Thank You, Lisa

As I prepare to retire tomorrow night after graduation, I am reminded of a dear friend that has retired last year. While others have certainly been supportive in this endeavor, one friend of mine stands out of this crowd. She seems to have known how "difficult" this experience would be. And she seemed determined to stand by me through it, to make the experience easier, to make it that much more special.

Tonight, I am posting a tribute I delivered to the end of her career last year at her retirement dinner. She was, and still is, a great teacher. And a great friend. Thank you, Lisa.

Tribute: Lisa McLean

As I was thinking of what to say tonight about Lisa McLean, how I would, in two minutes, sum up her career in education, a career that stretched over 38 years, 34 of them in Long Branch, a poem I had read over 40 years ago continued to pop into my mind. This poem had nothing to do with teaching. Nothing even to do with education. It was a poem written by Sam Walter Foss about an experience he had had one hot fall day when, on a particularly long walk, he came upon a bench under a big tree and flanked by a well. The sign on the well said Come and drink if you are thirsty. The sign on the bench said Come and sit awhile if you are tired. And the sign on a barrel of apples at the foot of the tree said Help yourself. Why would that poem pop into my mind when I was trying to write a tribute to Lisa McLean, the teacher?

In her 38 years as a teacher, Lisa has certainly proven herself to have been a master teacher. She has taught at all levels in the district, from Pre-School Handicapped to 12th grade high school classes in 5 of the 8 district schools. Twice she was named High School Teacher of the Year. She spent her career teaching children with the severest handicaps. Children of, some would say, limited abilities. And yet, Lisa worked wonders with them, making miracles in the classroom each and every day. And how did she do it? How did she teach high school children with severe learning disabilities to read not just one Charles Dickens novel in a year, but 8 of them, and a few by other authors to boot? “Where are we this week?” I would ask one of her students as I passed him in the hallway. “We’re in England.” He would reply. Or, when she was reading A Tale of Two Cities, “We’re in France.” It didn’t take me long to realize that her technique was two-pronged yet simple. She loved them. And, because she loved them, she refused to allow them to be limited by their own limitations.

If what I have just described was all that Lisa McLean did over the last 36 years, she would surely qualify as a master teacher. But that is not all she did. Not by a long shot. She will be remembered for far more than that in the minds and hearts of the children of Long Branch families. She will be remembered by students who could not afford to go to their proms, but suddenly found money for tuxedos or fancy dresses, and made memories they would have for the rest of their lives. She will be remembered for birthday celebrations, replete with cake, candles and presents by those who had no one else to remember when they were born. She will be remembered by senior homerooms for regularly scheduled homemade breakfasts of French toast, bacon, juice and coffee, made to encourage them to get to school on time, for sugar cookies and bottled water in a study hall they once dreaded to go to, for a friendly and concerned ear for their troubles or advice and encouragement for their morale, whenever they needed it. She will be remembered for bags of groceries delivered to those who could barely support their families, as well as for the bags laden with breakfast bars, goldfish and juice she would cart into school each and every day for children who did not have the time, or the money, to grab a meal. “Could I have one of those, Miss?” she would hear each day from a student standing at her classroom door, a student she might never have met before. Her reply was always simple, and always bore the same warmth and care, “Absolutely!” Not once or twice, but day after day, year after year, in a lifetime of generosity and love.

Dealing with the loss of a husband and a mother in less than three years, she reached out beyond her own grief to help a dying teacher hold her family together by cooking meals, fundraising, and daily hands-on intervention that those of us who know her, have come to expect. Ask her why she does these things, and you will get a look from her that will make you sorry you asked. Questions like that are rhetorical, at best, to Lisa McLean.

So now, when I think back to that tree, that bench, that well and that barrel of apples, and to that poet who went home that day and wrote a poem, entitled The House by the Side of the Road, I think I understand why it popped into my mind. It is the last stanza of this poem that, I believe, explains it best. He wrote:

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by –
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish – so am I;
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

For the last 36 years, Lisa McLean has lived in that house by the side of the road, and has been a friend to everyone. And it has been my distinct honor to have been one of them.