greatest things they can do is honor their parents. Not for what their parents do but for what a parent stands for. Even if you don’t like what they do, God says honor your father and mother and it will be well with you. And I have seen relationships between parents and children change: mothers come to me, cry, and say, “We talk, we sit down together, and we have conversations. Before, he did nothing but swear at me or slam the door or wouldn’t even talk. Now I have a new son.” Or a new daughter.
I work with PC Labs in Keene and do Victory High School’s computer-studies program through them. The students pay for this themselves, but they get good training. They can go as far and as high as they want with computers, then I give them credit for it. There are many ways to get an education and this is one thing that they’re finding out. After high school, especially regarding Finnish kids, graduates have gone into family businesses and done very well. Some have gone on to college, usually a two-year technical school. Some get married. I haven’t had that many girls so far: this year I have more girls than ever. The ratio has been something like five boys to two girls. But that was always my first love: to reach the boys. And it’s been an answer to some problems with the Finnish students. Now guidance counselors from public schools are calling and want to know how I am getting through to students. The superintendent of schools in Peterborough asked me, “What are you doing, Lorna?” I said, “You have everything I have, but I have one more element. I can bring the spiritual element in and every child needs that. It isn’t that I speak about religion. It’s a sense of direction. And to have some kind of belief is to have an inner security. When you have that, you have the ability to stand up and say no to something that’s coming at you.” Last year a boy, a month before graduation, was on a motorcycle and took a spill. He was in the University of Massachusetts hospital. Our school prayed for him and there wasn’t one kid who wouldn’t bow his or her head: that’s one thing about the Finnish people. This boy’s father gave the opening prayer at his son’s graduation and he started to cry. He said, “This could have been a totally different graduation.” His kid was valedictorian. Money isn’t the issue because some of these students are coming to the school free. They can’t pay. What are you going to do? You can’t throw them out after you’ve put all this work into them and see their unbelievable value and what they’re doing. I know I’ll get that investment back.
We need more teachers like Lorna.