My sister is a consummate teacher. If we were to gather all the students whose lives she has touched through the years, we would probably have to rent a venue the size of Madison Square Garden. She is affectionately known to us as “Chikka” her childhood nickname, which originated from her care of her baby brother. As she fed him in his high chair, cleaning up the usual messes that babies are known to create, she would tease him by calling him “sika”, the Finnish word for pig. Of course it backfired and he began to call her “Chikka” in his baby language. It stuck! But this little anecdote strikes at the heart of the person she has been throughout her life – a Giver.
Wind the clock backward with me to peek in on a little brown eyed first grade girl in pigtails, sitting quietly at her desk in a one room schoolhouse in northern Minnesota, just two miles from her family’s farm. She notices a boy just a bit older than she, her neighbor who is two years ahead of her in Grade 3. She can tell that Alvin is struggling to read his primer. The budding teacher in her rises to the occasion and quietly, she begins to come alongside to help him.
That night at dinner she tells her parents about him. “What can I do for Alvin? I feel so sad for him.” Her mom and dad suggest a slotted piece of cardboard for tracking the text. It sounds so simple, but she and Alvin give it a try the next day. Unbelievably, this is the magic that kicks in Alvin’s decoding skills. Suddenly the letters make sense, and he begins to fly as she cheers him on.
Fast forward that clock some 50 years. She is now teaching at the university level in St. Cloud, MN but has made a weekend visit home to Menahga to see her mom. It’s Sunday afternoon and she’s getting ready to drive back to St. Cloud when there’s a knock at the door. She does not recognize the gentleman on the porch who asks, “Remember me from third grade?”
It takes a minute, but it all comes back to her. Into the kitchen he comes with his wife and granddaughter for a cup of coffee and a trip back into those memories. Through his tears he tells her, “Thank you so much for teaching me to read. Because of you, I caught up and eventually trained to be a bricklayer. I had a great and successful career, a good life. I could never have gotten through if you hadn’t helped me in third grade.”
That’s our “Chikka”.