The Bard’s Blog
Mrs. Sorrels; My Most Influential Teacher
Meeting Mrs. Sorrels
It was in mid October in 1948 that I first met Mrs. Sorrels. She became my sophomore English teacher after a series of negative events occurred in my life. Because my parents got a divorce I went to three different high schools that year. The third school was Grandview High in Grandview, MO. I lived with my sister and my brother in-law there to finish my second year of high school.
After the divorce, my dad remarried and we moved away from Harrisonville, MO where all my friends were and where I had just succeeded in making the football team. Harrisonville was a school of about 400 students, the size with which I was very comfortable.
We moved to St. Joseph, Mo where I had to go to Central High, a huge school of over 2,000 students. It was like a small college. All this caused me to become depressed and get sick for several weeks. My dad saw this and asked my sister and brother in-law to allow me to live with them and finish my sophomore year in high school at Grandview, also a school of about 400 students.
So on October 13th, just three days before my fifteenth birthday in 1948 I enrolled at Grandview High. The first teacher I met there was Mrs. Harriet Sorrels, who would become the most influential teacher of my whole life.
A Study of Mrs. Sorrels
Mrs. Sorrels would not have won a beauty contest. She was a “stout” woman from Tennessee with a marked southern accent. She wore a bad “Page Boy” haircut which was a little ahead of its time. She had red hair and steely blue eyes with which, it seemed she could see into your very soul. She was not unkind or unfair but she was very strict and was determined to get perfect English into our heads even if she had to “pound it into you with the English book” as she put it.
I also remember thinking to myself as a former farm boy, that the word “sorrel” was the color of a horse which also had short reddish brown hair. The thought of it was funny to me but, of course I kept that thought strictly to myself.
I was already a good English student when I came under the influence of Mrs. Sorrels’ teaching but she wanted perfection and I was far from perfection. I dared not come to her class unprepared and neither did anyone else for fear of incurring her righteous indignation. What with my unsteady first few months of that year I was totally intimidated by her “First Sergeant” demeanor. So I dug into my English books every night and on weekends as well. I also copied every word of instruction she uttered. Soon I was making straight A’s and enjoying her smiles of approval.
Mrs. Sorrels didn’t just teach English Grammar she also taught, as an added bonus, proper manners and how to give a good handshake plus proper hygiene. She once told a story of her having the opportunity to shake the hand of Harry Truman. His sister also lived in Grandview. He was President of the United States at the time and she admired him very much. She went into great detail about meeting Mr. Truman one day when he came to visit her.
The main point of her story was that Harry Truman had a very firm handshake. A firm handshake she explained, was a sign of a strong character. She even had us practice shaking hands with one another to show us just how it was done. She said “Nobody wants to shake a hand that feels like a cold limp fish”. She also told us, particularly the boys, to never come to school without a clean handkerchief. She even taught us the proper way to blow your nose when at a formal dinner.
Doug, the Football Player
Then there was the case of Doug, a good looking guy and an excellent football player, who was also in Mrs. Sorrels’ class. (Doug had beaten me out in my attempt to make the Grandview football team as a sophomore) He was pretty strong on himself and one day he complained to Mrs. Sorrels about the grade he had received from her. She said to him “if you had studied as hard as Mr. Mitchell you would have received a better grade”. When he got a little steamed over that remark she said “Come down off your ‘High horse’, Doug”. (I thought “you mean high horse like in Sorrel”) “If you want better grades in my class” she continued “study as hard as you practice football”. Doug gulped and shut his mouth because he knew he could not win this argument. (I chalked that up as a win for me against Doug)
There was also a student in our class named Shirley. She came from a nice family, wore nice dresses, and never did anything wrong. One day Mrs. Sorrels told the class that Shirley and I were her best students. A few years later when she was a senior, Shirley became the Valedictorian of her class.
At the Waldorf Astoria
Mrs. Sorrels was also keen on using proper pronunciation. So she told a story on herself about the time she was in New York City and had a chance to dine at the famous restaurant, the Waldorf Astoria. (The Waldorf salad was made famous there) She said she asked for a Baked Potato with her meal, at first pronouncing it “po-tat-o” but later she pronounced it “po-tay-to”. She said her friends had a good laugh on her attempt at snobbishness.
Webster and I
Mrs. Sorrels was also keen on teaching us the meaning of words. So she would often ask us to define a word that was very descriptive and yet not often used by uneducated people. She gave us a list of these words of which we needed to know the meaning, “if we wanted to get on in the world” she added. I studied them religiously and memorized the dictionary definition. So when she asked me to define one of them I quoted the dictionary verbatim. So after that she called me “Webster”.
One day when Doug, the football player failed to know the definition of a certain word, she pointed to me and said “Ok Webster, can you give me the definition of this word”. Fortunately I knew the definition and I proudly quoted Webster verbatim. She replied “That’s why I call him Webster”. I smiled. Doug frowned. (Now I was two up on Doug)
Mrs. Sorrels Builds my Confidence
One day Mrs. Sorrels gave us a particularly hard “pop” quiz. The next day as she handed out the graded papers from that quiz each class member sat motionless while waiting anxiously for his or her paper. When I received my paper I immediately noticed the A+ written in big red letters at the top. Then I noticed the comment she had also written in red, just below my A+ grade. Here’s what it said: It’s a pleasure to teach when someone learns as quickly as you. My self-worth shot up ten points and rang my success bell like a strong man ringing the bell on the carnival sledgehammer attraction.
After looking over my graded paper I glanced up at Mrs. Sorrels. She smiled and winked at me with her now gentle blue eyes that were set just below the “Sorrel” bangs of her bad page boy.
I then saw that this teacher who had threatened to “pound English into our heads with a book” was also good at rewarding us with compliments when we did well.
I never made the first team in football at Grandview High that year although I did get to play in a couple of games. It didn’t matter anymore though because I had a new perspective on life. I now had the self confidence that I had lost earlier because I was an “A” student in the toughest class at Grandview High taught by the toughest teacher at Grandview under Mrs. Harriet Sorrels.
Conjugating the Verb “To Be”
Mrs. Sorrels spent a lot of time teaching us how to conjugate verbs, especially the verb “to be”. At first I didn’t even know what the word “conjugate” meant. I learned this from the real Webster: to give the different forms of a verb as they vary in tense, number, and person.
Mrs. Sorrels also taught us that “tense” means whether the verb is present, or past tense. “Number” has to do with whether a verb is singular or plural. Then “person” has three parts: First person is the person speaking. Second person is the person spoken to and third person is the person spoken of. Most people have a hard time learning this about grammar but I learned it easily in order to please Mrs. Sorrels. I can still do it today (Seventy-four years later) to the amazement of many, including myself.
Here is the conjugation of the verb “to be” in the first, second, and third person; present and past tense; singular and plural. [I am, you are, he is; we are, you are, they are] These three are all singular: “I am” is first person (person speaking), and present tense. “You are” is second person (person spoken to and present tense. “He is” is third person (person spoken of) and present tense. Now for the plural form: “We are” is first person, present tense. “You are” is second person, present tense. “They are” is third person, present tense. Now that was quite a bit of detail for “young skulls full of mush” as Rush Limbaugh used to say.
Mrs. Sorrels would also point to anyone of us at any time without notice and say, for example “Give me the conjugation of the verb “to be” in the first, second, and third person, singular, present tense. If we answered: I am, you are, he is; we would be right and receive her coveted approval. This is how she taught and it was amazing. Mrs. Sorrels is probably teaching English grammar to the angels right now.
Harroll E. (Hal) Mitchell
The Bard of Hearthstone Hills
Author of seven “Grammatically correct” books